The Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer on Saturday admitted that multiple Elector Photo Identity Card numbers were inadvertently generated for the same person during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls due to “procedural circumstances during data processing”.

The clarification came after The Hindu reported on Wednesday that at least 803 voter IDs were linked to just 397 persons in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency.

The report also highlighted cases in which persons held multiple voter IDs and instances where the same ID number appeared in the final electoral rolls of two different Assembly constituencies.

On Saturday, the state poll panel chief said that some applicants had submitted multiple Form 6 applications, seeking inclusion in the electoral rolls, through the Citizen Service Portal during the voter roll revision process. As these applications were processed independently, multiple voter ID numbers were inadvertently generated for the same individual.

The officer also explained that some identical voter ID numbers appeared in the electoral rolls of two constituencies because of delays in processing applications for deletion following migration.

In some cases, Form 8 applications seeking migration to another constituency had been approved and the electors’ names were included in the rolls of their new constituencies. However, the corresponding Form 7 applications, seeking deletion of their names from the previous constituencies, remained pending.

According to the Karnataka chief electoral officer, this happened because electoral roll operations had been frozen under statutory provisions ahead of the final publication of the rolls.

It added that the cases had been referred to the respective district election officers, additional district election officers and electoral registration officers for verification and necessary remedial action in accordance with the law.

“The Election Commission remains committed to ensuring absolute accuracy, transparency, and integrity of the electoral rolls,” the statement added.

The names of more than 99.3 lakh voters have been deleted from Karnataka’s final voter list published on October 27 following the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The number of voters fell to 4.5 crore from 5.5 crore that were on the state’s electoral rolls before the exercise began. This amounts to a decrease of about 17.9%.

Karnataka is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

A contentious exercise

Since the revision began, concerns have been raised that the exercise could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Ten years on to the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sweeping withdrawal of 86% of all cash in the economy. The impact of this move was immediate and devastating as millions of people scrambled to deposit or exchange their cash within a narrow window of time.

Adding to their misery, the government and the Reserve Bank of India kept changing the goal posts, imposing a limit on the exchange of notes, the amounts that could be deposited and steadily narrowing the time frame for exchanging the notes. As with the changing rules of the game, the announced objectives of demonetisation kept changing.

The tumult and chaos of those days are still fresh in our minds – small traders and hawkers without cash and working capital, unskilled workers thrown out of jobs, housewives losing cash they had hidden from abusive husbands, the lines and lines of people forced to stand in front of ATMs to withdraw measly amounts, and so much more.

The demonetisation of November 8, 2016 was a forerunner of the capriciousness, callousness and centralised nature of decision-making that has marked the Modi government’s 12-year-long tenure.

In a repeat move in March 2020, Prime Minister Modi announced a nationwide lockdown, which caused much greater human suffering. The Covid-19 lockdown, effected without prior announcement and without preparation, inflicted immense pain on millions of migrant workers who lost their jobs and were forced to march across the country.

In early 2021, the self-congratulation of the Bharatiya Janata Party and government over the limited impact of the first wave of Covid-19 left India unprepared for the devastating second wave of April-May 2021. The official figures of Covid-19 deaths have, in typical fashion, downplayed the true scale of mortality but all reliable and independent estimates point to around 4 million Indians dying because of the pandemic – to a good extent because of union government carelessness.

Ten years after the event, we could ask what Demonetisation 2016 has achieved, both in terms of its official objectives and unintended consequences. What lasting impact has it had in any form to justify that decision?

Black money, ‘terror financing’

Rooting out black money was the main objective of the exercise, a major plank of the BJP’s campaign promises in 2014. As its original promise to bring back black money stashed abroad was a non-starter, demonetisation of high denomination currency was seen as a dramatic way to capture the high moral ground. Combating counterfeit currency and terror financing were added as secondary reasons to strengthen the case.

For good measure, Indians were exhorted to view their suffering as a necessary sacrifice to achieve a noble end.

The objective had a built-in measure of success – how much of the demonetised currency did not come back into the banking system. Official sources and cheerleaders, who included some well-known economists, claimed that as much as between Rs 3 lakh crore to Rs 5 lakh crore – some 20% to 30% of the currency held by the public – estimated as black money holding would not return.

The government would have a windfall surplus of between 2% to 3% of the nominal GDP, they claimed. As well as a strike against black money, the government was predicted to generate a huge fiscal surplus.

However, it was immediately evident that despite the rapid changes in the RBI rules of currency exchange, most of the demonetised currency would be deposited in the banks. Sure enough, more than 99.3% of the demonetised currency eventually returned to the banking system.

What remained was mostly the small and pitiful holdings of the poor, the savings of women and emergency cash of old and the sick who could not exchange the notes in time. By any reckoning, this objective was a resounding failure.

Note Ban & Vote Ban (SIR) #SIR #Demonetisation pic.twitter.com/gKhhlNSGLi

— Satish Acharya (@satishacharya) October 31, 2026

The impact on counterfeiting of currency or terror financing – perhaps added on only to make demonetisation appear like a multi-objective operation – was harder to measure. With more than 99% of the notes back in the system, their scale and size would in any case have been minuscule.

Counterfeiting has always been around and will continue to do so even with the newly issued currency post-demonetisation. Terrorism is a state security matter, whose origin and containment should be sought through security operations and the law and order apparatus.

As it became evident that the demonetised notes were being returned in large volumes, the goal posts were shifted once more. The objective was now about India having less cash and moving to a more digital economy. The return of currency into the system, supporters claimed, would not only spur the growth of digital payments but also strengthen the formalisation of the economy. And with it, the growth of the tax base and further reduction of black money.

Those who could not explain the source of the large deposits of cash would be investigated and penalised. But we never heard of major investigations, penalties or seizures.

Over 450,000 “suspicious transaction” reports were filed in 2016-’17 by banks and other financial institutions with the Finance Ministry, but there was no abnormal jump in personal tax collections that year or the next.

Direct tax collections have indeed increased the past decade.

But the rise has been modest with regard to non-corporate tax (broadly personal income tax) and even less so of corporate taxes (which slumped in between because of the major tax cuts of 2019-’20).

A more noticeable increase of non-corporate tax has been in the years after Covid-19. There was no sudden jump immediately after Demonetisation 2016, belying claims that with the professed weakening of the black economy we would see vastly improved tax compliance.

Internationally too, the cash-GDP ratio has changed little over the decade. Its relative position remains just where it was earlier – as a country with one of a higher relative amount of cash in circulation.

The economic costs of demonetisation were never formally counted. There were direct costs of replacing the currency and the larger impact on the economy.

The official statistics reported an incredible picture: growth of gross national income at constant prices accelerated from 8% in 2015-’16 (the year before demonetisation) to 8.3% in 2016-’17 (the year of demonetisation).

In fact, according to the official statistics, during the decade of the 2010s, growth was the highest in 2016-’17.

The estimates for credible independent sources suggested a loss of output from 1% to 2.5% of the GDP for the 2016-’17 period. Others have indicated a much longer drag on the cash-based unorganised sector, which was especially hit hard. The fact that it was overtaken by other policy measures like the Goods and Services Tax and Covid meant that the true costs of demonetisation per se could not be counted.

On the longer-term impact of demonetisation or the lack of it, three key issues stand out. One is the role of cash in the economy. The second is the rapid growth of digital payments at the retail level. And despite this, the continued prevalence of black money in the system.

Demonetisation made no difference to the currency in circulation and its usage in the economy. The currency to GDP ratio between 2017-’18 to 2025-’26 is remarkably stable, moving from 10.7% to 12.1%, hitting a couple of highs of 14.4% and 13.3% during the Covid years of 2020-’21 and 2021-’22.

In 2015-’16, it was around 12% (RBI Annual Report 2016-17 Appendix Table 4).

The year-on-year changes to the currency in circulation over the 10 years indicates that the demand for cash took a substantial jump of 37% in 2017-’18 and continued to grow around 15% to replace the near total wiping out of the cash in the system (RBI Annual Report 2026, Appendix table 4). Thereafter it grew at a rate sufficient to meet the demand for cash in the economy.

The currency-deposit ratio is another important indicator of cash preference while bank deposits are used as a proxy for the growth of digital payments, the tax base and and more generally the formalisation of the economy: the higher the ratio, the greater the preference for cash over bank deposits.

The currency deposit ratio has remained unchanged or remained consistently high except immediately post-demonetisation – indicating that digitisation or vast expansion of bank accounts has not made much difference to the demand for currency. (RBI Annual Report 2026, Appendix Table 4; RBI Annual Report 2016-’17 Appendix Table 4)

Explosion in digital payments

The big story in digitalisation since demonetisation is of course the explosion in the use of the Unified Payments Interface – the instant payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India,

UPI had been set in motion earlier, but it received a fresh and high-priority push immediately after November 2016. The results are evident: the use of UPI has exploded over the past decade. As we all now experience every day, UPI has become a tool of convenience for Indians across class lines increasingly carry little cash for retail transactions.

Analysing the trends in UPI, which is a near-substitute to cash compared to all other forms of funds transfer or payments, it is clear that transactions on this platform have expanded exponentially (Chart 2) in volume terms. However growth in value, though impressive, has been low in absolute terms.

In 2025-’26, transactions by NEFT, or the National Electronic Funds Transfer system used to move funds between banks, were still 60% higher in value than over UPI: Rs 502 lakh crore vs Rs 314 lakh crore (RBI Annual Report, Table IX.1).

The average value of transactions is also small and has declined from around Rs 1,900 per transaction to Rs 1,300, showing that the UPI has substantially replaced cash in retail transactions. Although UPI accounted for 85% of all payment instruments by volume in 2025, its share in value terms is only 9.5%. (Payment System Report, December 2025, RBI – Charts 1 and 2)

While demonetisation may have played a part in this, the Covid years and the spectacular spread of smart phones played a much greater role in the growth of digital payments.

Despite this, the demand for cash remains at the pre-demonetisation level. The demand for cash is clearly for higher denominations. Indeed, the data shows that Rs 500 denomination is an overwhelming favourite, accounting for 85.5% of all notes in circulation. The position is almost identical to the pre- demonetisation period when notes of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination together accounted for around 86% of the total value of notes in circulation.

If it was argued that the demand for cash was in part motivated by the demand for black money or tax evasion or other purported reasons, clearly demonetisation did nothing to reduce or eliminate these demands. If anything, the use now of cash for black money transactions or in electoral politics would be greater because the traditional retail transactions demand for cash is very substantially being replaced by digital transactions.

Arguably, demonetisation had very little impact on cash usage, though the reason for the demand for holding cash may have changed in the wake of substantial digitisation of retail. The demand for currency remains anchored around 12% of GDP.

Beyond the long-term economic impact of Demonetisation 2016 we have had to live with, in many ways, the event permanently affected Indian society. The first is the belief that there is an arbitrariness and ad-hoc manner in which the Indian state can strike at everyday life.

The way it destroyed 86% of legal tender and denied individuals their legal right to their savings in bank accounts has left citizens wondering if there is any arbitrary action with a mass impact that can be outside the thinking of the Indian state. If further evidence was needed, we had the overnight lockdown of March 2020.

There were institutional failures, especially in the role of the Reserve Bank of India. Between November 8 and December 31, 2016, the RBI and the Finance Ministry issued around 74 notifications, many of which placed restrictions on the exchange, deposit or withdrawal of depositors’ funds.

Moreover, the RBI, as the custodian of currency, and best placed to understand the impact of demonetisation, appeared to do the government’s bidding unquestioningly. Although the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the move, a dissenting note by Justice Nagarathna questioned whether the RBI Board’s recommendation was based on the independent application of its mind.

The RBI’s decision in 2023 to withdraw Rs 2,000-denomination notes, which had been hastily introduced in the wake of Demonetisation 2016, was an equally arbitrary exercise though tempered with caution in the light of the post-demonetisation experience.

The media was another institution that fell even further during Demonetisation 2016. Early in the Narendra Modi regime, the media had shown that it was unwilling to question the government or demand accountability. Barring a few brave examples, the press turned cheer leader and a peddler of fake news during and after Demonetisation 2016. On this foundation, it hailed demonetisation as the master stroke of a master strategist in destroying India’s black economy.

The most egregious example was the reporting on TV of plans to insert a micro-chip on all new currency notes as part of the government’s all-round strategy to track black money usage, “news” that compelled the RBI to issue a refutation. This was not laughable. It set the stage for years and years of the mainstream media – especially TV – swallowing anything fed to them and applauding anything the government did.

Demonetisation was a disaster whichever way one looks at it. Yet, there has been no introspection or accountability for the policy action. Unlike the Covid lockdown, however egregious it may have been, there were no extenuating circumstances to justify the arbitrary imposition of demonetisation.

Neither the media, nor Parliament, has demanded explanations as to who made the decision and what its consequences were. Even the Supreme Court declined to intervene in what it said was a matter of policy.

The critics of Demonetisation 2016 pointed out from the beginning that it was not going to strike at the underground economy. They have been proven right. As some have noted, from a fiscal perspective it was all pain and no gain.

The black economy emerged unscathed from the events of November 2016 and has since only grown, fuelled by continuing large ticket corruption and illegalities. Nor have the secondary and new objectives added on in haste at the time been realised.

Moreover, India continues to be a cash-intensive economy. The new and strange situation is that a high cash-GDP ratio sits alongside a high degree of digitalisation of legal transactions. We can only surmise what the cash is held for and used for.

C Rammanohar Reddy is the author of Demonetisation and the Black Economy, Orient BlackSwan, 2018.

K Jayaram is a former central banker who worked for many years in an international financial organisation.

Staying true to the promise he had made in September, Srinagar MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi resigned from the National Conference and the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

“There are people who cry for the seat of power, but I feel at peace shunning the chair I am holding,” said 48-year-old Ruhullah as he announced his resignation at a massive gathering in Budgam.

Ruhullah’s resignation was preceded by a biting speech that targeted Kashmir’s grand old party, the National Conference, and its two prominent faces, the father-son team of party President Farooq Abdullah and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. With his resignation, Ruhullah – who is also a well-known religious figure – ended his nearly two-and-a-half-decade-long association with the party.

For many in Kashmir, the Shia cleric-politician’s resignation was not unexpected. It followed his growing isolation within the National Conference. He has been a vocal critic of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government’s decision to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under the Constitution and statehood in August 2019. He has also been vociferous about his party’s refusal to make restoring these two items its primary agenda.

In 2024, in the run-up to the first Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir after it was downgraded to a Union Territory, the Abdullah-led National Conference pledged to restore the region’s special status if voted to power. In its manifesto for the polls, the party had also promised to “strive” to restore Article 370 and Article 35A – the two provisions that had guaranteed internal autonomy and protection in matters such as land and jobs for locals. These had also been annulled in August 2019.

While the National Conference achieved an overwhelming majority in the Assembly, many feel that the party, which has been in power for more than two years now, is not serious about taking on New Delhi over the question of restoring this special status. Ruhullah is more blunt. He claims that the National Conference has surrendered to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Ruhullah’s rise has been fed by the growing displeasure towards the Omar Abdullah-led government in Kashmir.

So far, the junior Abdullah has avoided taking a combative posture to the Union government’s writ in Kashmir. But to his credit, Abdullah has expressed his frustration with the current governance setup in Jammu and Kashmir several times.

However, many in Kashmir want him to do more, including giving up the chair if he has no power. Abdullah’s pragmatism is not only being viewed as surrender but increasingly even as collusion.

To the major issue of restoring Article 370 and Article 35A, the party has merely paid lip service. Also pending is the task of establishing the business rules that would delineate the role and functions of the elected government and the Lieutenant Governor-led administration in the Union Territory.

While the final approval for those pending decisions remains with the unyielding Union government, Abdullah has been largely reticent in his response to the dominant Centre.

Ruhullah believes that the National Conference should make the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and autonomy its core agenda.

However, there is a constituency in Kashmir that is sceptical about Ruhullah’s exit: they believe it will further fragment the Kashmiri Muslim voter base. That scepticism springs from the history of New Delhi’s machinations in Kashmir. For decades, Union governments have created new political outfits in the Valley, broken up existing formations or backed obscure political outfits to cut powerful regional forces down to size.

This is why the biggest challenge for Ruhullah will be to convince Kashmiris that his politics is organic and does not have the blessings of the Union government. In his speech in Budgam on Tuesday, Ruhullah hinted at creating a new political formation. However, as a senior politician himself, Ruhullah, must know that there is a difference between platforming the grievances of Kashmir through speeches and turning a viewpoint into a powerful representative force. He faces an uphill task.

So far, the question Ruhullah has not answered is how he plans to compel New Delhi to restore the legal status quo in Kashmir. At the moment, the only difference between Omar Abdullah and Ruhullah is that Ruhullah has made the restoration of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir his core agenda.

Even though Ruhullah has been taking a strong line against the BJP-led Union government for nearly six years, he has failed to attract prominent voices or leaders to his side. But to his credit, a big chunk of Kashmiri youth do seem to like him.

At a deeper level, Ruhullah’s resignation is essentially a nudge to New Delhi to engage with Kashmir and address its anxieties. Whether the reason for these developments, New Delhi should read beyond Ruhullah’s resignation.

The massive support in his resignation rally in Budgam reiterated that there is support for the restoration of special status and autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi should not ignore the message.

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

A setback for Trump. The Democrats took control of the United States Congress from the Republicans in the mid-term elections. Before the polls, President Donald Trump-led Republican party had a 53-47 majority in the 100-member Senate. It had a slim 219-214 majority in the 435-member House of Representatives.

As of 11 am Indian time on Saturday, the Democrats held 54 seats in the Senate and the Republicans had 44. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats had won 254 seats and the Republicans 162. Some seats were yet to be called. A party needs 218 seats for a majority in the Lower House.

The elections are being viewed as a verdict on Trump’s second term as president. The Democrats’ control of Congress is expected to lead to greater scrutiny of the Trump administration in the remaining two years of its tenure.

Counting in the elections to elect governors was also underway in 36 states and three territories. The Democrats won 22 gubernatorial posts where the polls were held and the Republicans 12.

Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate, won the gubernatorial election in Texas, a long-standing Republican stronghold. This is the first time the state will have a Democratic party governor in three decades.

Democratic leader Keisha Lance Bottoms won in Georgia, becoming the first Black woman to be elected as a governor of any state in the US. The party’s Abdul El‑Sayed won the Senate race in Michigan, becoming the first Muslim senator in the US.

India-born Nithya Raman won the Los Angeles mayoral election on a Democratic party ticket.

Vivek Ramaswamy loses, at least four Indian-Americans win, reports Oishika Neogi.

Agniveer extension. Seventy-five percent of Agniveers who are not enrolled in the armed forces permanently after their four-year tenure will be given an option to extend their service by two more years. After this six years of service, Agniveers will get another opportunity to join the armed forces as regular soldiers, provided they meet the criteria, said Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani.

The introduction of the short-service Agnipath scheme in June 2022 had triggered protests in several states as aspirants demanded permanent recruitment with pension benefits. The announcement on Wednesday came as around 18,000 Agniveers from the first batch are expected to complete their four-year tenure and exit in December.

Subramani said that Agniveers who opt for the additional two-year service will receive higher salaries and an increased exit package.

An Agniveer died in Operation Sindoor. A year later, his parents are still fighting for pension, reports Anant Gupta.

In court. The Bombay High Court said it was disturbed by remarks made by some politicians targeting actor Dia Mirza for a video she had shot on behalf of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, urging Mumbai residents not to light firecrackers on the streets during Diwali. The court directed the municipal corporation to re-upload the video to “restore the confidence of the people”.

The municipal corporation had removed the video from its social media handles after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s city chief Ameet Satam declared, “We don’t need lessons on how to celebrate Diwali from Dia Mirza.”

The court said that the objections to Mirza’s participation in the civic body’s anti-pollution campaign were unfortunate and appeared to have given the matter a communal angle.

Also on Scroll last week

• A decade after demonetisation, no dent in black money and corruption
• Double hoax: Takedown notices from RSS, Delhi Police to digital rights groups turn out to be fake
• How an El Niño winter could worsen pollution in Delhi
• ‘Everything is political’: The anger driving India’s young women to hit the streets
• Not just Arunachal. A proposed dam has set off protests in Assam and Meghalaya as well
• How Indians in post-war Japan rebuilt their lives under Allied occupation
• India has made progress in reducing poverty, but World Bank estimates are flawed
• A month since tumult at Kolkata’s film institute, students firm on protesting till VC goes
• The all-risk gamble behind ‘Gondhal’ as it charts its journey to the Oscars
• ‘Ramayana: Part 1’ review: A sleek and sumptuous spectacle

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

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Delhi residents woke up to “very poor” air quality on Diwali morning, with several parts of the national capital recording pollution levels in the “severe” category.

The overall Air Quality Index stood at 383 at 8 am on Sunday, according to the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board.

Twenty-four monitoring stations recorded AQI levels above 400, indicating “severe” air pollution. Jahangirpuri was the worst-affected area, with an AQI of 450, followed by RK Puram at 448 and Punjabi Bagh at 446.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

The cities adjoining the capital also recorded “poor” to “very poor” air quality. While Noida recorded an AQI of 319, Gurugram recorded 322.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. The lighting of firecrackers during Diwali along with stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

This year, Diwali will be celebrated on Sunday. Peak air pollution levels are historically observed during and immediately after Diwali.

The Supreme Court has allowed the manufacture, sale and lighting of certified green firecrackers in Delhi-NCR for two days during the festival. However, Scroll found that vendors continue to sell regular firecrackers.

View this post on Instagram

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Bombay High Court has quashed the notifications and show-cause notices by the Maharashtra government seeking to acquire 84 hectares of land belonging to Tata Power Company Limited in Pune for a private Ayurvedic wellness project, reported Bar and Bench.

In March 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party issued a notification categorising 84 hectares of land situated near the Thokarwadi Dam and Reservoir as an industrial area.

The land forms the catchment area for Tata Power’s 75-megawatt Bhivpuri Hydro Station and its proposed 1,000-megawatt Bhivpuri Pumped Storage Project.

In June 2018, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis wrote to the late industrialist Ratan Tata proposing that part of Tata Power’s land in Pune be made available for “vedic pandits to take up chanting”, The Indian Express reported.

The Maharashtra government had intended to transfer the catchment area to Maharishi Vedoddharak Foundation for a project worth Rs 1,500 crores, featuring a wellness centre and an Ayurvedic college, Bar and Bench added.

Tata Power challenged the move, contending that the land had been given to its predecessors over a century ago for the public purpose of generating hydroelectricity.

The company argued that the government violated the 2013 Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act to benefit a private company.

On Thursday, a bench of Justices Manish Pitale and Shreeram V Shirsat set aside the March 2025 notification declaring the land an industrial area and its subsequent acquisition by the private company, the newspaper added.

The court criticised the acquisition of an operational dam’s catchment area for spiritual and leisure activities.

“Can this be at the expense of the hydro-electric projects of TPCL and its catchment area?” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “We find that in such a situation, the TPCL has made out a case to successfully challenge the impugned action of the respondents.”

The court also cited a March 8, 2018, government resolution prohibiting development within 500 metres of a dam’s high-flood line, and said the land “cannot be used for development activity”, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Sneha.

American lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs has said in its public disclosure that a social media post by United States President Donald Trump congratulating Prime Minister Narendra Modi on becoming India’s longest-serving prime minister in June was among the work it had executed as part of its monthly retainership with the Indian embassy, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Lobbying in US politics is the practice of individuals or interest groups attempting to influence legislative, executive or regulatory decisions made by government officials.

After Trump was elected for his second term in January 2025, the Indian embassy in Washington hired two major lobbying firms headed by individuals considered a part of the US president’s inner circle, reported The Indian Express.

One of the firms was Mercury Public Affairs, signed at a monthly retainer of $75,000, or approximately Rs 70 lakh, with Bryan Lanza, the communications director for Trump’s transition team.

A presidential transition team is the organisation formed by a president-elect after winning an election to prepare for taking over the executive branch of the US government.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s former chief of staff, was also a registered lobbyist with the firm until late 2024, reported The Indian Express.

The company disclosed the information about its retainership in its filing to the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Act requires people and organisations who lobby, or act on behalf of foreign governments, parties or principals, to make public disclosure of their relationship, activities and financial compensation.

The other lobbying firm that the Indian embassy hired was SHW Partners LLC, headed by Trump’s aide Jason Miller. The embassy’s contract with Miller involved a monthly payout of $150,000, or approximately Rs 1.4 crore, reported The Indian Express.

The scope of the company’s work included “strategic counsel, tactical planning and government relations assistance on policy matters before the US government, the US Congress, state governments, academic institutions, think tanks, and other relevant stakeholders”, the newspaper quoted its filing as stating.

SHW Partners LLC also stated that it arranged phone calls between New Delhi and senior US government officials in May, ahead of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to India.

The company also reportedly listed two embassy events with Rubio on May 23 and May 24, when he was in India and attended the “America@250” events hosted by the US embassy.

Miller was also in New Delhi at the same time, the newspaper reported.

Sharing The Indian Express report on social media, Congress Media Coordinator Harmeet Kaur asked “what exactly are Indian taxpayers receiving in return” for the Union government spending $225,000, or more than Rs 2.1 crore, monthly on American lobbying firms.

“What’s the need of a paid congratulatory social media post from the US president?” asked Kaur.

$75,000 a month for lobbying.

Another $150,000 a month for access to Washington.

And even Trump's congratulatory post on @X to Narendra Modi which Modi gleefully responded and the whole BJP 's ecosystem including "certain news anchors" labelled it Vishwaguru moment, appears in…

— Harmeet Kaur K 🇮🇳 (@iamharmeetK) November 7, 2026

Edited by Sneha.

The Delhi High Court on Friday said that lawyers and judicial staff residing in the National Capital Region will be exempt from the ban on vehicles registered outside Delhi that do not meet the Bharat Stage-6 emission standards, Bar and Bench reported.

The court was hearing a plea filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association, which argued that lawyers and judicial staff perform essential duties.

The bench ruled that the exemption would apply only on court working days.

Starting November 1, as part of the Winter Action Plan, non-Delhi vehicles below the Bharat Stage-6 emission norms are not being allowed to enter the national capital till January 31.

Several lawyers practising in Delhi live in surrounding Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad and regularly travel to the capital for work, Bar and Bench quoted the petition as stating.

The association argued that the vehicle entry ban could hamper lawyers’ ability to reach court hearings on time. It added that such an exemption was previously granted to them during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The petitioners clarified that they were not seeking a blanket exemption from environmental regulations or immunity from stricter restrictions imposed under the Graded Response Action Plan, Live Law reported.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in Delhi-NCR.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. The lighting of firecrackers during Diwali along with stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

This year, Diwali will be celebrated on November 8. Peak air pollution levels are historically observed during and immediately after Diwali.

On Friday, the Supreme Court said that vehicular emissions were a “major” contributor to air pollution in the National Capital Region and called for immediate, medium-term and long-term measures to address the problem.

‘Very poor’ air quality

As of 2.05 pm on Saturday, Delhi recorded an average AQI of 366, according to the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

The cities adjoining the capital also recorded “poor” to “very poor” air quality. While Noida recorded an AQI of 288, Gurugram recorded 345.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

Why some Delhi residents leave the city during Diwali

How an El Niño winter could worsen pollution in Delhi

How Delhi’s rich are escaping air pollution

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday alleged that a “deeply sinister plot” was underway after Union minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh announced that voter ID cards, not Aadhaar, will be the basis for availing benefits under panchayati raj schemes.

Singh had said on October 30 that organisations issuing Aadhaar “are available in every locality now” and can create the identification card “for anyone within five minutes”. Therefore, Singh said, “Aadhaar won’t be the basis [for identifying beneficiaries]”.

Instead, beneficiaries will need to provide their biometric data and their Elector’s Photo Identity Card, or voter ID number, the Union panchayati raj minister said.

It was unclear what benefits Singh was referring to. But the comments came while talking about the new Pradhan Mantri Viksit Gram Swaraj Yojana, which replaces the Rashtriya Gram Swarajya Abhiyan. The new scheme is aimed at strengthening gram panchayats as the authorities for “integrated and participatory development planning”.

The announcement came amid the Opposition, activists and citizens’ groups raising concerns about how voters were being deleted during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, alleging that 13 crore electors had been removed in states where the exercise had taken place.

On Friday, Gandhi said that the names being left off the revised voter rolls were of citizens angry at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“The voter list should be in the hands of an impartial Election Commission – but now it is in the hands of [Chief Election Commissioner] Gyanesh Kumar, an employee of the Modi government, whose collusion with the BJP in vote theft we have caught red-handed with evidence,” he alleged on social media.

The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha accused the BJP of creating a voter list that will always give the Hindutva party a majority.

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for the resignation of the chief election commissioner over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Gandhi described the new identification requirement for beneficiaries as a theft of rights.

“Today, panchayati raj schemes,” Gandhi said. “Tomorrow, rations? Pensions? MGNREGA? Housing? Scholarships? Reservations?”

He alleged that this was not politics to win elections, but an arrangement to “steal elections and a permanent setup to stay in power”.

Gandhi said that “a poor person’s pension cannot be held hostage to their voter card”, adding that voting is a right and not a condition.

In response to the Congress leader’s allegations, the Union minister accused Gandhi of distorting the facts.

Singh said the shift from Aadhaar to voter ID cards as a requirement to avail welfare benefits is aimed at ensuring that no middleman takes advantage of the schemes instead of the actual beneficiaries.

A contentious exercise

Since the revision began, concerns have been raised that the exercise could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, BJP-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Written by Abeer Khan. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the office-bearers of the Congress’ Kerala unit, including the party’s state chief, seeking their response on why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them for a social media post criticising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Live Law reported.

The court was hearing a plea filed by an advocate seeking suo moto action over the post, which has since been deleted.

The counsel for the Congress’ Kerala unit said that the post had been made by a party worker without the approval of the organisation’s leaders, and it had been taken down. The lawyer also said that the party had apologised in the matter.

Justice Aravind Kumar said that the court will examine “whether it has come from the pen or your heart”, Live Law reported.

The court said that the Constitution “is supreme” and that no person or political organisation stands above it. “Independence of the judiciary is not a matter of political convenience,” it was quoted as saying.

The bench said that while it is open to criticism, freedom of expression “cannot be a shield for intimation or interference with the administration of justice”, Live Law reported.

The authority of the court rests on the rule of law and any attempt to undermine it “needs to be dealt with an iron hand”, the legal news outlet quoted the bench as having said.

The post about Kant was made during the Opposition INDIA bloc’s march to the Supreme Court demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The electoral registration officer in northeastern Delhi’s Mustafabad Assembly constituency on Friday registered a police complaint seeking a first information report against a booth level agent for filling allegedly false Form 7s seeking to delete voters living at their addresses, The Hindu reported.

Form 7 is used to object to the inclusion of a name or seek the deletion of an existing name from the electoral roll.

Ajay Kumar, the district election officer in northeastern Delhi, told The Hindu that officials of the poll panel had verified the newspaper’s October 30 report and found that 36 of the 37 Form 7s that had been filed by the agent to be false.

The forms were filled as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

A complaint has been filed against the agent under the 1950 Representation of the People Act for making allegedly false declarations.

The newspaper had reported on October 30 that in polling part 129 of the constituency, voters listed in 28 Form 7s seeking their deletions were found to be living in the area.

The forms had been filled by a booth-level agent registered under the Bharatiya Janata Party, the newspaper had quoted the Election Commission’s records till October 28 as having shown.

The person had denied being an agent, filing the forms and being associated with the BJP, The Hindu reported at the time.

However, nine fresh applications were filed naming him as objector on October 29 and October 30, the newspaper reported.

“Since the BLA/objector has knowingly made false statement or declaration in the Form 7, action under Section 31 of the RP Act has been invoked for making false statement/declaration in writing in connection with preparation/revision of electoral roll,” the poll panel was quoted as saying.

In the 2025 polls, the BJP had defeated the Aam Aadmi Party in Mustafabad by less than 17,600 votes.

Delhi is among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is underway In the third phase.

In 2025, the first phase of the voter roll revision was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

A contentious exercise

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

The Supreme Court on October 30 asked the Election Commission in Uttar Pradesh to take “corrective steps” against Form 7 applications filed in bulk to delete voters’ names during the exercise.

On October 5, the Telangana chief electoral officer had directed officials to take action against persons misusing Form 7 to seek the deletion of eligible voters. This came four days after the Karnataka chief electoral officer said that legal action would be initiated against persons found to be filing bulk Form 7 applications.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, BJP-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

In its October 2026 Poverty and Equity Brief, the World Bank shows a sharp decline in extreme poverty in India between 2011 and 2024. But there are significant shortcomings in its calculations.

The bank says that India’s extreme poverty rate fell from 27.1% in 2011-’12 to 2.6% in 2023-’24, and that an estimated 496 million people escaped poverty over the period. This, the bank said, was one of the fastest declines anywhere in the world.

India has made real gains in food security, housing, electricity and banking for poorer households but the Bank’s estimates are based on flawed data.

For one, it is unclear how the World Bank arrived at the estimate when data on India’s household consumption can no longer be compared due to changes in survey methods.

Second, the large decline conceals the nature of poverty among Indians, including borderline existence where one setback can push a household or family back into poverty.

Data problems

The government think tank, NITI Aayog, says multidimensional poverty fell from 29.17% in 2013-’14 to 11.28% in 2022-’23, with about 24.82 crore people moving out of poverty. These estimates were arrived at based on calculations made using data from the three rounds of the National Family Health Surveys.

Other economists using India’s own poverty lines have also found low figures for 2022-’23, as The Wire’s review of one such calculation notes. Defenders of the numbers point to expanded food transfers, housing, sanitation and electricity as real improvements in people’s lives.

The estimate compares household consumption surveys that were designed very differently. India’s consumption surveys are conducted by the National Sample Survey Office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

They measure how much households spend each month on necessities such as food, clothing, rent, transport, health, education and more, which help indicate living standards and purchasing power for the economy.

In the 2011-’12 round, surveyors took down spending details from households in a single visit. The newer Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys of 2022-’23 and 2023-’24 spread this out over multiple visits, separate questionnaires for different kinds of spending, and a changed sampling design.

This difference means the two rounds are not strictly comparable, so some of the apparent rise in spending may reflect the new method, and any poverty estimates should account for this. The Indian government had withheld the 2017-’18 consumption survey, and has not updated its official poverty line since 2011-’12 – it still stands at Rs 32 per day. Instead, the government has relied on other estimates to calculate a reduction in poverty.

The World Bank’s methodology note warns of comparability problems and says changes in survey methods can substantially affect measured poverty. It tries to correct for them, but without a bridge survey that measures consumption under both methods, it is unclear how distorted the data might be.

The World Bank’s numbers have also changed sharply in a short span: in 2025, it said extreme poverty in India was at 5.3% for 2022-’23, using the same bar of $3 a day. The new brief puts it at 2.6% a year later. It is possible that poverty halved in a year, but it is also possible that the measure is sensitive to survey design.

The bar is low

The World Bank’s international poverty line of $3 a day is based on purchasing power parity, or PPP, at 2021 prices. It measures what $3 can buy in every country. In India, that works out to roughly Rs 60 per person per day. The international poverty line, however, is meant for the world’s poorest countries. For lower-middle-income countries like India, the World Bank’s framework uses a higher line of $4.20, about Rs 84 a day, in terms of purchasing power parity.

With that as the bar, the share of Indians surviving on less than Rs 82 per day falls from 57.7% to about 16%, which still leaves roughly 23 crore people. It means that roughly three in five Indians were below the line in 2011-’12, and now about one in six are.

Even as per this definition, a household spending a little over Rs 84 per person a day is not poor but precariously positioned where an illness or job loss can push the family into poverty. The World Bank’s brief projects poverty at the $4.20/day line to decline from 14.2% in 2026 to 12.1% by 2028.

The World Bank brief also measured the rural-urban divide in poverty rates. At the $4.20 line, 19.3% of the rural population is poor, while among the urban population, it is 8.6%. This indicates that poverty in India is concentrated in rural areas, so the countryside accounts for most of the country’s remaining poor. Despite employment growth, much of the rural job creation has been in low-productivity work, which limits how far it lifts household incomes.

The World Bank’s October 2026 Poverty & Equity Brief records India’s progress as one of the fastest poverty declines in the world.
The report highlights several significant gains:

✅ 49.6 crore people moved above the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 a day between 2011…

— Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) October 30, 2026

Poor jobs growth, stagnant wages

The brief acknowledges stagnant real earnings and higher youth unemployment.

A critical analysis of the report notes that agricultural employment has risen in recent years, which runs against the usual path of development, in which labour moves from farms to factories and services.

Similarly, much of the increase in female labour force participation has come through self-employment and unpaid help in family enterprises, particularly in farming. For instance, Periodic Labour Force Survey data issued this year shows that about 73.5% of rural women workers were engaged in agriculture and 72.7% were self-employed in January-March, while only about 11% held regular salaried jobs.

These women are counted as workers, but their work may add little to household earnings, and does not count the hours spent in unpaid domestic chores and household care work.

The World Bank’s brief counts employment growth among the factors, including welfare and food transfers, leading to a fall in poverty while also saying that real earnings have barely moved. It falls short of explaining the dramatic reduction in poverty.

Who is missing from the survey?

Household consumption surveys also have limits on who they reach. Surveys sample households at a fixed address, and are likely to be less suited to capturing people whose work takes them from place to place, such as seasonal migrants in brick kilns and construction sites. The World Bank acknowledges that the richest households are poorly captured, which can understate inequality.

The Bank’s consumption-based inequality measure shows a decline, while its own data show the top-earning tenth of workers making about 13 times what the bottom tenth earns.

Consumption, income and wealth are different things, and a fall in one says little about the others. Consumption is what households spend, income is what they earn, and wealth is what they own after debts.

A family can keep spending from savings or through borrowing, and can spend more when prices fall even if its income is flat. The festive season shows the difference: last year’s record Diwali sales were driven largely by cuts in the Goods and Services Tax, which lowered prices. This year, spending is expected to decline amid inflation and borrowing costs.

Way forward

The World Bank’s numbers must be used to measure how much poverty in India has declined and how securely.

India should collect consumption data under both the old and new methods in the same households, so that researchers can separate real change from measurement change. Accurate and comparable data on earnings, the quality of employment, and the time women spend on unpaid care are crucial to understanding India’s poverty decline.

Pintu Paul is an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad. He holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email: pintu.paul@tiss.ac.in.

The Delhi High Court on Friday verbally questioned the New Delhi Municipal Council about its decision to disconnect electricity and water electricity supplies to a heritage mosque near Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official residence, The Times of India reported.

The court issued notice to the municipal council, seeking its response within two weeks to a petition challenging the move.

“You cannot disconnect electricity without notice,” The Indian Express quoted Justice Subramonium Prasad as saying.

The petition was filed by the mosque’s imam after a single judge declined to order the restoration of the utilities to the religious structure, which is listed as a heritage property on the New Delhi Municipal Council’s website.

On October 19, the mosque received an eviction notice stating that the structure stands on government land and is “unauthorised”. The Land and Development Office, which functions under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, had directed the mosque authorities to vacate the premises within six days.

On October 29, the demolition was put on hold for four weeks after the Union government informed the court that the Land and Development Office will decide on a representation by the Delhi Waqf Board and would not take any coercive action against the structure during the period.

However, the government opposed allowing access to the mosque, citing safety concerns because of the demolitions in the area.

The notice to the mosque came amid a wider demolition drive in the Race Course Road area, where the prime minister’s official residence is located, including the removal of slum dwellers.

On Friday, the lawyer appearing for the petitioner said that the municipal council disconnected water and electricity supply to the mosque on October 7, during the demolition of surrounding slum clusters, the Times of India reported.

He said that the supplies were disconnected without serving any notice or following due procedure. He added that electricity and water were essential parts of the right to life and could not be withdrawn without statutory safeguards.

The lawyer highlighted that while the action was purportedly taken in compliance with a High Court order for the demolition of nearby slum clusters, the mosque itself was not part of those proceedings, the newspaper reported.

The court will hear the matter again on December 14.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Commission for Air Quality Management on Friday imposed Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan in Delhi and the National Capital Region as a precautionary measure after air quality deteriorated towards the “severe” category.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in Delhi-NCR.

As of 5.05 pm, Delhi recorded an average AQI of 380, according to the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board.

Twenty-five of the 58 active monitoring stations recorded “severe” air quality, while one recorded “severe plus” levels. Punjabi Bagh recorded the highest AQI at 453, followed by Jahangirpuri at 447 and Rohini at 444.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

The cities adjoining the capital also recorded “poor” to “very poor” air quality. While Noida recorded an AQI of 300, Greater Noida 314, Ghaziabad 259 and Gurugram 365.

Stage 3 measures include a ban on non-essential construction work and the closure of stone crushers and mining activities, in addition to the measures already imposed under Stage 1 and Stage 2.

They also include the shifting of primary school up to Class 5 to hybrid mode. Parents and students have the option to choose between offline and online classes wherever available.

The restrictions under the first two stages were introduced on October 21 and November 2.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said vehicular emissions were a “major” contributor to air pollution in the national capital region and called for immediate, medium-term and long-term measures to address the problem, Hindustan Times reported.

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant said that imposing more restrictions alone would not solve the problem and stressed the need to raise public awareness.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. The lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, along with stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

This year, Diwali will be celebrated on November 8. The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the manufacture, sale and bursting of certified green firecrackers in Delhi-NCR for two days during the festival.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Anamika Pathak.

Also read: How an El Niño winter could worsen pollution in Delhi

This story is the first in a series on deep-sea fishing in India, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network. The first story examines India’s Deep Sea Fishing Vessel Scheme and finds a mismatch between its ambitions and the realities of fishing.

Shaju Antony, a traditional fisherman from Kerala, was encouraged by his parish priest to apply for a government scheme in 2020 that provided financial assistance for deep-sea fishing vessels. He gathered about Rs 72 lakh for his part of the contribution for a boat under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, a central government scheme.

He received the boat three years later, in December 2023. But the boat started showing signs of trouble as soon as he started using it. Antony and his crew spent another Rs 30 lakh repairing the boat. Finally, after months of sending petitions to the state government to look into the matter, he gave up. “If they are building boats for fishermen, why aren’t they consulting the fishermen?” he asks.

About 1,500 km further up, on the west coast of India, Kiran Koli, a traditional fisherman and leader of a fishers’ union from Maharashtra, had also applied for the same government scheme in 2017-’18 when it was under the government’s Neel Kranti (Blue Revolution) Mission. In 2020, when the scheme became Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, Koli was the first person on the list, he says.

In June 2026, nearly a decade after he first applied, Koli received his boat. But the final two instalments of the subsidy from the government, which cover a percentage of the boat’s cost, are yet to arrive. “We were supposed to prosper with this new boat, but are instead caught in a deeper mess, a never-ending wait,” he told Mongabay-India. “Imagine, someone like me, a union leader, is stuck in this mess. How will a regular traditional fisherman survive this?” he asks, underscoring the concerns that make other fishers wary of participating in the scheme.

Fisheries is an important economic sector for India, contributing 1.1% to the national GDP and 7.26% to agricultural GVA (Gross Value Added). It serves nearly 28 million livelihoods in the country and contributes to nearly 8% of the global output. Coastal fishing, however, faces the challenges of overfishing, coastal erosion and development pressures. This has prompted the government to look to deeper waters to expand the sector.

With a coastline of over 11,000 kilometers, India has been pursuing deep-sea fishing, driven by the promise of high-value catch for exports, better livelihood opportunities for traditional fishers, and securing greater access to waters beyond its national jurisdiction.

As part of the broader push towards deep sea fishing, in 2020 the government launched the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, a national fisheries scheme, under which the largest allocation of funds is to support traditional fishers to acquire deep-sea fishing vessels. With these vessels, the fishers can conduct fishing activity at sea depths greater than 200 metres. This gives fishers access to higher-value species such as oceanic tuna, billfish, sharks and oceanic squid that are less available in nearshore waters.

However, a deeper look at the actual implementation of the scheme exposes a disconnect between the policy on paper and the on-ground needs and realities of the country’s fishers.

Fishers hesitant

Traditional fishers in India are defined by their reliance on ancestral knowledge of the sea, and skills passed down through generations, alongside a deep understanding of local marine ecosystems.

The central government’s Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana aimed to convert traditional fishers into deep-sea fishers, but it has found few takers so far.

Under the scheme, a deep-sea fishing vessel, mainly a tuna longliner-and-gillnetter, worth a minimum of Rs 1.2 crore is offered to the beneficiary fisher at a subsidised cost, with the government and beneficiary sharing the costs.

The share of investment in these boats is typically 60% from the fishers and 40% from the government, with higher subsidies for women and certain disadvantaged groups, though it varies state to state. The boat costs do not include costs of the fishing gear, which the boat owners have to buy themselves.

The government had approved around Rs 470 crore for the construction of 392 deep-sea fishing vessels under the scheme’s 2020-’25 implementation period. But as of September 2026, only 131, less than half of the approved number of boats, have been ordered (constructed and under construction), according to a compilation of responses received from RTI applications and officials from each state.

Many of the fishers who invested their trust and money early on in the scheme are in debt. Delayed subsidy payments, high operational costs arising from defects and poor boat design have left them with more money lost than gained. They also do not have a robust supply chain or a market for their catch. The difficulties faced by the initial beneficiaries have made others more cautious about taking up the scheme.

The scheme intended to improve income and livelihoods has, in turn, left many fishers questioning its financial viability.

Increasing catch, expanding presence

India’s policy on marine fisheries has been motivated by its ambitions to increase fish catch for domestic markets and exports, and securing its presence in the exclusive economic zone waters and ABNJ — areas beyond national jurisdiction.

Its deep-sea fishing ambitions have historically responded to the demands of the global market. The initial demand for penaeid prawn led India to move toward mechanisation of its fishing fleets and increasing its capacity for fish catch and for surveys. This was followed by a demand for exploration of tuna and tuna-like species. India then followed the development template of several other countries pursuing deep-sea fishing. It began importing foreign vessels, forming foreign country collaborations, joint ventures, investments, technology transfers and training for gear-species diversification.

India faced resistance against foreign investment and foreign vessels in the Indian waters by the country’s traditional and small-scale fishers. This led to a shift in policy where the focus then became on building and promoting indigenous deep-sea fishing vessels.

Boats on the ground

Most of the 131 boat orders from the 392 approved are from Karnataka where 58 boats have been sanctioned and Maharashtra with 49. Some of the largest fish-producing states like Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have only six boats operational and there have been no takers from other major fishing states like Odisha, Gujarat, Goa, Tamil Nadu and others.

This variation also reflects how the scheme has been taken up across different states as well as the fishers’ ability and willingness to take on the financial costs involved.

Kerala was, in fact, the first state to implement the deep-sea fishing vessel scheme under Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana that was launched in 2020.

Their vessels were constructed by Cochin Shipyard Ltd, India’s largest shipbuilding and maintenance facility. The vessels were 22.7m long tuna-longliners-cum-gillnetters made entirely of steel, with a 230 HP engine by Indian company Greaves Cotton Ltd, with a wheelhouse and accommodation facilities. All components of the boat were of Indian make, following the protocol of Make In India, a government initiative to encourage domestic manufacturing.

All the beneficiaries of the Kerala vessels had consistent complaints – they returned to the shore with rotting fish because the cooling compressor did not work, the engine stalled mid-operation at sea, it guzzled too much fuel, the rudder did not function properly, there was seepage of water in the engine room. None of the beneficiaries are currently earning a profit on these boats and have debt rising to over Rs 4 crore collectively.

Seeing the experience of Kerala fishers, the fishers and boatyard builders in Karnataka and Maharashtra lobbied for a different design. In August 2025, during a consultation with stakeholders, the central ministry of fisheries sent a modified/amended standard operating procedure (SOP) for procurement of deep-sea fishing vessels. While the new SOP would help the next set of boats, the Kerala fishers continue to suffer.

In Maharashtra and Karnataka, two important fishing states on India’s west coast, the overall number of boats on the ground is higher than in other states, but the expenditure is still significantly less than the approved funds.

Officials of the respective states said that the fishers are hesitant to apply for the scheme because of high upfront investment and they are not confident of receiving the subsidy amount from the government in time. Work on building the boats starts once the fishers put in the first installment of their share of funds, after which the government puts in their installment. The remaining installments come through at different stages as the work on the boat construction progresses.

“For a traditional fisherman, this is a huge investment to make,” said Kiran Koli, the fisher union leader from Maharashtra. “They would be willing to take this risk if the returns are assured,” he said.

In Karnataka, the central government approved funds for 114 boats. Only 58 boat orders have been placed so far, of which only 31 boats are completely constructed. A state official from Karnataka said they had a hard time convincing fishers to take up the scheme as the fishers had doubts about it.

In Andhra Pradesh, a state on the east coast with rich fishing grounds for yellowfin tuna, the central government had approved funds for 50 deep-sea fishing vessels between 2020 and 2025. But so far, only six deep-sea fishing vessels are in operation, in the districts of Nellore, Kakinada and Tirupati.

State government officials say that fishers are not willing to come forward to avail themselves of the scheme because the vessels are too expensive and it is difficult to get loans. They added that for the deep-sea catch, there are no adequate processing or export facilities available in the existing fish landing centres and harbours. Cold storage facilities are not enough. Those who have the boats are not happy because they are not finding a good market to sell the catch at good prices.

In the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, there have been orders for three deep-sea fishing vessels that are still under construction. While in Lakshadweep, nine deep-sea fishing vessels are currently under construction.

The islands were in fact part of the 2025-’26 Union Budget announcement, where India’s finance minister emphasised a special focus on harnessing their marine fisheries potential, particularly for tuna fisheries and developing a tuna cluster in the Andamans. Officials in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands have clarified that so far no money has been spent on building tuna-related infrastructure.

No takers in some states

Meanwhile, in several major fishing states, including Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Goa and Odisha, there were no takers for Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana’s deep-sea fishing vessel scheme during its 2020–25 implementation period. Fishers in these states raised concerns over the investment required, the prescribed boat design and fishing gear. In some cases, they were also wary after earlier deep-sea fishing schemes had failed to take off.

Tamil Nadu, located on the south-eastern coast of the Indian peninsula, was, in fact, one of the early implementers of the government’s efforts towards deep-sea fishing. Under a previous scheme called Blue Revolution, the central government sanctioned 281.5 crore to the Tamil Nadu government, between 2017 and 2020, to convert 750 trawlers to longlining vessels for the fishers in the state’s Palk Bay region. But though the state government received an approval for 750 boats, state officials say they got only about 91 boat orders under the Blue Revolution scheme.

When the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana’s deep-sea fishing vessel scheme came about in 2020, no fisher in Tamil Nadu opted for it, citing high operational and construction costs, Tamil Nadu fisheries officials explained. “They say that they get insufficient landing catch as compared to the operational costs, so they do not want to go for this. They also don’t have skilled labour for longlining,” explained a state fisheries official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the media. The officials plan to introduce interest-free loans, aside from the existing subsidy, with the hope of attracting fishers to the scheme.

In Gujarat, a state on India’s west coast that boasts of the longest coastline of over 2400 km, and consistently tops the country with its marine-catch landings, the central government had approved a budget for 50 deep-sea fishing vessels under the 2020-2025 Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana scheme. But conversations with the state fisheries officials and the empanelled boatyards confirmed that no fisher in Gujarat has come forward to invest in the scheme.

Damodar Chamudiya, president of Mahavir Fisheries Cooperative Society, one of the largest fisheries cooperative societies in the state, with over 6,000 members, told Mongabay-India that the reason none of their members applied for the scheme so far is because the government was not offering a refund on the diesel tax. “Our boats consume over 60,000 litres of diesel every year. Our fishermen cannot earn good money if there are no tax rebates on fuel,” Chamudiya said. With rebates on fuel, the per-unit cost of fishing reduces, allowing for the boats to have incentives to venture deeper.

On June 29, 2026, the Gujarat government approved a revision to its Diesel VAT Subsidy Scheme, now also allowing vessels over 20 metres in length, which includes deep-sea fishing vessels, to take up the subsidy on VAT on high-speed diesel used in mechanised fishing boats. Chamudiya said that thirty members of his cooperative will now apply for the scheme.

In Goa, the state officials say that a majority of the fishers in Goa conduct purse seining, and they were not keen to take up longliners-cum-gillnetters. Many fishers in Maharashtra cited similar reasons for not taking the scheme.

The scheme itself, however, does not seem to be the problem; its design and implementation is, say the fishers. Shaju Antony, who is deep in debt because of the scheme, still believes that the intention behind it is good. “When we got this boat, we imagined that our people could go into the deep sea, catch fish, and bring them back. This will be an asset to our society, specifically our cooperative society. We started with that intention,” he told Mongabay-India. “Now we are in trouble because of the manufacturing of this boat.”

Lack of shore-based infrastructure

While poor boat design, high price and delayed subsidies have left the fishers, who participated in the scheme, disappointed, the absence of processing facilities and an assured market place for deep-sea catch, deter the fishers further.

“We need a tuna-specific infrastructure either on board the fishing vessels or at least at the harbours. Without it, one cannot sell the fish at good margins,” said an official from the state fisheries department of Andhra Pradesh, adding that due to a lack of strong market linkages and processing units the fishers are reluctant to take on the scheme.

NITI Aayog, India’s apex public policy think tank, states in it’s own strategy document on India’s deep-sea fishing potential, that the lack of adequate infrastructure and access to advanced technologies is one of the most significant challenges hindering the growth of India’s deep-sea and offshore fishing industry.

Deep sea push continues

On the global stage, India’s stance is that large, historically subsidised distant-water fishing nations bear primary responsibility for the depleting tuna stocks, not developing coastal states such as India, whose fishing sector, as India portrays, is predominantly small-scale and comparatively low-impact, a claim that is internally contested by the country’s small-scale fisher unions.

This is reflected in two ongoing negotiations that India is a part of: the WTO fishery subsidies agreement, which India recently signed, and the IOTC talks on criteria for tuna-catch allocation. The WTO agreement includes binding rules to curb harmful subsidies linked to overfishing, overcapacity, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. The IOTC, the regulatory body overseeing tuna fishing in the Indian Ocean, recommended total allowable catch and quotas for tuna species for the 2027-2028 period

India has paired its international advocacy with domestic frameworks that operationalise the same “protect small-scale EEZ fishers, regulate high-seas activity responsibly” logic. It introduced the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, of which the deep-sea fishing vessel scheme is a part. And in November and December 2025, with a view to regulate India’s fishing activity in the EEZ and the ABNJ regions, and driven by the imperatives of WTO and IOTC negotiations, the Ministry of External Affairs introduced fishing rules and guidelines. Then, in July 2026, the government of India launched a programme to issue letters of authorisation for Indian-flagged fishing vessels to undertake regulated fishing operations in the high seas.

Mongabay-India sent a list of questions to the Department of Fisheries, Government of India about our investigation seeking comments. The ministry has not responded yet.

As India expands its ambitions for deep-sea fishing, the experience of fishers under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana scheme so far offers an indication of what will need to be addressed before those ambitions can sail.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

Could your home be at risk from rising seas? Scroll is investigating coastal flooding in Mumbai and Kolkata, mapping vulnerable areas and examining whether developers and the authorities are accounting for the risks. Support this investigation and help us make this reporting possible. Fund the project here.

Citizens whose names were excluded from draft electoral rolls during the special intensive revision in seven states and Union Territories can submit a fresh enumeration form to have their names included in the final list, the Election Commission said. The provision applies to those whose enumeration forms were not received, resulting in them being marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate in the draft rolls.

The seven states are: Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana and Nagaland.

The booth level officers will issue fresh enumeration forms to these voters. Those who have shifted to a new address within the state must submit the form along with proof of residence. They will not need to file Form 8, which is used to update addresses, the poll body said.

Electors who have not shifted homes but were unable to submit their forms earlier must submit the form along with a statement explaining the reason for the delay. Read on.

The Gauhati High Court quashed the detention of activist Pranab Doley under the National Security Act. The Act allows for long periods of detention without trial up to a year.

Doley was arrested on July 12, days after he took part in a protest against a hotel project in Ingle Pathar, a village adjoining the Kaziranga National Park in Assam.

The police had alleged that he “unlawfully trespassed into the site of the Tea Tribes Museum and thereafter trespassed into the nearby ATDC [Assam Tourism Development Corporation] Hyatt project at Ingle Pathar with deadly weapons” during the protest. Read on.

The Supreme Court refused to suspend the 10-year prison sentence imposed on journalist Tarun Tejpal for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. The court rejected the journalist’s plea saying the case did not warrant such relief.

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Tejpal, asked the bench when it might consider suspending the sentence. “We can’t give a stage now,” the court responded. Read on.

The Supreme Court clarified that its March 11 verdict, which held that parental income alone cannot be used to determine whether a candidate belongs to the creamy layer of the Other Backward Classes category, would not apply to past appointments and admissions. The court added that the previous order would apply to the candidates who were parties to the proceedings before it.

It said that existing seniority and promotions would not be disturbed on the basis of the ruling, while cases pending before courts and other competent authorities would be decided on their own merits and entitlement.

In its March order, the Supreme Court had said that whether a person is part of the creamy layer must be determined primarily by the status and category of the posts held by the parents, not income alone. Read on.

Social media platform X told the Delhi High Court that the purported notices directing it to block the accounts of digital rights groups Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Centre were sent by an imposter and not the Delhi Police. The court was hearing a petition filed by the two digital rights groups challenging the notices.

The counsel representing X told the bench that the accounts would not be taken down.

“We have done an internal investigation and it turns out this was an imposter,” the lawyer said, adding that the platform had filed a complaint with the Delhi Police.

Following the platform’s submission, the court disposed of the pleas. Read on.

Takedown notices from RSS, Delhi Police to digital rights groups turn out to be fake, reports Ayush Tiwari

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People who were issued enumeration forms during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Delhi and six states, but whose names were excluded from the draft voter list after being marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate, will get another opportunity to have their names included in the final rolls, the Election Commission said on Friday.

The provision applies to electors in Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana and Nagaland.

The booth level officers will issue fresh enumeration forms to these voters. Those who have shifted to a new address within the state must submit the form along with proof of residence. They will not need to file Form 8, which is used to update addresses, the poll body said.

The Election Commission said that district election officers and electoral registration officers must make every effort to contact the electors through booth level officers and ensure that enumeration forms are delivered to them either physically or through electronic means.

Electors who have not shifted homes but were unable to submit their forms earlier must submit the form along with a statement explaining the reason for the delay. They can submit these documents to the electoral registration officer, assistant electoral registration officer or booth level officer, the poll panel said.

The Election Commission also directed officials to publicise the measures widely, including through announcements in areas where homeless persons live. For homeless voters who do not have address documents, a field verification report by the booth level officer will be accepted as proof of residence, the poll panel said.

Enumeration forms can also be submitted through the Election Commission’s ECINET portal.

The poll panel said booth-wise lists of deleted voters, along with the “probable reasons” for their exclusion, would be displayed on notice boards at polling stations and government offices and uploaded to the chief electoral officer’s website in a readable PDF format.

It also said that voters who have already submitted Form 6 for fresh enrolment during the special intensive revision, “need not submit the enumeration form with statement afresh”.

The decision comes a week after the Election Commission on October 29 extended the deadline for filing claims and objections in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Delhi and Maharashtra, and expanded the processing window in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Nagaland.

The poll panel also postponed the date of publication of the final voter lists in the five states and Delhi. The final voter list in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana and Nagaland will be published on November 30 and in Delhi on December 22.

The deadline for disposal of all claims and objections in Jharkhand is November 23 while the final roll is scheduled to be published on November 30.

The six states and Delhi are among the 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of the special intensive revision.

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• Explainer: Why the Election Commission’s Form 6 for new voters has triggered a legal row
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to lift a ban on the sale of meat imposed by the state government near the Somnath temple in Gujarat, Bar and bench reported.

The court said it had to “maintain a balance” and asked the Gujarat High Court to expedite the hearing

“We request the High Court to decide appeal expeditiously within a period of 2 months,” it ordered.

The court was hearing a petition by six restaurant owners, who said that the ban would be detrimental to businesses in the vicinity and argued that 80% of the country’s population consumes meat.

The petition challenged an August 10 notification banning the sale, storage, distribution and cooking of meat along roads leading to and within half a km of the temple in Veraval.

On October 31, the Gujarat High Court struck down the ban, only to reverse its order within four hours.

At 3 pm, a single-judge bench allowed the plea and lifted the ban. Immediately after the ruling, the state government sought time to challenge it before a division bench.

The government pleader argued that the position on the ground had not changed since August 10 and requested that the operation of the single-judge bench’s order be kept in abeyance for five working days, The Indian Express reported.

However, the judge declined to keep the order in abeyance.

The state government then filed an urgent appeal before the division bench, before the single-judge bench’s order had been published.

Before 7 pm, the division bench had stayed the operation of the single-judge bench’s order and kept the meat ban in force.

On Friday, the advocate appearing for the restaurant owners, argued before the Supreme Court that dietary choices were a matter of personal freedom and that the ban was affecting their businesses, Bar and Bench reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, told the bench that the High Court was scheduled to hear the matter on November 25.

In response, the Supreme Court said that it would not interfere at the interim stage.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Jharkhand High Court on Friday quashed the state government’s decision to cancel the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level examination, The Hindu reported.

The examination, conducted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission, was held under advertisement number 10/2023.

Justice Deepak Roshan also ordered the reinstatement of candidates selected through the examination, directing that their service be treated as continuous without interruption.

The court said the candidates would not be denied any service benefits because of the notification cancelling their recruitment.

On August 18, the state government had issued a notification cancelling 22 exams including the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission, Child Development Programme Officer, and the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level examination. The decision followed weeks of student protests against alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive examinations for government jobs.

The Chief Minister Hemant Soren-led government had also decided to postpone six other examinations, with the investigation into them handed over to the Crime Investigation Department.

On Friday, the High Court observed that it was “not impossible” to identify the guilty candidates in the matter, therefore, “instead of cancelling the entire examination and the appointments made on its basis, those involved in the irregularities can be identified through an investigation.”

The court also said the state government had failed to provide concrete evidence that the entire selection process was affected by systematic irregularities.

“The appointments of all selected candidates cannot be terminated merely on the grounds that allegations exist or investigations are pending against a few individual candidates,” the judge said.

On August 21, the High Court had stayed the notifications cancelling the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level examination and the Child Development Project Officer test.

This came a day after it stayed the state government’s decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Civil Services examinations, and the recruitment of Food Safety Officers.

The High Court decision was met by protests from students who accused the state government of “deceiving” and “betraying” job aspirants.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to suspend the 10-year prison sentence imposed journalist Tarun Tejpal for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench of Justices MM Sundresh and PB Varale rejected Tejpal’s plea, saying the case did not warrant such relief.

“We do not find it to be a fit case to grant suspension of sentence,” the court said. “On prima facie view we are not inclined to grant suspension of sentence.”

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Tejpal, asked the bench when it might consider suspending the sentence.

“We can’t give a stage now,” the court responded.

On August 6, the Bombay High Court convicted the journalist by overturning a 2021 sessions court verdict that had acquitted him.

The High Court convicted Tejpal under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of more than Rs 10 lakh, Bar and Bench reported.

On August 20, the former editor-in-chief of Tehelka magazine moved the Supreme Court, challenging the High Court’s decision.

On August 25, the Supreme Court directed Tejpal to surrender within two weeks, saying his appeal would be listed after he submitted a certificate confirming his surrender by September 22.

He surrendered before the Additional Sessions Court at Mapusa on September 14, after which he was sent to Central Jail at Colvale in North Goa.

Tejpal was accused of raping a junior colleague in an elevator in 2013. He had been arrested in November 2013 and was in jail for seven months before being granted bail by the Supreme Court in July 2014.

A sessions court in Goa’s Mapusa had acquitted him in May 2021.

Additional Sessions Judge Kshama Joshi had said at the time that Tejpal was granted “benefit of doubt” in the absence of corroborative evidence to support the allegations made by the complainant. The judge had also remarked that the complainant did not show the “kind of normative behaviour” expected from her.

During the hearing in the High Court, the Goa government alleged that the trial court’s verdict was prejudiced and contended that it had wrongly focused on the complainant’s character and post-incident behaviour instead of the conduct of the accused.

The counsel representing Tejpal had argued that the complainant’s account was inconsistent with evidence such as the security camera footage and how the elevator worked.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

After Tejpal: A letter to progressive men from a feminist

The Supreme Court on Friday clarified that its March 11 verdict, which held that parental income alone cannot be used to determine whether a candidate belongs to the creamy layer of the Other Backward Classes category, would not apply to past appointments and admissions, The Hindu reported.

The court added that the March order would apply to the candidates who were parties to the proceedings before it. It said that existing seniority and promotions would not be disturbed on the basis of the ruling, while cases pending before courts and the other authorities would be decided on their own merits and entitlement, Live Law reported.

The creamy layer refers to the wealthier and more advanced members within a group that is eligible for affirmative action benefits.

In its March order, the Supreme Court had said that whether a person is part of the creamy layer must be determined primarily by the status and category of the posts held by the parents, not income alone.

Referring to the government’s 1993 office memorandum issued after the ruling in the Indira Sawhney versus Union of India case, the court had noted that income from salary and agricultural sources was not meant to be clubbed with the income from other sources while applying the income or wealth test.

The bench had said at the time that relying only on a 2004 government clarification to treat salary income as the determining factor was “legally unsustainable”.

The Union government had raised concerns that applying the March verdict retrospectively could affect recruitments and admissions already undertaken by the Union and state governments and Union territories, Live Law reported.

The government also sought two years to establish equivalence between posts in other organisations and government posts, and to formulate a uniform mechanism for determining OBC creamy layer status in cases where such equivalence had not been established.

However, the Supreme Court on Friday, rejected the Union government’s request and granted an extension of eight weeks to comply with its March directions, Live Law reported.

It added that the March verdict would apply when allocating services to candidates selected through the 2025 civil services examination, The Hindu reported.

The creamy layer debate

There have long been calls to exclude the creamy layer from benefiting from reservations meant for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The creamy layer concept was introduced for Other Backward Classes in the 1992 Indra Sawhney versus Union of India judgement.

In August 2024, a seven-judge Constitution bench ruled that the sub-classification of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is permissible for providing reservations in government jobs and education based on empirical data.

The bench, in a 6:1 majority verdict, overruled the court’s 2004 judgement, which held that Scheduled Castes formed a homogenous group and hence could not be subdivided into categories.

Further, four of the seven judges called for identifying the creamy layer among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories so that they could be removed from the reservation matrix.

However, as the application of the creamy layer was not one of the questions before the bench, the suggestions of the four judges lacked legal enforceability.

The Union government had at the time clarified that it would not act on the court’s non-binding recommendation as there is no provision in the Constitution for applying the creamy layer concept to reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

In March, the Supreme Court held that parental income alone cannot be used to determine whether a candidate falls in the creamy layer of the Other Backward Classes category.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Sara Varghese.

Social media platform X on Friday told the Delhi High Court that the purported notices directing it to block the accounts of digital rights groups Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Centre were sent by an imposter and not the Delhi Police, Bar and Bench reported.

The court was hearing a petition filed by the two digital rights groups challenging the notices.

The counsel representing X told the bench that the accounts will not be taken down.

“We have done an internal investigation and it turns out this was an imposter,” the lawyer was quoted as saying, adding that the platform had filed a complaint with the Delhi Police.

Following the platform’s submission, the court disposed of the pleas.

The digital rights groups had moved the court in the absence of responses from the police when they tried to confirm whether it had sent notices to X asking for the accounts to be removed.

Double hoax

On October 30, the digital rights groups had gone public with purported legal notices they had received in the name of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, asking them to stop documenting and opposing the government’s content restriction orders.

The RSS has not officially commented on the notices but its member Ratan Sharda and Kanchan Gupta, an advisor to the information and broadcasting ministry, denied on the social media that the organisation had sent any such notices.

The digital rights groups had later received communication from X, informing them that the Delhi Police had sent an “illegal content report” asking for their posts and accounts to be taken down since they were allegedly defamatory about the RSS.

Scroll reported earlier on Friday that the purported notices appeared to be part of an elaborate hoax that seemed to have swept in not just the digital rights groups and the RSS, but even the Delhi Police.

Read more on this: Takedown notices from RSS, Delhi Police to digital rights groups turn out to be fake

Not only was the notice sent in the name of the RSS fake, a police officer familiar with the case told Scroll that even the purported police communication to X was fabricated. The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity since he is not authorised to speak to the press.

Questions sent to Delhi Police’s spokesperson were unanswered when Scroll reported about the matter.

Besides the accounts of the Internet Freedom foundation and Software Freedom Law Centre, the notices had also been sent to X account Geo Blocked in India, which compiles blocking orders in the country.

The purported takedown order sent to X listed 40 links of 37 posts and the entire accounts of the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center and Geo Blocked in India.

It also asked X to take down posts by 16 others, including Sharda, technology journalist Abhishek Baxi, The Wire’s Editor Seema Chishti and Congress’ Rajya Sabha MP Naseer Hussain, for commenting on the notice received by the digital rights groups.

The Internet Freedom Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center had questioned the legality of the purported notices, adding that defamation is not a police matter and that no court can take cognisance of it except on a complaint by the person who is aggrieved.

The police cannot investigate a non-cognisable offence without an order of a magistrate, the Internet Freedom Foundation has said.

The police officer had told Scroll that the report sent to X had come from a fake email address purporting to be an official Delhi Police account.

The report, seen by Scroll, states that the email address through which it was sent to X: “splcp-crime-dl@delhipolice.gov.in” – the address for Special Commissioner (Crime) Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal. The Software Freedom Law Centre claimed that this address was present on the Delhi Police’s directory till November 4, but an email sent to it that day bounced back with an error saying that it did not exist.

On November 5, the digital rights group said that the police directory had changed Dhaliwal’s email address to “splcp[dot]crime[at]delhipolice[dot]gov[dot]in” – replacing hyphens with dots.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A division bench of the Gauhati High Court on Friday quashed the detention of activist Pranab Doley under the National Security Act in Assam, said advocate Dipesh Agrawala, one of the lawyers who represented him.

The Act allows for long periods of detention without trial up to a year.

A copy of the judgement was not yet available.

Doley was arrested on July 12, days after he took part in a protest against a hotel project at Ingle Pathar, a village adjoining the Kaziranga National Park in Assam.

The police had alleged that he “unlawfully trespassed into the site of the Tea Tribes Museum and thereafter trespassed into the nearby ATDC [Assam Tourism Development Corporation] Hyatt project at Ingle Pathar with deadly weapons” during the protest.

On July 29, a sessions court in Golaghat granted bail to Doley, stating that the investigating officer had already recorded the statements of key witnesses and that there was no possibility of the accused concealing or tampering with the evidence.

A day later, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state detained Doley under the National Security Act, alleging that he had carried out “suspicious foreign transactions from doubtful sources” in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

This meant that he was not released from jail, despite the bail order.

In August, the Congress had alleged that the Assam government invoking the Act against Doley was part of a “growing pattern” of the BJP “weaponising extraordinary laws to silence dissent”.

Party leader Jairam Ramesh had described the state government’s allegations against Doley as “vague and speculative”.

Citing detentions of at least two other persons under the Act in Uttar Pradesh in April, the Opposition MP claimed that this was a familiar script followed by the Narendra Modi government.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Gujarat High Court has refused to order the release of a Bangladeshi woman and her infant daughter detained in Bharuch, saying that their detention cannot be said to be illegal, The Indian Express reported.

A division bench dismissed a habeas corpus petition filed by the woman’s Indian husband, and said that the detention was not illegal because it was based on an administrative order directing her to remain at the police training school in the town till she is deported.

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

The bench took note of a December 2025 order issued by the superintendent of police and the Foreigners Registration Officer in Bharuch under the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Act and the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Orders, the newspaper reported.

It was not immediately when was the woman detained. But the woman and the child were produced before the court on May 6.

The bench said that the husband had not challenged the order before the correct forum, adding that the woman cannot be released while the administrative order remained in operation.

The husband had approached the High Court claiming that his wife and their seven to eight-month-old daughter were being illegally detained by the police.

The Gujarat government had told the court that the woman is a Bangladeshi citizen and that her detention was legal, The Indian Express reported. She had been provided medical facilities and essential facilities in line with the standard operating procedure, the state said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Delhi Police have arrested three contractors in connection with the collapse of a building under construction in Old Delhi’s crowded Chawri Bazar area that killed two persons, the Hindustan Times reported on Friday.

At least five persons are still feared trapped under the debris, ANI quoted Sub-Divisional Magistrate Manoj Kumar as saying on Friday morning.

The three men were arrested from Sirohi village in Faridabad’s Dauj tehsil, the police were quoted as saying.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Rohit Rajbir Singh identified the accused as Siraj, Tajuddin and Furkan.

They have been booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the newspaper reported.

On Thursday, the Hindustan Times reported that the Delhi Police had flagged unauthorised construction at the property five months earlier. In a letter to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the police had sought action against the construction.

The municipal corporation acknowledged receiving the communication in a statement on Thursday.

It said that in April, it had warned the owner of the three-storey building to undertake repairs to ensure structural safety.

However, the municipal corporation alleged that the owner had used its advisory for repairs as a cover to clandestinely construct an entirely new building, the newspaper reported.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that the municipal corporation had suspended a junior engineer and an assistant engineer.

This came two months after seven persons were killed after a five-storey building in Satya Niketan collapsed on September 6. The building was being used as paying guest accommodation.

On October 7, five persons were killed as a four-storey building collapsed in northeast Delhi’s Seemapuri.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Election Commission has issued an order restoring the oversight on its information technology department head through a deputy poll commissioner, The Hindu reported.

An internal order issued on July 28 by Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Maneesh Garg had removed Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar from the charge of the information technology and communications divisions. It had allowed Director General of Information Technology Seema Khanna to directly report to the commission.

A day later, two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had written to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan expressing concerns about the work allocation order issued by Garg, an investigation by The Indian Express showed on September 23. Garg held the interim charge of the administration department at the time.

This came against the background of Joshi in May having flagged that there was a “gradual centralisation of the electoral roll database” and proposed an audit to certify that “no one, except the concerned statutory authorities, has credentials to make any change in the database”.

In August, Sandhu also recorded that state-level election officials were reporting they “don’t have proper and complete access” to the digital system through which the poll body maintains the electoral roll.

He flagged that Khanna “doesn’t have any legal authority to restrict proper and complete access and freedom to operate, as given by law, to the statutory authorities”.

In its statement on September 26, the Election Commission said that oversight of the IT division by the deputy election commissioner had never been withdrawn and that the work redistribution order had not been implemented.

According to a new order issued on November 4, Khanna is required to route the files related to information technology and communications, and the public grievance redressal system through Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma, The Indian Express reported.

Complaints about work allocation changes

Garg, an Indian Administrative Service officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, was given additional charge of the poll panel’s administration division on July 28 while Deputy Election Commissioner Bhanu Prakash Yeturu was on leave.

In their letters to the Cabinet secretary, Sandhu and Joshi, had alleged that Garg, within hours of taking charge, issued an order changing the work assigned to senior deputy election commissioners, deputy election commissioners, director generals and other officers. The order revised the work allocation set out in a previous order dated September 2025.

The records were provided in response to an application by Right to Information activist and Navy officer Commodore Lokesh K Batra (retired).

Sandhu and Joshi alleged that Garg had made the changes without consulting the Election Commission or the officers concerned, despite repeated verbal and written instructions that such changes required “prior discussion or approval” from the poll panel.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has amended the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Exemption Order to make it mandatory for persons from six non-Muslim communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who had, citing religious persecution, entered India by December 31, 2024, without valid travel documents, to get an “appropriate visa” to continue staying in the country.

The changed rules, notified on Wednesday and published on Thursday, also apply to persons whose documents have expired.

The rules had exempted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Jains and Parsis from the three countries from requiring valid passports or visas while entering and staying in India. The amendment retains the exemption of allowing entry without valid passport and visa.

The rules align with the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act. The contentious law aims to provide a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and have entered the country by December 31, 2014. The Union government notified the rules under the Act in March 2024.

The amendment on Wednesday made changes to several other provisions relating to travel by Indian, Bhutanese and Nepali citizens, and reorganised categories of exemptions granted to Tibetan refugees.

Norms for some Pakistanis relaxed

The amendment also provides relief to some categories of long-term residents who are facing challenges in renewing their foreign passports.

This includes Pakistani citizens who entered India on a valid passport before December 31, 2009, with the intention of residing permanently in the country, some Partition-era migrants who returned from Pakistan and settled in Keralam, with conditions, and persons of Indian origin who acquired Malaysian or Singaporean citizenship but are unable to renew their passports.

The amended rules require persons covered by these categories to obtain a visa to continue living in India.

Rules for travel beyond Nepal and Bhutan

The amendment introduced a definition of “Visa Manual”, describing it as a document issued by the Union government containing instructions relating to visas, immigration and related matters.

The rules now require Indian citizens travelling to Nepal or Bhutan, and Nepali and Bhutanese citizens entering or exiting India, to produce identity documents specified in the Visa Manual before the immigration authorities.

Indians do not require a passport to travel to Bhutan and Nepal. However, Indian citizens travelling onwards to a third country through the India-Nepal or India-Bhutan borders will need to produce their passports.

Bhutanese and Nepali citizens also do not require a passport to travel to India. However, Bhutanese and Nepali citizens travelling to or from, or transiting through China, Macau, Hong Kong or Pakistan will need to show their passports and visas while entering or exiting India.

Tibetans refugees, military personnel

Tibetans who entered India on permits issued by the Indian embassy in Kathmandu between 1959 and May 30, 2003, or on special entry permits issued subsequently through designated immigration posts on the India-Nepal border will continue to be exempted from passport and visa requirements. However, they will be required to obtain a registration certificate from the authorities.

The exemption from passport and visa requirements includes Indian military personnel entering or leaving the country on duty, and their families accompanying them on government transport, and foreign armed forces personnel arriving on warships or government vessels undergoing repairs in India.

Registered Sri Lankan Tamils who took shelter in India by January 9, 2015, continue to be exempted from requiring a passport and visa.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Digital rights groups Internet Freedom Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center said on Thursday that they have moved the Delhi High Court, challenging notices purportedly issued by the police to social media platform X, asking it to take down their accounts and posts for allegedly defaming the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The organisations have sought that the notices be quashed, as the Delhi Police had neither denied nor withdrawn the takedown requests that were communicated to them by X.

Due to the lack of any official denial or rescision by the Delhi Police for the takedown notices for IFF's X Account that were communicated by X to us, IFF has been constrained to file a writ petition in the Hon'ble High Court of Delhi. The matter is registered and will come up… https://t.co/0L3cOF7dM3 pic.twitter.com/EV7tXBo0SM

— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) November 5, 2026

“Our attempts to verify the notices with the Delhi Police have not yielded any confirmation,” the Software Freedom Law Center said on social media. “Several emails were returned as undeliverable, and we are yet to receive an official response from the Delhi Police.”

The notices

On Tuesday, the organisations said that they and an X account, Geo Blocked in India, which compiles blocking orders in the country, had received a legal notice in the name of the RSS.

https://t.co/NhFrIS6sdb has filed a petition challenging the takedown notices purportedly issued by the Delhi Police on 31 October and 2 November, 2026. We have approached the Delhi High Court seeking the quashing of the takedown notices that directed the removal of our X account… https://t.co/NE2POfqzFC

— SFLC.in (@SFLCin) November 5, 2026

The October 29 notice asked the three to stop opposing the government’s blocking directions, stop documenting restricted content or posting details of geo-blocked posts, and confirm within a week that they would comply, the Internet Freedom Foundation said. The notice “was signed by an unnamed ‘authorised signatory’”, it added.

The foundation also said that several office-bearers of the RSS had clarified on X that the notice was not authentic.

“IFF replied to the notice, wrote to the RSS at its official address asking whether it had authorised it, and published both the notice and its reply on October 30,” the foundation said.

On October 30, the special commissioner of police (crime) filed an “illegal content report” with X listing posts by the Internet Freedom Foundation and the Software Freedom Law Center that day, alleging that the content was defamatory towards the RSS under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the foundation said.

The boxes on the content report for “safety/security”, “defamation” and “other” were ticked and the “fields for the nature of the court order and court order details were left empty”, the Internet Freedom Foundation said. The desired action section said “remove/withhold content”, it added.

On November 1, a second notice was sent in the RSS’ name, the Internet Freedom Foundation said.

“It said the matter had been handed to the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, that complaints had been filed in several states, and that requests had been made to block IFF’s X account and suspend the organisations,” the foundation stated.

The Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad is a lawyers’ organisation linked to the RSS.

A day later, the police filed a second report with X listing 40 links of 37 posts and the entire accounts of the Internet Freedom Foundation, the Software Freedom Law Center and Geo Blocked in India. In this, the boxes for “hate speech”, “defamation”, “safety/security”, “enforcement of court order” and “other” were ticked, the foundation added.

The notice also asked X to take down posts by 16 others, including RSS leader Ratan Sharda, technology journalist Abhishek Baxi, The Wire’s Editor Seema Chishti and Congress’ Rajya Sabha MP Naseer Hussain, purportedly for commenting on the notice, according to the Internet Freedom Foundation.

The Delhi Police had not written to the Internet Freedom Foundation and no court had been approached, the organisation had said.

The Software Freedom Law Center and Geo Blocked India had separately reported notifications from X about requests from the Uttar Pradesh Police, the Telangana Police and the Delhi Police’s Cyber Crime unit, it added.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Bengaluru, a city rapidly losing its green cover to infrastructure projects, had an important job to do: count its trees. In August 2019, the Karnataka High Court mandated the exercise under the Karnataka Preservation of Trees Act, 1976, setting a three-year deadline which wasn’t completed even seven years later.

Residents in some neighbourhoods decided to then take the task into their own hands, driven by the apprehension of losing trees to several large-scale infrastructure projects announced for the city, including flyovers and tunnel roads. What they found has prompted them to push back against some of these impending projects.

In east Bengaluru’s Indiranagar, a group of residents mapped the trees along the alignment of a proposed 13-km flyover from Swami Vivekananda Metro Station in the east to Silk Board Junction in the south, via Indiranagar.

The flyover’s detailed project report estimates that 89 trees will be felled for the proposed elevated corridor, while 235 trees fall within its construction width. The latter figure indicates the number of trees within the designated construction area, not necessarily the number that will be cut.

Unconvinced that these figures reflected the trees on the ground, I Change Indiranagar, a network of resident welfare associations in the area, decided to conduct an independent survey, starting with a roughly 3.5-km stretch of the route. The group counted 1,001 trees.

There is, however, a caveat. The detailed project report’s count of 235 trees covers the entire 13-km flyover alignment, while the residents surveyed only one section of it. Also, since they could not determine which trees would be directly affected by construction, they counted every tree along that stretch.

“Our survey didn’t include the trees that will be cut inside the Swami Vivekananda Metro Station where the ramp will begin or a nearby church and temple whose premises will be taken. The count would be more than 1,001 if we included those,” says Sneha Nandihal, co-founder of I Change Indiranagar.

Four residents’ associations, including one Nandihal represents, filed a petition over the discrepancy, which is currently being heard in the Karnataka High Court. As a result, Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited, or B-SMILE, the agency implementing the project, has dropped one stretch of the flyover while the rest of the project continues. “There was a writ petition, so we did not want to hurry. We will abide by the court decision,” said Balaji MT, an official with B-SMILE.

Multiple campaigns to save trees

Harini Nagendra, Director of the School of Climate Change and Sustainability at Azim Premji University, has conducted several independent environment impact assessments in Bengaluru since 2007.

She says discrepancies of this kind are common because detailed project reports tend to count trees selectively, often resulting in lower estimates. Smaller trees are left out, undervaluing them, while “overmature” trees are excluded on the assumption that they are likely to die soon. “They are the very trees that deserve more attention,” she says, considering the carbon sequestration potential of mature trees.

The Indiranagar flyover is one of the 11 elevated corridors proposed across 75.6 km of the city, at an estimated cost of Rs 13,000 crore. A separate citywide citizen’s campaign, “Dear Dr DK, Flyover Yaake?” is urging the authorities to rethink this approach and redirect the funds towards public transport. “Flyovers shift the choke point from one place to another,” says Asadullah MA Ansari, one of the campaign organisers.

He points to the recently opened double-decker flyover between Silk Board and Ragigudda, which, instead of easing congestion at the junction, has been accused of shifting it to the next one.

Mongabay-India had earlier reported on a tunnel project in north Bengaluru’s Hebbal, where residents are opposing the proposed removal of 1,128 trees for a 2.2-km tunnel. GBA officials confirmed that they had received around 1,600 objections from residents after issuing a public notice on the proposed tree removal on September 19.

On October 16, the National Green Tribunal, hearing a petition challenging the felling, ordered that no trees be cut for the project until the case is decided. The next hearing is scheduled for December 15. The order does not halt other work on the tunnel, which is ongoing. A separate petition challenging the project is also before the Karnataka High Court.

Why green covers matter

These protests come against the backdrop of a city whose once-vaunted green cover has been thinning due to urbanisation, with far-reaching consequences. A 2014 study by the Indian Institute of Science estimated that Bengaluru had 1.47 million trees for a population of 9.5 million, or roughly one tree for every seven residents. This was not enough to sequester even the carbon dioxide residents produce simply by breathing, estimated at 540g-980g per person per day, says TV Ramachandra, author of the report and head of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc.

A 2025 study by the Indian Institute of Science found that Bengaluru’s built-up area increased by 1,078% between 1973 and 2025. During the same period, vegetation cover shrank by 88% and water bodies by 79%. According to the study, this transformation contributes to the urban heat island effect, in which built-up areas become hotter than surrounding non-urban areas because surfaces such as concrete and asphalt absorb and radiate heat.

Vegetation and water bodies help counter this effect by acting as natural heat sinks. The IISc study found that land surface temperatures reached 40 degrees celsius in built-up areas, falling as green cover increased to as low as 31 degrees celsius in areas with dense vegetation or water cover.

Mature trees provide greater cooling than young plantings because of their larger canopies. “We have this wicked cluster of urbanisation, pollution, and climate change, which is trapping so much heat into our cities. The oldest trees are our best safeguard, especially in heat waves,” says Nagendra.

The other safeguard is unfragmented green cover, such as parks and tree-lined avenues. While comparable India-based research is lacking, studies elsewhere have shown that microclimate is not just affected by the number of trees, but the spatial pattern and connectivity of trees, says Nagendra. “When trees are more interconnected, you have better amelioration of urban heat islands and increased protection with shade because there are spillover effects to neighbourhood areas.”

Street trees are also among the best weapons to reduce air pollution, she adds.

The study by the Indian Institute of Science recommends at least 30% vegetation cover in any given area to sustain a comfortable microclimate, but Ramachandra estimates that less than 4% of the city is currently under green cover.

Offsets are not enough

Mobility infrastructure projects often come with a stated offset. The DPR of the Indiranagar flyover sets aside Rs 4.26 crore to plant 2,350 saplings “wherever possible in and around Bengaluru city area”.

Compensatory plantings are often carried out on the city outskirts or on secluded government land, Nagendra says, doing little for affected neighbourhoods. “If you compensate in some other place, you’re not going to get the social, environmental or ecological benefits for that region. That region is still going to suffer heat waves, pollution and the mental stress that comes from complete lack of greenery.” Replacing mature trees with saplings is no immediate solution either, as they take at least 30-40 years to provide some of the same benefits, she adds.

Some project reports propose tree transplantation, which involves relocating a tree with much of its root system intact. Bengaluru’s guidelines require trees to be assessed for species, age, size and health before transplantation.

However, the Indiranagar flyover’s DPR, which proposes relocating 37 trees, provides no such details. At Hebbal, 1,050 of 1,128 trees marked for removal are slated for transplantation. The tree survey lists species, girth, height and condition, but not age or which trees will be moved.

Mature trees are difficult to transplant, with poor survival rates, Nagendra points out. “When they survive, they’re shocked so badly it takes them a really long time to recover.” Transplantation is largely limited to trees younger than 25 years, says Vijay Nishanth of Vruksha Foundation.

DPRs forget urban wildlife

By focusing narrowly on tree counts, project reports also fail to account for the broader impacts on urban biodiversity. I Change Indiranagar’s survey mapped ancient rain trees alongside saplings just five- or six-years-old, belonging to diverse species. “There are really old trees in the Swami Vivekananda Metro parking. In CMH park, there’s a huge banyan tree,” says Nandihal, pointing to birds such as parakeets and barbets that use these trees. Such details find no mention in the flyover’s detailed project report.

Similarly, the Hebbal tunnel tree survey does not assess the impact on Hebbal Lake, which is home to about 183 bird species. The tunnel will also pass through the Veterinary College campus, which hosts at least 95 bird species.

Project reports and many urban environmental impact assessments typically overlook habitat fragmentation, says Nagendra, with consequences for urban wildlife. Research shows that insects and butterflies respond to green spaces within a three-kilometre radius, while birds respond within five kilometres. “So they need unfragmented habitats to move,” she says.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam have moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in the 2020 Delhi riots conspiracy case, registered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, reported Bar and Bench on Thursday.

The trial in the case is yet to begin.

Khalid and Imam have challenged the September 30 order of the Delhi High Court denying them bail.

The High Court had said that it was “bound by judicial discipline” and could not modify conditions imposed by the Supreme Court in its January 5 order concerning the activists.

In January, the Supreme Court denied bail to Khalid and Imam, but granted relief to activists Gulfisha Fatima, Meera Haider, Shifa-Ur-Rehman, Muhammad Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmed.

The top court had said that Imam and Khalid could renew their bail petitions after the examination of protected witnesses was completed or after one year, whichever came earlier.

Khalid and Imam “stand on a qualitatively different footing as compared to other accused”, the Supreme Court had said at the time.

On May 18, a Supreme Court bench criticised the January order, observing that “bail is the rule and jail is an exception” even in prosecutions under the anti-terror law.

In his petition, Imam stated that despite spending six years and nine months in jail as an undertrial, the prosecution has failed to examine even one of the 47 protected witnesses, Live Law reported.

In view of this, the condition of “whichever is earlier” set by the Supreme Court was unlikely to be met before the deadline, he added.

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

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

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

Edited by Sneha.

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The Supreme Court ruled that the 24-hour deadline to produce a detained person before a magistrate begins when they are taken into custody, not when the investigating agency formally records their arrest. “Any attempt to draw an artificial distinction between arrest and detention would dilute or negate the fundamental protection guaranteed by the Constitution,” the bench said.

The only permissible exclusion is the time needed to travel to the magistrate’s court, it added.

The court also ruled that anyone detained beyond 24 hours without being produced before a magistrate must be released immediately. Read on.

The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court directed the Election Commission to restore the names of six members of a family who were deleted from the electoral rolls during the special intensive revision. Their applications for a change of address had been rejected.

The direction came after the petitioners said that their booth-level officer had asked them to submit Form 8 to update their addresses after they moved to a new home in the Santa Cruz Assembly constituency in North Goa eight years ago.

However, an assistant electoral registration officer told them that their names had been deleted from the draft rolls during the special intensive revision and their Form 8 applications could, therefore, not be processed. Instead, they were reportedly asked to submit Form 6, which is used to register new voters. Read on.

Two persons were killed and at least 15 others are feared trapped after a three-storey building that was under construction collapsed in Delhi’s Chawri Bazaar area. A junior engineer and an assistant engineer with the municipal corporation have been suspended.

Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that a first information report was registered against the contractor. Read on.

The Election Commission announced a special summary revision of electoral rolls in four states and two Union Territories. The exercise will be undertaken in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim, Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, starting November.

The exercise will update existing electoral rolls through additions and deletions, as opposed to the special intensive revision where fresh voter lists are prepared. The annual revision had been paused after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections due to the special intensive revision that began in 2025. Read on.

A Delhi court has directed the police not to take any coercive action against Jawaharlal Nehru University professor and Congress MP Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, who has been accused of sexual harassment by 11 students. The court directed the police to give him seven days’ notice before arrest.

The bench observed that the university had not provided the complainants’ details and their statements were yet to be recorded. Read on.

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The Goa bench of the Bombay High Court on Thursday directed the Election Commission to restore the names of six members of a family who were deleted from the electoral rolls during the special intensive revision in the state, The Indian Express reported. Their applications for a change of address had been rejected.

A division bench of Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar ordered the poll panel to restore their names within 10 days.

The petitioners said that they had moved to a new house in the Santa Cruz Assembly constituency in North Goa eight years ago, the newspaper reported. Their booth-level officer had asked them to submit Form 8 to update their addresses.

However, an assistant electoral registration officer told them that their names were deleted from the draft rolls during the special intensive revision and their Form 8 applications could, therefore, not be processed, the petitioners claimed. Instead, they were allegedly asked to submit Form 6, which is used to register new voters.

The petitioners argued that this was legally untenable, as Form 6 is meant for first-time voter registration and not for updating the details of existing voters, The Indian Express reported.

The form requires applicants to declare that they have not been voters before.

The court also rejected a request by the Election Commission’s counsel to stay its order to allow the poll panel to approach the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported.

During the hearing, the poll panel’s counsel argued that the omission of names from the draft rolls during the special intensive revision did not mean that they had been deleted, as the exercise involves preparing electoral rolls afresh instead of automatically carrying forward existing entries.

Since the draft rolls are prepared strictly from newly collected enumeration forms, people who have not been enumerated do not have an existing entry that can be modified through Form 8, the legal news outlet quoted the counsel as saying.

Therefore, those omitted from the draft rolls must apply afresh through Form 6 during the claims and objections period, the lawyer added.

EC on Form 6

On Tuesday, the Election Commission clarified that voters whose names are missing from the draft electoral rolls prepared under the special intensive revision can submit Form 6 to seek inclusion without facing prosecution for making a false declaration, even if they had been enrolled previously.

In October, the poll panel had directed its state units where the revision had been completed to identify and restore eligible voters who may have been wrongly excluded, using Form 6.

However, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi had said at the time that Form 6 cannot be filled by deleted voters as it is only for new voters.

“All those who have been forced to fill it have committed a criminal offence carrying one year prison,” Quraishi said on social media. “EC officials who forced them are abetters to crime. This press note shows EC’s abetment!”

A contentious exercise

In 2025, the first phase of the voter roll revision was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026. The third phase of the exercise is underway in 19 states and Union Territories.

Since the exercise began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision. But it said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Despite this, Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states have cited the SIR to deny ration cards to those who have been eliminated from the rolls. In some cases, the police have denied permission for their passports to be renewed.

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

On Saturday, the Opposition INDIA bloc held a symbolic “public impeachment” of Kumar.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls here.
• Explainer: Why the Election Commission’s Form 6 for new voters has triggered a legal row
• SIR explained: Why the voter roll revision has become so controversial

The Election Commission on Wednesday announced that it would conduct a special summary revision of electoral rolls in four states and two Union Territories, starting this month.

The exercise will be conducted in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim, Chandigarh, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, where the special intensive revision of voter rolls has been completed.

While the special summary revision involves updating the existing electoral rolls through additions and deletions, voter lists are prepared afresh under the special intensive revision.

The annual special summary revision was paused after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections due to the special intensive revision, which began in 2025 and is still underway in some states and Union Territories.

In its letter to the chief electoral officers of the six states and Union Territories on Wednesday, the Election Commission said that rationalisation or rearrangement of polling stations under the special summary revision should be conducted by November 20.

Following this, draft electoral rolls should be published on November 30. Voters will be able to file claims and objections to the draft rolls between November 30 and December 30, while the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on January 21.

On October 15, the Election Commission announced the special summary revision in 13 states and three Union Territories where the special intensive revision of electoral rolls has been conducted, as well as in Assam, where the poll panel decided not to undertake the exercise.

The poll panel had been conducting a special revision of the voter list in Assam, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll.

The special summary revision in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will also be conducted from November.

The draft rolls after the revision will be published on November 12. Following this, claims and objections will be invited till December 11 and the final rolls will be published on January 4.

The poll panel’s announcement came days after media reports said that the freezing of the annual revision of electoral rolls after 2024 due to the special intensive revision could affect the enrolment of voters who have recently turned 18.

On September 24, The Economic Times reported that the poll panel had overshot its May-June announcement timeline for the annual revision due to a lack of consensus between Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

The newspaper reported that Sandhu and Joshi had been advocating for resuming the exercise, while Kumar sought legal opinion on it.

This had followed a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express that showed that Sandhu and Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

A Delhi court on Thursday directed the police not to take any coercive action against Jawaharlal Nehru University Professor Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, who has been accused of sexual harassment by students, Bar and Bench reported.

Akoijam is a Congress Lok Sabha MP from Manipur.

Justice Digvinay Singh directed that the police give Akoijam seven days’ notice before arresting him. The court noted that he had been cooperating with the investigation.

It also observed that the university administration had not provided the names and details of the students who filed the complaints and that their statements were yet to be recorded.

Singh said that if Akoijam failed to cooperate with the investigation, the Delhi Police could approach the court for appropriate directions.

On Monday, the Delhi High Court stayed the October 9 order of Jawaharlal Nehru University dismissing the professor.

The university had said that the allegations against Akoijam had been investigated by its internal committee. Based on the panel’s findings, the professor who taught at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, was dismissed from service with immediate effect on October 9.

Akoijam, who lived on campus, has been accused of inviting students to his residence for gatherings and making sexual advances. Some complainants also alleged that he made lewd and inappropriate comments during classes and viva examinations, including demands for sexual acts in exchange for marks.

Akoijam has denied the allegations, accusing what he described as “racist schemers” attempting to tarnish his reputation with unverified claims and lies.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Two persons were killed after a three-storey building under construction collapsed in Old Delhi’s crowded Chawri Bazar area on Thursday, ANI quoted the Delhi Police as saying.

At least 15 persons are feared trapped under the debris, PTI quoted a Delhi Fire Services official as saying.

VIDEO | Delhi: A three-storey under-construction building collapsed in Old Delhi's Chawri Bazaar, with several people feared trapped under the debris. Rescue operations underway. A DFS official says, "At least 15 people are feared trapped... several have been injured. We received… pic.twitter.com/7PMs4zVQRQ

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) November 5, 2026

At least six fire department vehicles were at the site to oversee rescue operations, the news agency reported.

Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said the Municipal Corporation has suspended a junior engineer and an assistant engineer, while a first information report has been registered against the contractor.

This came two months after seven persons were killed after a five-storey building in Satya Niketan collapsed on September 6. The building was being used as paying guest accommodation.

On October 7, five persons were killed as a four-storey building collapsed in northeast Delhi’s Seemapuri.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar and Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the 24-hour deadline to produce a detained person before a magistrate begins when they are taken into custody, not when the investigating agency formally records their arrest, Live Law reported.

Treating detention and “formal arrest” as separate events for the deadline is constitutionally unsustainable, held a bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar.

“Any attempt to draw an artificial distinction between arrest and detention would dilute or negate the fundamental protection guaranteed by the Constitution,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying.

Article 22(2) of the Constitution requires that an arrested person be produced before the nearest magistrate within 24 hours of arrest, excluding the time needed to travel to the court.

On Thursday, the court also ruled that anyone detained for more than 24 hours without being produced before a magistrate must be released immediately.

The bench said that the magistrates must record the date and time when a person’s liberty was first curtailed and verify whether the 24-hour deadline has been observed.

They must also examine whether the detention was reasonable and can refuse further custody if it was excessive, even if the person was produced within 24 hours.

The court was hearing petitions filed by four persons against a Tripura High Court judgement that had denied them bail under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

They said that they were detained on September 29, 2025, at 2 pm and were shown as formally arrested at 11 am on September 30, 2025, reported Live Law.

The accused persons alleged that this was done by the investigating agency to circumvent the 24-hour deadline.

Edited by Sneha.

The Kerala High Court has said that “political activities” such as dharnas, or sit-ins, hunger strikes and satyagraha, or peaceful protests, have “no place in a constitutional democracy”, particularly in academic institutes, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed a first information report against a student accused of violating an order prohibiting unlawful gatherings during a protest, the newspaper reported.

The Kerala High Court made the observation while setting aside a single-bench order that allowed 16 suspended students of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in Ernakulam district to appear for their semester examinations.

The students, members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s student wing, were suspended after they protested for better infrastructure and academic facilities, and held a street play that allegedly insulted Vice Chancellor Ciza Thomas in August.

The students had failed to meet the university’s attendance requirements as they had been suspended and approached the single-judge bench seeking permission to appear for their semester examinations. The bench had allowed them to appear for the examinations, subject to the final outcome of their writ petition.

The university appealed against the order on October 30.

On Tuesday, the division bench said the students had not provided evidence that they were eligible to appear for the examinations, The Indian Express reported.

The division bench said allowing the students to take the examinations without meeting the university’s requirements would undermine its academic and disciplinary rules.

Any students involved in “political activities like dharna, hunger strikes or satyagraha” would be liable to being “expelled and/or rusticated”, the High Court was quoted as saying.

“Educational institutions are meant for imparting education and not politics,” The Indian Express quoted the bench as saying. “By their political ambition, the political parties cannot hold to ransom the educational institution or the right of the civilized students to receive education.”

MP High Court quashes FIR against student over protest

In Madhya Pradesh, the High Court quashed the FIR against a student accused of violating an order prohibiting unlawful gatherings during a protest against a case filed in June 2024 against some members of the Adivasi community.

The student had been charge-sheeted in the matter.

The court observed that the “bright student” should not be “unnecessarily dragged” into criminal proceedings, spoiling his career.

The court granted his plea on Monday. It also noted that the student had scored distinction in four of the five subjects in Class 12, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A Guwahati-based businessperson accused of shooting five persons dead near a hotel last week was killed by the police during an alleged gunfight while allegedly trying to escape custody on Wednesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Ghanakanta Gogoi had allegedly committed the murders over a dispute involving the lease of the hotel. He allegedly shot six persons on October 26, killing five, including the owner of the hotel.

He was arrested the same day and sent to judicial custody on Tuesday. An investigation was underway to ascertain his motives.

The alleged gunfight occurred when he was being taken from Guwahati to Sibsagar, which is about 350 km away, in connection with another case, the police said.

“When the team reached Gaurisagar, he said he wanted to answer nature’s call,” Sibsagar Senior Superintendent of Police Papori Chetia was quoted as saying. “After he got down from the vehicle, he tried to snatch the service weapon of the investigating officer. A scuffle ensued.”

The police claimed that it had to “resort to extreme measures” to protect its personnel as there was a “threat” from Gogoi.

A district court in Kamrup Metro had directed the Guwahati Police not to take Gogoi out of the jail after sunset following a request for security by him, the Hindustan Times reported. The police had also been ordered to ensure his safety in custody.

After the alleged gunfight on Wednesday, the senior superintendent of police was quoted as saying that the court’s directions were “part of a process”, alleging that Gogoi “is a criminal and also a shooter involved in a heinous crime”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Congress on Wednesday criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party over reported cases of fake attendance recorded under the VB-G RAM G rural employment scheme, asking “how many more sins” would the Hindutva party commit in the name of Hindu deity Ram.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that in October a case of fake attendance under the scheme had been reported in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. The government had issued a clarification after the Opposition had raised the allegations, he said.

At the time, Ramesh had shared a report about alleged irregularities in the state’s Bahraich, Chandauli and Ghaziabad districts.

Ramesh said that a similar case had now been reported in the Sant Kabir Nagar district. It was not immediately clear which report the Congress leader was referring to.

The Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin Act took effect on July 1. It replaced the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The MGNREGA, which was introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, guaranteed 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wanted it, covering all districts in the country.

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

The legislation has drawn criticism from economists and labour rights experts, who have said that it consolidates decision-making with the Union government, while transferring greater financial burden on to the states.

Five Opposition-ruled states have passed resolutions opposing the VB-G Ram G Act, and seeking that the MGNREGA scheme be restored.

On Wednesday, Ramesh said that cases of “recording fake attendance through clone apps are repeatedly being exposed, which is an extremely serious matter”.

“Donations stolen and offerings stolen in the name of Ram, fake employment in the name of Ram,” the former Union rural development minister said on social media. “How much more sin does the BJP have left to commit in the name of Ram?”

Ramesh was referring to the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The allegations are being investigated by a Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court.

The matter had come to light after Opposition leaders and a whistleblower raised questions about the handling of donations at the temple.

In its preliminary report, submitted to the Uttar Pradesh government in June, an earlier investigative team had found several instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes.

The report held temple trustee Anil Mishra, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, responsible for the dilution of security protocols in the counting room but did not recommend any action against him. Mishra resigned from their positions in the trust.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the BJP.

On October 15, the Uttar Pradesh Congress alleged irregularities in the V B-G RAM G scheme’s digital attendance system in 11 districts and demanded an investigation. Besides Bahraich, Chandauli and Ghaziabad, the districts included Ayodhya.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: ‘A bill to destroy MGNREGA’: Why experts fear the worst from new job guarantee bill

Three suspected militants were killed in a gunfight between rival Naga groups in Manipur’s Noney district on Wednesday, a senior police officer told Scroll.

The gunfight began at around 3.30 am in Taodaijang village and continued for several hours, The Hindu reported. The exchange of fire had prevented security personnel from immediately reaching the area, the newspaper quoted an unidentified district official as saying.

The persons who died were from the armed Naga group Zeliangrong United Front (Jenchui faction) and the Naga insurgent group National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), NDTV reported.

However, The Hindu quoted residents as saying that one person who was killed was from the Kamson faction of the Zeliangrong United Front.

Several persons from the groups were injured, the newspaper reported.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the gunfight.

The incident follows ethnic clashes that broke out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. Tensions between the Kuki and the Naga communities have also escalated in the state since February.

At least 310 persons have been killed and 49 are missing in Manipur since the beginning of the clashes, the Assembly was informed in September. About 60,000 persons were displaced during the violence. Of them, 36,000 persons had been resettled and 24,000 remained in relief camps across Manipur.

Inputs from Rokibuz Zaman. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Corrections and clarifications: This article was updated to quote the senior police officer as saying that three suspected militants were killed. The earlier version quoted reports as stating that four had been killed.

Also read: ‘No one to protect us’: In Manipur, civilians easy targets as armed groups step up violence

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on companies and persons based in India and Türkiye for supporting Iran amid the war in West Asia.

The sanctions are part of the Donald Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” aimed at cutting-off Tehran’s ability to sell oil to fund the conflict with the US and Israel.

The US Department of Treasury’s action targeted what it alleged was a “vast criminal network” run by Chandigarh-based Suniel Kumar ⁠Sharma and his wife Jaspreet Preeti Shahid.

Washington alleged that the couple “supported Iran’s shadow fleet through a web maritime fraud”.

It also sanctioned two other Indian citizens, Ashwani Kumar Dhiman and Ishwinder Singh, who head two of the couple’s businesses, and nine entities linked to ​Sharma and Shahid.

Their schemes “provided false flags and certifications to sanctioned vessels involved in transporting Iranian petroleum, including vessels operating on behalf of the Iranian military and its proxies,” the department alleged.

False flags and fake maritime certifications allow ships engaging in illicit activity to evade international regulations aimed at ensuring crew safety and safeguarding against environmental harm, Washington said in a statement.

Vessels that are falsely flagged carry no valid protection and indemnity insurance, meaning that Iranian shadow fleet vessels operating under false flags “could potentially cause billions of dollars in damages to the economies of the countries in whose territorial waters they operate”.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, a treasury department agency, also sanctioned Türkiye-based Fugo Ground Services “for its ongoing services in support of Iran’s aviation sector”.

Fugo Ground Services provides ground handling and other services to several US-sanctioned Iranian airlines that continue to fly to Türkiye, the department said.

The department said it had “repeatedly warned” that it will take action against entities that continue to support Iran’s aviation industry.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that “you are either with us or against us”.

He added: “We know where you are, and we will sanction those who continue supporting the Iranian regime, whether by land, sea or air.”

The fresh sanctions came more than eight months after the war in West Asia began on February 28. Peace talks between Washington and Tehran have stalled amid periodic upticks in fighting and US strikes on Iran.

In August, four India-based companies were among several entities sanctioned by the US for importing petroleum and petrochemical products from Iran.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

On October 10, the Delhi Police detained a group of people near INA Market for protesting against the controversial Special Intensive Revision of India’s voter rolls.

One of them was 22-year-old Ananya, who climbed onto the bonnet of the detention bus. A video shows that as the crowds closed in, a policeman shoved his pelvis against Ananya as she clung to the vehicle, while other women tried to push him away.

Ananya, a member of the Left-aligned All India Students Union, was undeterred by the incident, and was back on the streets the next day. “They think that if they hurt and traumatise us, we women won’t return to protest. But they can’t scare us off like this,” she said. “It is our right to have fair elections and protest peacefully.”

Like Ananya, many women protestors have been subjected to violence on the streets this year, both in July and October. Photos and videos from the recent agitations show police dragging and bodily hauling away protesters, many of them young women. Some women told Scroll they were groped and even beaten by the police.

Despite facing immense risks to their safety, women protestors have joined the protests in large numbers. In October, many had already been participating in ongoing agitations focused on violence against women, and continued on to join those against the SIR.

“While women had already participated in the paper leak protests in large numbers, it appears as if even more women have joined the protests this time,” said Mariam Dhawale, general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. “It’s possibly because a lot of them were already out on the streets protesting against a series of rape cases that occurred in the country.”

Scroll spoke to women protesters in Delhi and Pune about the rage driving them to hit the streets. Their accounts suggest that they view their fight for safety, independence and rights as part of larger political struggles against injustice to marginalised groups, broader state failures, and importantly, a political regime that they view as misogynistic.

Referring to the Modi government’s “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” campaign, Sahar, a 20-year-old who is pursuing a master’s degree at Delhi University, said: “They see us as daughters when it’s convenient and question us using slurs. But do we not remain daughters when we’re being beaten up by the police?”

She added: “From facing sexual violence to losing your voting right to SIR, everything is political, and all these issues converge together.”

Political awakening

For many women who participated in the recent protests, the roots of their political awakening lay in experiences of gender discrimination at home.

Dhanashri, who is 21 years old, grew up in Pune watching her family favour her brother: he was gifted a bicycle and sent to a better school, and even served more food during meal times. Meanwhile, she was told to “adjust”.

“When we are young, we don’t understand or identify this discrimination as patriarchal but I did not like it,” she told Scroll in October during a small protest by student groups in Pune. “I still kept speaking up against it.”

Three years ago, in college, she joined the Left-leaning New Students and Youth Federation. That was when she began to understand patriarchy as more than discrimination, she said. “I used to get very angry in my initial years.”

Women’s liberation can often be perceived as an elite concern, but Dhanashri said, “Independence is important, be it a woman or man.”

Dhanashri clashed frequently with her parents over the years because they did not like her being part of the student group. “My parents have even hit me for coming home late,” she said. However, with time, her parents have come to accept her beliefs. “They now know that I am fighting for the right things,” she said.

She added, “I keep open space for discussion with my family, even though sometimes we get irritated with each other. But it is okay, they have also grown up with a social conditioning, and it will take time to unlearn and change.”

Swapnaja, who is 29 years old, and is the Pune coordinator for Stree Mukti League, a revolutionary women’s organisation, recounted growing up with a father who hit her mother frequently. “I would read things about women’s choices, but often wondered, where is the full plan for women’s liberation, mukti, and how will we achieve it?” she said.

She went on to study engineering in Mumbai. She did not have very defined political ideas through these years, but her observations of the world around her troubled her – for instance, the glaring contrast between the rich and the poor. This motivated her to volunteer during the Covid-19 lockdown and help provide food to migrant workers.

“It felt wrong, given that they were being denied their right to earn a livelihood with dignity,” she said. “I was consumed by this question.”

This experience led her to formally join the Stree Mukti League. Today, she describes herself as a revolutionary, and says that understanding the “root of things” has been an important part of her politicisation.

She explained that anyone who was “bothered by the woman’s question” would try and “delve deep into it”. Analysing the problem more carefully would reveal a wider context – such as “the BJP’s propaganda” on so-called love jihad, as well as other socioeconomic matters.

“On why there is inflation today – we are told it is because of Muslims. Why is there unemployment – because Muslims are stealing jobs,” she said. “This attempt to create the figure of the “other” is automatically undone when you go to the root of matters.”

Apart from gender discrimination, some young women were inspired to take up political activity by other socioeconomic problems. For instance, 23-year-old Juliya, a member of the Left-aligned Students Federation of India, who grew up in Kerala, said she joined the organisation in school when it organised against buses that were refusing rides to children who could not afford tickets.

“SFI was the only group organising about this, and they managed to get the buses to accept students riding with their passes,” said Juliya. “This was a personal issue for me, so I joined them then and have stayed on ever since.”

The current protests

The protests that women had been organising and participating in Delhi before the SIR agitations focused on several problems, many pertaining to students. For instance, they demanded the improvement of crumbling campus infrastructure and the implementation of University Grants Commission regulations on equity on campuses, and also more broadly demanded better safety for women in public spaces.

Smriti, who is 20, and is the president of the Women’s Development Cell at Hindu College, had organised a protest against sexual violence in early October. “Public places are already unsafe, but often men stand outside our college gates, or they even come inside campus and leer at us, molest or flash us,” she said. She compared these agitations to the upswell of angry protests against the lack of safety for women in the winter of 2012 after a 22-year-old was brutally violated and gangraped, and died of severe injuries. “Why has nothing changed in so many years?” she said.

Young women were also angered by what they saw as the “protectionist, patriarchal logic” with which institutions responded to their demands, explained a feminist scholar who has studied women’s movements. The scholar cited the example of the Lady Shri Ram College shifting classes online after a 17-year-old girl was gangraped by three men in a park. Further, in response to the same incident, the Delhi Development Authority restricted access to its parks after sunset.

“Women’s safety really becomes a kind of code word for reconfiguring control over women,” said the scholar, who asked to remain anonymous because she works with a public institution and was not authorised to speak to the media. “But it is interesting for a new generation of women to discover that question in some ways for themselves.” She added, “Once you start seeing the politics in something, it’s easier to connect it to the politics of something else.”

Ananya recounted that the calls to protest against the SIR in October were circulated in several women’s WhatsApp groups active for “the smash the patriarchy” protests. “Women, even those who aren’t ideologically affiliated, responded with enthusiasm,” said Ananya. “They got enraged when they heard of the police sexually violating women protestors and journalists.”

Lalita, a 30-year-old member of the Revolutionary Workers Party of India in Pune, said young women had realised the limitations of “choice feminism” – which is the idea that women’s liberation is tied to their freedom to make choices for themselves.

“I have the right to wear what I want, but after getting educated – and look at the cost of education – do I have jobs?” said Lalita. “If I try to become independent, would I be able to sustain myself?”

Women’s slogans

The women’s protest marches drew particular attention and commentary on social media for their use of creative slogans such as “Ek chai, do samosa, inn mardon pe kya bharosa!” – a tea and two samosas, there is no trusting these men.

But women recounted that they had also raised more pointedly political slogans that did not receive as much attention – including some that targeted politicians who had been accused or convicted of crimes against women.

“We chanted – Kuldeep Singh se azaadi, Brij Bhushan se azaadi,” said Ananya. Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a legislator expelled from the BJP, was convicted in 2019 for raping a minor, and for later killing her father. Brij Bhushan Singh, a former BJP member of parliament, was accused of sexual assault by India’s top female wrestlers. His acquittal in August has been challenged by four wrestlers.

The slogans angered members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student organisation aligned with BJP’s ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Ananya recounted. “The ABVP miscreants suddenly came up to us and started misbehaving with us,” she said.

The feminist scholar argued that the regime’s lenience towards these leaders was revealing of its misogyny. “And I think that is also translating in some ways into how young women are making sense of their world,” she said.

Sahar, the 22-year-old Delhi University master’s student, argued, “Women know where the blame lies. While the protests were about the rape cases and our anger against patriarchal institutions, we know what kind of example this government has set by keeping leaders in power who have raped women.”

Women also targeted the regime’s most senior leaders. Sahar recalled that one of the placards said “Modiji kya ab culture shock hua?”

This was a response to a short video that Prime Minister Narendra Modi put up in July, after he came across videos of placards and slogans ridiculing him and the government. In his video, he had said it was a “cultural shock” for him to hear “daughters using such language”.

Sahar noted that apart from failing to tackle sexual violence, the government had also pursued policies which impacted women and minorities disproportionately. “It is married women, trans people and religious minorities who are facing the worst brunt of the SIR,” she said. “All of this is interconnected.”

Hypocrisy on gender

Many women protestors argued that it was ironic that the government had launched welfare schemes for girls and women, and yet unleashed violence against women in Delhi when they protested for their rights.

Lalita, who has organised protests in Pune, said that she found the videos of police violence against women in Delhi unsurprising. “We should all know what we are up against,” said Lalita. “All of this is being live-streamed. The evidence is available for all of us to see how this fascist state operates.”

She added, “We must know that the fascists use sexual violence and brutal violence as a tool to subjugate us.” Further, “We must also understand that our honour does not lie in women’s bodies,” she noted.

Like Ananya, many other women are also undeterred by police brutality. “So many of my comrades have been slapped, groped, their clothes have been torn, their t-shirts or kurtas pulled up,” said Juliya. “But we will still return.”

Dhanashri, the 21-year-old student from Pune, was traveling to Delhi on October 8 to participate in protests when she and other students were pulled off their train in Itarsi and detained by the Madhya Pradesh police. “When I got detained, I felt that the only thing I had to do was resist,” she said. Her fear has since vanished. “I am no longer afraid of the state,” she said.

Ananya, too, echoed arguments about the government’s hypocrisy. “The state can mobilise so much security against peaceful protestors,” she said. “Where are these personnel, where is the state when women face sexual violence?

The feminist scholar argued that part of the reason police had responded violently to women was to make an example of them. “You don’t want other women to get the same kind of ideas, because there is a lot more at stake in ‘keeping women in control’,” she said.

The scholar pointed out that since many of the young women protestors are from Left groups, the regime was pushing forward a narrative about the protests that suggested, “These are not our betis and our betis wouldn’t do this”.

This argument, she said, was also being deployed to justify the use of force. “It’s almost like the argument is that because these are Left women, we need to treat them as ‘Left’, as ‘naxals’, and not as women,” she said.

If a 20-year-old has found her way to this politics, she said, “All of us don’t need to tell her what to do with that politics.” In fact, she explained, the recent protests had shattered the common belief that young women are not interested in feminist politics, or politics more generally. “There’s always a potential once someone starts seeing the world differently,” she said.

The Karnataka High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against a man accused of shouting “Pakistan Zindabad”, or long live Pakistan, at a Bharatiya Janata Party rally in 2022.

In the judgement delivered on October 28, the court took note of the petitioner’s submission that he had mistakenly shouted “Pakistan Zindabad” instead of “Pakistan Murdabad”, or death to Pakistan.

The petitioner had shouted the slogan in the heat of the moment due to a “slip of the tongue”, his lawyer told the court.

The matter pertains to a complaint filed in 2024 in connection with a demonstration organised on December 18, 2022, by supporters of the BJP.

The complainant said that a video of the incident had caused him mental distress and prompted him to seek police action.

The Mandya Police registered a case under the Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to public mischief and assertions prejudicial to national integration.

The accused subsequently moved the High Court urging it to quash the case.

In his order, Justice V Srishananda said: “At the outset, in a demonstration organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party, it is highly unimaginable that the protesters therein would raise the slogan ‘Pakistan Zindabad’.”

He held that continuing the criminal proceedings against the petitioner would be unnecessary and amount to an abuse of the process of law.

During the hearing, the prosecution had alleged that the petitioner deliberately shouted the slogan “in order to create unrest in the society”.

However, the court held that the investigation had failed to establish that the slogan had led to any social unrest.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

In the plains of Assam, different kinds of rain are often distinguished through vivid local expressions that reflect their intensity and impact on everyday life. One such term is “sagoli-kheda-borokhun” (the rain that chases goats). It refers to a light shower, enough to send goats hurrying into their sheds while people continue with their daily activities.

As the rainfall intensifies, it may be described as “goru-kheda-borokhun” (cow-chasing rain), followed by “manuh-kheda-borokhun” (people-chasing rain), when even humans seek shelter from the downpour. At the extreme end of this scale of vernacular expressions of rainfall intensity lies “gor-kheda-borokhun” (the rain that chases away rhinos), evoking a deluge so intense that even Assam’s iconic one-horned rhinoceroses would retreat and look for shelter.

With rapid urbanisation and changing rainfall patterns, such beautiful expressions of rain have lost continuous usage, especially among the younger generation, who no longer name types of rains.

These expressions reveal the richly textured ways in which communities inhabiting the water-abundant landscapes of North East India have understood and interpreted rainfall. Their environmental imagination is shaped not only by the rains themselves but also by the sounds, movements, and rhythms of the ecosystems around them.

Among the most evocative signs of the approaching monsoon was the chorus of frogs inhabiting the “pukhuris” (ponds), “khaals” (natural drainage channels), and “beels” (wetlands). Their persistent croaking, described locally as the rhythmic “tur-tu-rai” of an assembled army of frogs, would fill the night air. Hearing this familiar symphony, people would often remark that the rains were on their way.

In today’s times, such soundscapes have diminished considerably and the traditional knowledge of being able to predict rains by observing sounds and signs in nature have not been passed on. The familiar chorus of frogs on humid nights has grown noticeably quieter as ponds have deteriorated, wetlands have been drained, and traditional water bodies have gradually disappeared from the landscape.

Here, I look at the languages and imaginations of communities, and how these interact with the annual rains and storms along the eastern Himalayas, how they keep record of the changes in the climate patterns in their community lives through their vernacular depictions of storms and rains, and how the current climate crisis has clouded their traditional communication methods.

Water-abundant worlds

The Himalayan river-systems and the plains they nourish have always been regarded as a water-abundant environment, with monsoons, storms and rains forming an essential part of the lives and imaginations of communities living there. Nation-state borders, which straddle river-systems and regions across the Himalayas, bring in an additional layer of complexity to the various discourses of climate change disasters and patterns in the region, which are already exacerbated by infrastructural interventions on the river systems.

The languages and imaginations of Himalayan communities through which they describe the monsoons, climate change, storms, and rainfall patterns in their daily lives and natural environment, and how they are shaped by the interventions and narratives deployed by the nation-state in the eastern Himalayas serve as critical crisis communication, often proving more useful and timely than government communication.

The monsoon rains that stream in from the Indian Ocean currents and extend up to the heights of the easternmost fringes of the Himalayas bring most of the Himalayan river-systems to life. The monsoon clouds, after they enter Northeast India, play a veritable ping-pong between the low-lying rolling hills of the Patkai ranges and the towering eastern Himalayan mountain ranges, and the rains and storms that ensue from this match nourish the various communities, sustain the forests, and shape the landscape. This interaction forms an archive of climate disasters in the region.

Modern meteorological forecasting methods have greatly improved with scientific progress and modelling and availability of long-term data. However, from my research, it has been evident that the medium-range and long-range predictions of storms and rainfall patterns have low reliability at the local level, meaning state-led communication methods are not effective or timely. There are externalities of data collection challenges and reliability of what actually constitutes long-term data and the rapid infrastructure push and anthropogenic changes in the context of the fragile and ever-crumbling-and-forming eastern Himalayas.

Bordoisila is the personified name given to an annual spring storm that ravages the foothills of the eastern Himalayas, often spanning across Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Bhutan. The community memory of Bordoisila is archived over time through stories of the storm returning to “her maternal home,” Assam, to celebrate Bohag Bihu, the mid-April spring festival, and accounting for the ferocity and devastation it regularly brings along, as well as the variation in timing of the storm’s arrival and when “she returns” after celebrating.

Communities provide token offerings of festive food and clothing to Bordoisila, imploring the storm to pass by gently in “her path.” The variation in timing and ferocity of the storm is recorded in recent community memory as the personified storm managing to come home early this year as “she got to leave early from her workplace.” Originating in the Chotanagpur plateau and gathering force from the Bay of Bengal, she again returns in an angry mood as if “she was not treated well by her mother” with festive goodies and good food.

Personified storms

Over years of research in the region, I have noted that communities rarely rely on modern meteorological forecasting information for the stormy season. They know it only by community memory and their sense of the ferocity of the storm when it passes by – among a series of spring storms – and declare that “she has finally arrived” and “she will soon return after celebrating Bihu.”

It is along the trail of Bordoisila that the first wave of floods also arrives in Assam, and the traditional knowledge repository known as “Dakor Boson,” a collection of vernacular prose and poetry sayings, depicting how the coming monsoon and the ensuing agricultural cropping cycle will span out. The first floods were always celebrated with the Bihu dance, and the storm Bordoisila is revered despite its ferocity, as it brings the rain and nutrient-rich silt to nourish the overall landscape. However, with climate change and anthropogenic interventions, the language of climate crises has changed from a sense of celebration and reverence to utter despair.

Over the past several decades, North East India has witnessed profound shifts in its monsoon patterns. Periods of unusually intense rainfall have triggered devastating floods, while prolonged dry spells have brought drought-like conditions to many areas. In response to persistent droughts, communities across Assam have continued to observe customs such as frog-marriage ceremonies, invoking these creatures regarded as messengers of the rain-gods, to restore the rains through their renewed croaking.

In Meghalaya, rainfall that used to last nine nights and days in a continuous rhythmic pattern, known as “slap-khyndai-miet-khyndai-sngi,” has, over recent years, lost its original community language emphasis, as such long-enduring rainfall patterns have diminished greatly.

Among the Idu-Mishmi of eastern Arunachal Pradesh, traditional ritual specialists are called upon to communicate with rain spirits, seeking their intervention both when the rains fail to arrive and when incessant downpours raise fears of catastrophic flooding. The Idu-Mishmi term for rain, “ayyo or ayyoyo,” carries deep cultural significance within these practices.

Jibi Pulu, an Idu-Mishmi community leader and environmental activist, points to how different kinds of rainfall were once understood to perform distinct ecological functions in the forests of the Dibang Valley. Certain rains signaled the shedding of leaves, others supported flowering cycles, while some heralded the arrival of migratory birds that seasonally visited the region’s rich forest ecosystems. However, he observed that such patterns have become increasingly difficult to anticipate, as deforestation, climate change, and human intervention have disrupted environmental rhythms that earlier generations could interpret with a high confidence.

Many Idu-Mishmi elders similarly attribute the growing unpredictability of rainfall and the increasing occurrence of extreme floods on the Dibang River and its tributaries to a deterioration in the relationship between people and the natural world. They regard practices such as the indiscriminate slaughter of animals and the growing trend of winter picnics on dry riverbeds (where meals are prepared directly on the exposed riverbed) as acts that offend river spirits.

In their understanding, these transgressions disturb the balance between humans and the spiritual forces inhabiting the landscape, contributing to erratic weather patterns and destructive flooding events. Some historic flooding events are referred to by communities with names of where such flooding originated, such as the “China-paani” of the year 2000 and the recent episodes of “Bhutan-baanpaani” along the Bhutan-Assam border. This vocabulary has expanded to include specific dam-induced floods such as Ranganadi-floods in Assam.

Culturally grounded approaches

The diverse linguistic expressions, traditional knowledge systems, and lived experiences through which indigenous communities across Northeast India understand rainfall, storms, climate variability, and recurring flood events deserve to be documented, connected, and amplified within broader conversations on environmental democracy and transboundary cooperation.

Bringing these perspectives together can help foster more inclusive dialogues across the Eastern Himalayas and the Patkai mountain ranges, enabling local communities to participate meaningfully in decision-making processes concerning ecology, environmental governance, infrastructure development, disaster preparedness, crisis communication, and other issues that directly shape their everyday lives and livelihoods. For generations, communities have relied on close observation of their surroundings to interpret changes in weather and rainfall patterns, rhythms of rivers, and flood cycles.

As environmental transformations become more pronounced and traditional indicators grow increasingly uncertain, their ability to understand and articulate these changes offers valuable insights into the realities of climate change on the ground.

Recognising and engaging with such lived experiences, local knowledge, and environmental imaginations is, therefore, essential to strengthening civil society participation and building more democratic, responsive, and culturally grounded approaches to environmental governance in the region.

Modern meteorological forecasting methods need to learn from traditional wisdom and social innovation and the vast archive of knowledge which have recorded past disasters and also can predict future ones. The rapid pace and scale of transformation along the eastern Himalayas are rendering traditional knowledge systems incapable of providing climate solutions.

Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman completed his doctoral research on the Brahmaputra river basin geopolitics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and is currently a Research Associate at Heinrich Boell Stiftung, India and Visiting Associate Fellow at Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, India.

All photos courtesy of Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman.

This is the second in a multi-part series published in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, at the Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR, a research center focused on the economy, borders, identities, environment, and regional geopolitics of the wider Himalayan region including the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram.

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

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Seventy-five percent of Agniveers who are not enrolled in the armed forces permanently after their four-year tenure will be given an option to extend their service by two more years. After this six years of service, Agniveers will get another opportunity to join the armed forces as regular soldiers, provided they meet the prescribed criteria, said Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani

The introduction of the Agnipath scheme on June 14, 2022, had triggered protests in several states as aspirants demanded permanent recruitment with pension benefits. The announcement came as around 18,000 Agniveers from the first batch are expected to complete their four-year tenure and exit in December.

Subramani said that Agniveers who opt for the additional two-year service will receive higher salaries and an increased exit package. Read on.

An Agniveer died in Operation Sindoor. A year later, his parents are still fighting for pension, reports Anant Gupta

The Delhi Police said that it has filed a first information report against advocate Prashant Bhushan for sharing a video of the Russian foreign minister manipulated using artificial intelligence. The manipulated video showed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that New Delhi and Moscow were merely trading partners and that their commercial relationship “did not give India the right to interfere in our foreign policy”.

It also showed him saying that India was “neither an ally, nor a superpower whose advice” Russia was bound to follow.

While sharing the video, Bhushan had said that the comments were “a tight slap” by the Russian foreign minister on India. Read on.

The Democrats took control of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives from the Republicans as votes in the mid-term elections were being counted. Before the polls, President Donald Trump-led Republican party had a 53:47 majority in the 100-member Senate.

It had a slim 219:214 majority in the 435-member Lower House of the Congress. As of 5.30 pm Indian time on Wednesday, the Democrats held 54 seats and the Republicans had 44 in the Senate.

The Democrats had won 228 seats and the Republicans 139 in the Lower House. The remaining 68 seats had not been called. A party needs 218 seats for a majority. Read on.

An Indian citizen who was critically injured in the attack on Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on October 10 has died, the Indian embassy said. The man had been in an intensive care unit for 25 days.

The October 10 attack killed 14 persons and injured more than 300, making it the deadliest strike on Saudi Arabia since May 2015. Read on.

The Delhi government has granted consent to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Cockroach Janta Party legal affairs head Ratna Singh for her social media posts about a judge of the Saket District Court. Singh had approached the court seeking an FIR against police officers who allegedly prevented her from participating in a protest called by the political campaign to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10.

After the court rejected her petition, Singh posted on social media that the judge was “serving the master” and had taken several breaks during the proceedings. In another post, she alleged that both the Delhi Police and the judge were following orders from an unidentified “master”. Read on.

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The Delhi government has granted consent to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Cockroach Janta Party legal affairs head Ratna Singh for her social media posts about a judge of the Saket District Court, Live Law reported on Wednesday.

Singh had approached the Saket court seeking a first information report against police personnel who allegedly wrongfully detained her and prevented her from a protest called by the Cockroach Janta Party to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10.

The court had rejected her petition.

Following the hearing, Singh posted on social media that the judge was “serving the master” and had taken several breaks during the proceedings. In another post, she alleged that both the Delhi Police and the judge were following orders from an unidentified “master”, Bar and Bench reported.

Judge serving the master. Went for break/meeting 4 times during entire hearing. Order without any application of law.

Welcome to new India, where Sarkar can put 30 police personnel confining you & then say we won coz armless people couldn’t come to the protest site.

Irony is… https://t.co/SosmVKcgBK

— Ratna Singh (@whattalawyer) October 10, 2026

On Monday, the Delhi government’s counsel, Amol Sinha, said Singh’s remarks questioned the judge’s independence and could undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

Sinha said there was a difference between criticising a court order and alleging that a judge was acting under someone else’s instructions, Live Law reported.

He said Singh had not backed her claims with facts.

“Such imputations, in my opinion, strike at the independence and impartiality of the judicial process,” Sinha stated.

The consent was granted under the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, section 15(2), which allows a law officer to move the High Court to initiate criminal contempt proceedings.

The consent was granted on a complaint filed by an advocate.

Edited by Sneha.

Seventy-five percent of Agniveers who are not enrolled permanently after their four-year tenure will be given an option to extend their service by two more years, announced Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani on Wednesday.

After the extension is completed, the willing Agniveers will get another opportunity to join the armed forces as regular soldiers, provided they meet the prescribed selection criteria, added Subramani.

Agniveers are recruited into the armed forces under the Agnipath short-term recruitment scheme. Under the scheme, citizens aged between 17 and a half and 21 years are eligible to apply for a four-year term in the military with a provision that 25% of them will be retained for permanent service and will be required to serve for a minimum of 15 years.

The introduction of the Agnipath scheme on June 14, 2022, had triggered protests in several states as aspirants demanded permanent recruitment with pension benefits.

Agniveers are not entitled to pension and emoluments on the completion of the four years of service and are instead offered a lump-sum package.

The announcement on Wednesday came as around 18,000 Agniveers from the first batch are expected to complete their four-year tenure and exit in December. There are around three lakh Agniveers in the defence forces currently, reported The Hindu.

Subramani said that Agniveers who opt for the additional two-year service will receive higher salaries and an increased Seva Nidhi package if they choose to leave the armed forces after completing the extended tenure.

The decision was taken after evaluation of the performance of the Agniveers, he added.

“Based on these evaluations…the Indian defence forces recommended to the government that 75% of the Agniveers be granted an additional engagement period,” he said. “We have been discussing this for the past three to four months.”

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: An Agniveer died in Operation Sindoor. A year later, his parents are still fighting for pension

The Keralam government on Wednesday ordered a preliminary investigation into fresh allegations that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had sought bribes from contractors to clear bills during his tenure as the secretary of the state’s Public Works Department in 2006, The Indian Express reported.

On October 4, the Congress-led United Democratic Front government in the state directed the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to investigate bribery allegations against Kumar after Congress leader Malayinkeezhu Venugopal filed a complaint.

The development came amid allegations against Kumar about irregularities in the conduct of the special intensive revision of voter rolls and calls from Opposition parties seeking his removal from office.

The fresh allegations were made by a contractor named Sajan, who alleged that Kumar sought Rs 2 crore from Malaysian engineer Lee See Been, the project manager of a road project undertaken by the Indo-Malaysian construction company PATI-BEL, The Indian Express reported.

Lee died by suicide in Kuala Lumpur in November 2006, allegedly leaving behind a note in which he accused PWD officials of withholding payments over demands for bribes.

In their complaints, Venugopal and Sajan have claimed that Lee had mentioned Kumar in his suicide note.

The project was delayed and saw cost escalations during Kumar’s tenure while the Left Democratic Front government was in power.

The PATI-BEL consortium had been awarded the contract to upgrade the Main Central Road under the Kerala State Transport Project by the previous United Democratic Front government.

In his complaint to state Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala on October 23, Sajan claimed that he worked closely with Lee as one of the material suppliers for the PATI-BEL, reported The Indian Express.

“As the bills were not cleared on time, Lee could not make payments to local contractors and suppliers,” he alleged. “Lee had told me that Kumar had sought Rs 2 crore to clear the bills.”

However, PATI-BEL was unwilling to pay bribes to get the bills cleared, Sajan claimed.

He further alleged that Kumar had deliberately withheld cheques for bills amounting to around Rs 17 crore, despite engineers approving them, PTI reported.

Sajan said that if the government ordered a probe, he was ready to produce evidence, including Lee’s family members, before the investigators.

Protests against Kumar

Since October 2, nationwide protests have been held calling for Kumar’s resignation over concerns about the functioning of the Election Commission and the alleged irregularities in how the voter roll is being revised.

The trigger for the protests was a September 23 investigation by The Indian Express, which revealed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected 14 times in 10 months to decisions by the poll panel related to the special intensive revision, saying some had been taken without their knowledge.

Edited by Sneha.

The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday quashed a criminal defamation case filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit against former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah about the “corruption rate card” advertisements by Congress during the Assembly elections that year, Live Law reported.

In July 2025, the High Court had stayed proceedings in the case.

Ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections, the Congress’ advertisements alleged that the BJP-led government in Karnataka had fixed rates of bribes for job appointments and transfers.

The BJP alleged that the advertisements damaged the Hindutva party’s image by claiming that certain “rates” and “commissions” were charged for facilitating the appointments in government jobs, Live Law reported.

The complaint also alleged that the advertisements used the words “trouble engine sarkar” to malign the BJP’s reputation. The phrase was a play on the “double engine sarkar” slogan used by the BJP to urge voters to elect it at the Centre and in states.

The Congress was elected to power in Karnataka in 2023, replacing the BJP government.

In May 2023, the Election Commission issued a notice to the Congress’ Karnataka unit in connection with the advertisements. There appeared to be a prima facie violation of the Model Code of Conduct, said the poll panel.

The code is a set of guidelines issued by the poll panel that political parties, candidates and the government must follow during an election. It sets guardrails for speeches, campaigning, meetings, processions, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.

“While the general references and allusions to the alleged lack of achievement, misdeeds, not ensuring corruption-free governance of political opponents, do float in political campaigns, specific accusations and charges need to be segregated as the same must be backed by verifiable facts,” the poll panel said in the notice to DK Shivakumar, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief at the time.

In February, the High Court quashed a separate defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over the party’s advertisements.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed that the salaries of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Commissioner Ashwini Bhide and other officials be withheld till December 1 while hearing a case about the civic body failing to comply with its directions to remove encroachments from land earmarked for a bus stand, Bar and Bench reported.

It was not immediately clear who the other officials are.

The court initiated contempt proceedings against Bhide. It issued a show cause notice asking why action should not be taken against her.

The court also rejected the commissioner’s request for more time to comply with its earlier directions and imposed cost of Rs 5 lakh on the municipal corporation, The Indian Express reported.

The land in Borivali earmarked for a Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport bus stand has been at the centre of a dispute between the municipal corporation and a private developer for several years.

In an order passed in August 2025, the Supreme Court directed the developer to hand over possession of the 3,400 square metre-plot to the municipal corporation.

It had asked the municipal corporation to make the bus stand functional within three months. The court had also directed the corporation to continue taking steps to remove encroachments from the property.

in November 2025, the court raised concern that the municipal authorities had not removed the encroachments.

It had sought a personal affidavit from the commissioner listing who was occupying the property, eviction notices issued to them and any claims of tenancy or ownership.

Bhide was appointed the commissioner in March this year.

A day after the court’s order on Wednesday, the municipal corporation cleared the encroachments, a journalist from The Times of India reported.

Update: BMC has cleared encroachments on the 3,400 sq m plot reserved for a BEST bus depot on Swami Vivekanand Road in Borivli East.

27 commercial units demolished in a drive conducted by the R Central ward on Wednesday. Around 70 personnel, 2 JCBs and 4 dumpers deployed for the… https://t.co/t0ssfPLOkA pic.twitter.com/a0bZUP7kXD

— Richa Pinto (@richapintoi) November 4, 2026

On Tuesday, the commissioner sought more time to comply with the directions. Rejecting the request, the bench took strong exception to the corporation’s explanation that its officials needed to have documents in Marathi translated into English before they could act.

“The officer who filed the affidavit is Dr Tambe,” Justice Joymala Bagchi was quoted as saying. “Do you want us to believe that they do not know Marathi?”

Chief Justice Surya Kant said that the authorities may be colluding with the encroachers, Bar and Bench reported. “This is an absolutely mischievous breach of the directions of the Supreme Court, with the direct connivance and support of the encroachers,” he was quoted as having verbally observed.

The court refused to grant further time even as the municipal corporation’s lawyer offered to ensure compliance within a month.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

At least six schools in Bhopal were closed on Wednesday because of the traffic disruptions expected during a “save democracy, remove anarchy” march organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Dainik Bhaskar reported.

The district education officer on Tuesday issued an order asking all government and private schools to assess the likely impact of traffic congestion and diversions on the commute of students and make necessary changes to school timings, including declaring a holiday if required, The Times of India reported.

The march passed through New Market, one of Bhopal’s busy commercial areas.

The rally in the capital of the BJP-ruled state was organised in response to Opposition protests since October 2 demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over concerns about the Election Commission’s functioning and alleged irregularities in the revision of electoral rolls.

The Hindutva party has held similar rallies in Jabalpur, Indore and Hyderabad, among other cities.

Opposition reaction

Congress state president Jitu Patwari asked why children and parents should “bear the brunt” of disruptions caused by the BJP’s rally.

He added: “Has education for kids in Madhya Pradesh now become hostage to the BJP’s so-called programs?”

भोपाल में भाजपा फिर भाड़े की भीड़ जुटा रही है! नतीजा, प्रशासन ने स्कूलों को समय बदलने या छुट्टी करने के निर्देश दे दिए! कई निजी स्कूलों में तो कल अवकाश घोषित हो गया!

• @BJP4MP की रैली का खामियाजा बच्चे और अभिभावक क्यों भुगतें? क्या मध्य प्रदेश में अब बच्चों की पढ़ाई भी भाजपा के… pic.twitter.com/Eyx2Cu23B8

— Jitendra (Jitu) Patwari (@jitupatwari) November 3, 2026

Congress leader Abhinav Baroliya said that the Hindu festival of Dhanteras, which falls on Friday, is an important occasion for traders and business owners.

Dhanteras, celebrated two days before Diwali, is considered an auspicious day for shopping.

He said that disrupting access to markets and public amenities to hold a political event was inappropriate at this time, PTI reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.