There was a time when we called the monsoon month of Sawan by its name. In traditional lore, with its arrival, swings would appear in orchards. The air would be filled with the melodies of the kajri folk form and Raag Malhar. The Earth changed its attire as nature draped herself in a green veil.

Sawan meant relief and hope.

For farmers, Sawan is still Sawan. Even today, they call it by that name. Few other lives are bound to rain and drought as intimately as theirs. They await Sawan with particular longing. They know that the rhythm of cultivation changes with it.

Farmers know what the month means for paddy, maize, jowar, chana, black gram, cotton and other crops. Many of their festivals, too, fall in this month. There is Teej. There is Nag Panchami. The agricultural calendar and the Hindu ritual calendar have long lived together.

But we no longer inhabit that older sense of time. We now live within an official Hindutva calendar. It is no longer Sawan that begins but the auspicious month of Shravan. Every mention of Shravan must now be preceded by adjectives such as “holy, sacred or auspicious”.

Sawan has been stolen from ordinary people. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Sawan has been abducted. Its abductor is the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Over the past decade or so, Sawan has been subjected to a process of thorough Hindutvaisation. Governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party welcome the sacred month of Shravan with full-page newspaper advertisements. It is as though Indians no longer learn of its arrival from the changing colour of the sky or the scent of wet earth, but from government announcements.

Nor is one advertisement considered sufficient. Governments repeatedly remind people that Shravan has arrived and is very much there. More than that, they also tell Hindus what their principal duty during the month is.

There was a time when Krishna exhorted Arjuna: “Rise, Partha. Lift your Gandiva.” Now, governments issue a different command. Shravan has begun. Rise, O Hindus. Raise your kanwar to your shoulders.

Take Bihar. On July 28, the Hindi newspapers in the state carried a full-page advertisement issued jointly by the Bihar government and its Department of Tourism announcing the inauguration of the Shravani Mela or Shravan fair.

Government advertisements in Bihar these days invariably come bathed in saffron and this one was no exception. At the top of the advertisement, next to the words “Shravani Mela” were a saffron triangular flag, a damru drum and a trident. At the centre was an image of Shiva himself, holding a trident in his hand.

The chief guest at the inauguration was Bihar’s chief minister, Samrat Choudhary. Among the distinguished guests were the two deputy chief ministers belonging to the Janata Dal (United), Vijay Kumar Choudhary and Bijendra Prasad Yadav. Several ministers of the Bihar government and many legislators were also listed as participants.

Earlier, on July 15, the Bihar government had released another advertisement. This one announced an “attractive prize scheme” to promote the Shravani Mela. The Tourism Department invited participants to "take the spiritual, cultural and tourism experiences of Shravani Mela 2026 to the world through your camera and creativity and win attractive prizes”. The first prize was at Rs 3 lakh, the second Rs 2 lakh and the third Rs 1 lakh. There were two fourth prizes of Rs 50,000 each and five consolation prizes of Rs 25,000.

Curious about the changing language of official celebration, we looked for last year's advertisement about the event. It was considerably smaller. There was no announcement of an inaugural ceremony. It merely informed devotees about the facilities that would be available between July 11 and August 9.

At the top appeared the line: “For the comfort of devotees, the Kanwar Yatra has now been made easier.” Below was the phrase “Shravani Mela”, accompanied only by a trident and a damru. Nothing more.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar. They fill it into two pots balanced on a stick and carry this kanwar back to their home states to offer the water at temples. The Kanwar Yatra began on July 30 and will end on August 11.

The Bihar advertisement went on to list the facilities that Bihar Tourism had arranged to make the pilgrimage easier – night shelters, tent cities, medical camps, cafeterias, safe drinking water, fans, coolers, tourist assistance centres, kanwar stands, CCTV surveillance, toilets and a 24-hour helpline. On one side was an image of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. On the other stood a few Kanwar pilgrims.

The difference between last year’s official welcome to Sawan and this year’s is not difficult to explain. Last year, too, Bihar was governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance coalition. But the chief minister was Nitish Kumar. This year, the chief minister is from the BJP. Last year, in the government advertisement, Shiva did not carry a trident.

This year, the trident has been placed firmly in his hand.

Once upon a time, the Shiva of Sawan was the bearer of the damru. He was Bhole Baba. He no longer seems permitted to remain so. Both Shiva and his devotees are being absorbed into the machinery of the state.

राजकीय श्रावणी मेला, 2026 के छठे दिन प्रातः 04:08 बजे मंदिर का पट खुलते ही जलार्पण शुरू हो गया। शिवभक्तों की गूंज से रूट लाईन गुंजायमान है और सभी कांवरिया कतारबद्ध हो बाबा का जयघोष करते हुए निरंतर आगे बढ़ रहे हैं।#ShravaniMela2026#babadhaam @JharkhandCMO @prdjharkhand pic.twitter.com/jZIloYVkLz

— DC Deoghar (@DCDeoghar) August 4, 2026

Traditional kanwariyas call themselves “bam”. Chanting “Bol Bam” and carrying water, they journey towards Baidyanath Dham. Some run the entire distance. Some roll upon the ground. Some walk slowly, resting every few miles.

Today, they have been transformed into religious tourists. The government waits upon them. The BJP hopes to make worldly gains from the spiritual labour that these pilgrims undertake.

Even so, Bihar still places Hindus at the centre of its narrative.

In Uttar Pradesh, however, the government's attention seems fixed less upon Hindus than upon Muslims. Meat shops are being shut down. Hotels along the pilgrimage routes receive warnings to only serve vegetarian food. The very people who describe a single hour of collective Friday prayers on a public road as being an unacceptable obstruction to traffic now close highways and roads altogether for ordinary citizens. The roads are reserved exclusively for kanwariyas

Sawan has been stolen. Shankar, the lord of the three worlds, has been nationalised. In the larger project of transforming Hinduism into Hindutva, the appropriation of Sawan is only one stage.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi in Delhi University.

Sami Ahmad is a journalist and a translator.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that persons who had taken part in the protests in July against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations were being harassed and goons were being sent to their homes.

Speaking at a press conference along with protesters from New Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, Gandhi said that nobody needs to “accept” their apology as they had not done anything wrong.

The leader of Opposition’s statements were purportedly in reference to a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, in which he said that he wanted to forgive the students who had allegedly made objectionable remarks about him.

“I understand the anger in our society,” Modi had said. “There is a cultural shock about our daughters using such language. This is the time to show them the right path. They are misguided.”

On Wednesday, Gandhi said that while the students who had participated in the protests were standing in front of the media, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the prime minister “do not have the courage to do so”.

We had a free and frank conversation with some of the young protesters. They spoke about how they were assaulted, beaten and threatened.

I am very proud of them and of what they, along with thousands of young Indians like them, have done. They have defended the Constitution.… pic.twitter.com/tytSOD9U1w

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 5, 2026

“It is not easy for them to come here,” said the Congress leader. “They are facing harassment, violence and torture. And I am impressed that they have the courage to speak so eloquently. I am extremely proud of what they have done.”

Among the persons present at the press conference alongside Gandhi was a 32-year-old woman who had been injured in her ear after pellet gun was fired at her on July 20. Another woman present had purportedly been struck by a police officer on her private parts.

Amit Shah responsible for violence: Gandhi

Gandhi further alleged that Shah was responsible for the violence against protesters who marched to Parliament on July 20.

“Either he did not know that this violence was being carried, in which case he is incompetent,” said Gandhi. “And if he ordered the violence against the students, then he is culpable.”

The police in the national capital and the central armed police forces report to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

भारत के भविष्य को देखिए - युवा, निडर, बेबाक, देशभक्त।

और प्रधानमंत्री-गृह मंत्री? न संसद आने का साहस, न जवाब देने की हिम्मत। pic.twitter.com/XkNq1XohW7

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 5, 2026

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

The protesters’ march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

Modi’s video message on Friday, the fifth in a week, came a day after a 15-year-old girl in Noida was booked for making purportedly objectionable remarks about him on social media during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar.

Singh later apologised for the remarks she had made about the prime minister.

Speaking about this on Wednesday, Gandhi said that “forcing a 15-year-old to apologise, and then accepting the apology, is complete nonsense”.

Reacting to FIRs being filed against several young protesters in recent days, Gandhi had said on Friday that Modi and Shah “cannot threaten” Gen Z into silence.

With the Monsoon Session ongoing, the Opposition parties have been demanding that Shah make a statement in Parliament about the use of force by security personnel against student protesters in Delhi on July 20.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• ‘We will kill, rape you’: Online mobs are targeting women protesters for ‘abusing’ Modi

• Modi is one of India’s most powerful prime ministers – so why is he so bothered by Gen Z profanity?

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that goons were being sent to the homes of young people who had taken part in the protests in July against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations. While the students had faced the media, Union Home Minister Amit Shah or Prime Minister Narendra Modi “do not have the courage to do so”, Gandhi said.

He was speaking at a press conference with protesters from New Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. They included a 32-year-old woman who had been injured after pellet guns were fired at her on July 20. Another woman present had purportedly been struck by a police officer on her private parts.

Gandhi alleged that Shah was responsible for the violence against protesters. “Either he did not know that this violence was being carried, in which case he is incompetent,” he said. “And if he ordered the violence against the students, then he is culpable.” Read on.

‘We will kill, rape you’: Online mobs are targeting women protesters for ‘abusing’ Modi, reports Ayush Tiwari

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has been directed by an Indian parliamentary panel to apologise within three days for Facebook’s action of temporarily removing a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Meta is the parent organisation of social media platform Facebook.

Nishikant Dubey, the head of the panel, said that if Zuckergberg’s fails to apologise, “we will revoke the ‘safe harbour’ protection currently provided to his social media platforms, a privilege that they have been misusing”.

Considering the allegedly abusive language, and violent and objectionable content that is shared on the platforms, “a flood” of first information reports will be filed against the Meta chief in the country, he said. Read on.

The authorities should seek to understand the concerns of young people who had been protesting against alleged irregularities in the conduct of exams, said the Supreme Court. “We need to tread carefully so that these youngsters do not indulge in violence,” said Chief Justice Surya Kant.

He added that the better option would be to “counsel and pacify them”. “Listen to them and understand why they are shouting,” Kant said.

The court was hearing a petition by retired Air Force officers seeking action against the organisers of the protests that spread across the country in July. The petitioners claimed that allowing protesters to march to Parliament despite permission being denied for it would set a dangerous precedent. Read on.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke said that the political campaign would operate as a pressure group for now. The decision was taken because “what India needs right now is a pressure group”, he added.

Dipke said that the protests held in Delhi against alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations showed the citizens’ dwindling trust in “the political system, the judiciary, the media or the Election Commission”. Read on.

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The Supreme Court has clarified that its interim order restricting the sharing of audio and video recordings of court proceedings does not prevent “recognised news organisations” from reporting on hearings, Bar and Bench reported on Wednesday.

In its July 24 interim order, the court prohibited the extraction, editing, dissemination, reposting, uploading or monetisation of audio and video recordings of judicial proceedings on social media and other digital platforms without permission from the court authority.

A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant has clarified that the restriction should not be “construed as imposing a blanket prohibition on the reporting of court proceedings” but applies only to the use of audio and video recordings of hearings.

The interim order came on a public interest litigation filed by a journalist who has sought guidelines to regulate the clipping, editing, dissemination and monetisation of audiovisual recordings of court proceedings on digital platforms, Live Law reported.

The petition argues that the selective and decontextualised circulation of courtroom exchanges undermines the dignity of the courts and erodes public confidence in the justice system.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday verbally observed that “heavens will not fall” if all six stanzas of Vande Mataram are sung in madrasas, Live Law reported.

The bench of Acting Chief Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen was hearing a public interest litigation challenging a May 19 West Bengal government notification mandating that the song be sung in all madrasas under the state’s Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education Department.

The newly-formed Bharatiya Janata Party government has directed government model madrasas, recognised government-aided madrasas and recognised unaided madrasas to sing all six stanzas of the patriotic song.

During the hearing, Chakraborty remarked: “Heavens will not fall...today if I am asked to utter a quote that is not in my religion...what will happen? I will become a person not belonging to that religion?”

The court also pointed to educational institutions run by other religious communities where students recite prayers, Live Law reported.

“There have been thousands of Christian schools where all students are asked to pray to the Lord,” the court said. “Then, do students belonging to a particular community ask why they are being asked to sing certain things which are in the Christian religion?”

The petitioner’s counsel argued that the national anthem “stands on a higher pedestal when compared to the national song” and therefore singing Vande Mataram could not be made mandatory.

The acting chief justice, however, questioned whether the government had taken any punitive measures to enforce the notification.

“Only if any punitive action is taken, can you contend that it was mandatory,” the court said. “Has anybody suffered yet?”

Additional Solicitor General Dhiraj Kumar Trivedi, representing the state government, sought time to file an affidavit explaining the government’s position. He argued that the petitioners could not seek an injunction based solely on apprehension.

Schools in West Bengal had traditionally sung only the national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, during assemblies. In recent years, the previous Trinamool Congress government had also introduced singing of Banglar Mati Banglar Jol, the state song.

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

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

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

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

On January 28, the Union home ministry directed that all six stanzas of the Vande Mataram be sung first when it is played together with the Jana Gana Mana.

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg must apologise within three days for Facebook temporarily removing a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ANI quoted the head of the parliamentary panel on information technology Nishikant Dubey as saying on Wednesday.

Meta is the parent organisation of social media platform Facebook.

“If he fails to do so, we will revoke the ‘safe harbour’ protection currently provided to his social media platforms, a privilege that they have been misusing,” the news agency quoted Dubey as saying.

He told reporters that the parliamentary standing committee had told the Union ministries of home affairs and information technology that removing Modi’s video “was not the responsibility of an intermediary but that of a publisher”.

“Therefore, Zuckerberg must apologise within three days,” Dubey added.

Considering the allegedly abusive language, and violent and objectionable content that is shared on the platforms, “a flood” of first information reports will get filed against the Meta chief in the country, he said.

The safe harbour provision under the Information Technology Act gives online intermediaries such as social media firms immunity from liability for content posted by a third party on their platforms, as long as they comply with the government’s directions. Removing the status would mean that the platforms would become liable for the content posted on them.

Modi’s video briefly removed

On July 23, the prime minister posted a late-night video on social media assuring strict action on cases of paper leaks in competitive examinations, amid nationwide youth protests over alleged irregularities in the process. On July 28, the video was briefly unavailable in India. Users saw a notice that access had been withheld following a legal request. It was restored later.

Dubey alleged that the video was inaccessible for five hours.

On July 28, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned Meta’s global head of public policy in connection with the matter. Secretary S Krishnan had told ANI at the time the firm contended that it happened because of a technical error, but said that the reasoning was not “acceptable in its entirety”.

Dubey has argued that temporarily removing Modi’s video reflected conduct by the platform beyond that of a neutral intermediary, the Hindustan Times reported.

The BJP MP’s comments came ahead of a meeting between a Meta team led by its Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan and information technology ministry officials on Wednesday.

The ministry said that the discussions will also cover the technology firm’s compliance with Indian laws, child sexual abuse material on its platforms, content generated using artificial intelligence and safeguards for verified accounts.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke said on Wednesday that the political campaign would operate as a pressure group for now, ANI reported.

Speaking to reporters in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, he said the decision was taken because “what India needs right now is a pressure group”.

Pressure groups are viewed as formal or informal organisations that seek to influence government policies and decisions without contesting elections. They can act as a bridge between citizens and the government.

Ahead of a meeting of the core members of the CJP, Dipke said on Wednesday that the protests held in Delhi against alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations showed the citizens’ dwindling trust in “the political system, the judiciary, the media or the Election Commission”.

In view of this, the CJP would hold discussions about the government’s Ethanol Blended Petrol programme and rising unemployment in the future, PTI quoted Dipke as saying.

“The support that our movement received was not limited to education,” he said. “That is why we believe that, to restore accountability and neutrality in these institutions, a public movement and public pressure are needed.”

Dipke added that the CJP’s call to action was successful because “people rose above their own ideologies and political party lines to come together against things that are weakening our democracy”.

He also said that activist Sonam Wangchuk would continue to mentor the members of the political campaign.

#WATCH | Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Maharashtra | On being asked if he will start a political party, Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Founder Abhijeet Dipke says, "Our movement was successful because people rose above their own ideologies and political party lines to come together… pic.twitter.com/xQqgNBjzKk

— ANI (@ANI) August 5, 2026

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the CJP staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

The protesters’ march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

The CJP had agreed to call off the protests after Pradhan’s resignation.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read: How Abhijeet Dipke created a broad-based idea of politics that put the BJP on the backfoot

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the authorities should seek to understand the concerns of youngsters who had been protesting against alleged irregularities in the conduct of exams, reported Bar and Bench.

“We need to tread carefully so that these youngsters do not indulge in violence,” said Chief Justice Surya Kant while hearing a petition by retired Air Force officers seeking action against the organisers of the protests that spread across the country in July.

Kant added: “The better course is to counsel them and pacify them. The most powerful tool is listening. Listen to them and understand why they are shouting.”

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

The protesters’ march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

In their petition, the retired officers said that action should be taken against the organisers of the protest for the violence on July 20. They claimed that allowing protesters to march to Parliament despite permission being denied for it would set a dangerous precedent, reported Bar and Bench.

“What if they had opened fire?” the officers’ counsel told the court. “They were not marching on a national highway. They were not marching on a railway line. They were marching towards the temple of democracy. Everyone must be held accountable.”

However, Kant said that the priority should be to facilitate peaceful protests.

“If some incident takes place, the police also need to exercise a great deal of restraint to ensure that the situation does not go out of hand,” Bar and Bench quoted the chief justice as saying.

He also added that decisions on dealing with such situations should be left to the law enforcement authorities.

On Monday, the Supreme Court said that states can withdraw first information reports filed against youth protesters wherever permissible.

The clarification came in response to concerns raised by petitioners that the court’s July 28 order, which allowed states to continue investigations into the FIRs, could hinder the withdrawal of cases.

In its July 28 order, the Supreme Court had directed that minors who had been detained should be released and no coercive action should be taken against protesting students as long as they did not have any “criminal antecedents”.

Closing the FIRs was part of the Union government’s promise to leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party to end the protests, the petitioners said on Monday.

In response, the bench clarified that the term “criminal antecedents” in the order referred only to “grave and heinous offences”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The toll in rain-related incidents in Kerala has risen to 25 in the past six days, The Hindu reported on Wednesday. Four persons were missing.

The state has been receiving heavy and incessant rainfall since Friday, triggering flash floods and landslides.

While rainfall had reduced, the state was expecting another spell of intense rain by the weekend because of a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal, the newspaper reported.

The India Meteorological Department has forecast heavy rainfall in parts of central Travancore region, including Ernakulam, Idukki and parts of Kottayam, and in the northern districts of Kozhikode, Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod, the newspaper reported.

The rest of the state is likely to receive above-normal rainfall, except Thiruvananthapuram and parts of Kollam.

The state has set up 418 relief camps to shelter more than 18,400 persons, The Hindu reported.

An ex-gratia payment of Rs 8 lakh will be made to the families of those who died, Chief Minister VD Satheesan on Monday. Compensation of Rs 12 lakh will be given to those who lost their homes and land due to landslides. Families will be provided Rs 6 lakh to reconstruct their homes.

He also announced that the state government will provide Rs 10,000 in funeral expenses to the families of those who died. Persons returning home from relief camps would receive Rs 10,000 as an immediate measure.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Engineers rarely become celebrities. Yet M Visvesvaraya (1861-1962) is a notable exception, a man whose career and achievements continue to be widely celebrated in India. He presided over the construction of some of colonial India’s most audacious development projects, such as the Krishnarajasagara dam and reservoir near Mysuru. He became an evangelist for industrialisation and set out a technocratic vision for an independent India.

That vision remains powerful today. Aparajith Ramnath, the author of Engineering a Nation and winner of the 2025 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, has provided Visvesvaraya with the comprehensive biography he has long deserved. In this episode of Past Imperfect, Ramnath details Visvesvaraya’s achievements but also offers some cautionary words about technocratic thinking.

Born in a small town in the erstwhile princely state of Mysore, Visvesvaraya went on to have multiple careers. In 1884, he joined the Bombay Public Works Department as a civil engineer, entering a profession where a solid glass ceiling remained intact for Indians. He nevertheless rose through the ranks with stunning speed. Leaving Bombay, he accepted the position of chief engineer of Mysore state and, in 1912, became the state’s diwan or prime minister. A consummate workaholic, Visvesvaraya pushed through projects like the KRS, started an ironworks, expanded infrastructure, initiated compulsory education, and transformed Mysore’s higher educational landscape.

Some of these projects were, according to Ramnath, unprecedented by global standards. The KRS dam and reservoir preceded the multipurpose dams of the Tennessee Valley Authority by two decades and set the template for the large dam projects of the Nehruvian era. Visvesvaraya deftly navigated engineering, bureaucratic, and political challenges. And he constructed these monuments to technological progress despite India’s very real technological limits: the KRS was largely constructed with manual and animal labour.

Visvesvaraya was a demanding boss, practicing a distinctly top-down form of administration and constantly coaxing Mysore bureaucrats to show more drive and initiative. Not everyone was happy with his leadership style. HV Cobb, the British resident of Mysore state, complained that Visvesvaraya “resents opposition as though he were a Napoleon”.

The most important contribution of Ramnath’s book is how it rounds out Visvesvaraya’s life story: telling us what he did after he resigned as diwan in 1918. He became a liberal statesman, taking a significant role in Indian politics in the 1920s and 1930s. In Ramnath’s opinion, Visvesvaraya the politician “deserves to be studied as seriously as Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Tilak or Bose”.

It was here that Visvesvaraya balanced his technocratic instincts, honed during his time in Bombay and Mysore, with democratic ones. In collaboration with liberal Congress members like Madan Mohan Malaviya and M. R. Jayakar, he attempted brokering a compromise between Mahatma Gandhi and the British government and, later, sketched out plans for achieving dominion status.

Most surprisingly, this former diwan became a spokesman for the state people’s movement, an alliance of reformers in Indian princely states which clamored for increased democratisation. Despite his continuing ties with Mysore and numerous other maharajas and diwans across the subcontinent, Visvesvaraya could be blisteringly critical of princely India. “There is no instance of any State in any part of the world which is ruled on the medieval principles that the Indian States at present are,” he told one gathering.

Yet Visvesvaraya the technocrat could regularly trump Visvesvaraya the democrat. He became an early advocate of economic planning, laying out in the 1930s ambitions to double national income in 10 years and shunt 20% of the agricultural workforce into factories.

His prescriptions for industrial development, as Ramnath tells us, “often appeared to flirt with militarism and authoritarianism,” providing precious little room for democratic inputs. “He was surprisingly unmindful of the evils bound up with the kinds of industrialism that prevailed in the countries he cited as role models,” Ramnath notes. At the same time, Visvesvaraya advocated some form of top-down cultural homogenisation in India and had little sympathy with campaigns for reservations launched by the non-Brahmin movement in south India.

These insights matter: Ramnath credits Visvesvaraya for helping popularise technocratic thinking in modern India. While his plans and prescriptions were made with eminently good faith and a fervid desire to release India from the grips of chronic poverty, the “lack of engagement with humanistic schools led to blind spots”. Such blind spots continue to bedevil many technocratically-oriented development projects today.

Visvesvaraya ultimately helps us tell a bigger global story: how engineers have shaped politics since the early twentieth century. While engineers like Herbert Hoover rose to leadership positions in places like the United States, an engineering mindset shaped development agendas in other countries such as the Soviet Union, Atatürk’s Turkey, and Nehru’s India. In China, meanwhile – as the technology writer Dan Wang argues in a new book, Breakneck – an engineer-dominated leadership cadre has even created an “engineering state.”

Ramnath’s earlier scholarship has demonstrated how India’s own tryst with global engineering has had deep roots. As the country continues to churn out over a million engineering graduates every year, his book on M Visvesvaraya allows us see India’s future as well as an important chapter in its recent past.

Dinyar Patel is an associate professor of history at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. His award-winning biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.

Past Imperfect is sponsored and produced by the Centre for Wisdom and Leadership at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.

Until new appointments are made, party leaders Vidya Chavan and Mahesh Tapase will serve as the official spokespersons, said the Sharad Pawar-led faction of the NCP in a social media post.

पक्षाचे प्रदेशाध्यक्ष तथा माजी मंत्री मा. श्री. शशिकांत शिंदे यांच्या मान्यतेने, आज दि. ४ ऑगस्ट २०२६ पासून यापूर्वी पक्षाच्या प्रवक्तापदासाठी करण्यात आलेल्या सर्व नियुक्त्या पुढील आदेश होईपर्यंत तत्काळ प्रभावाने रद्द करण्यात येत आहेत.

तसेच, या कालावधीत माजी आमदार मा. श्रीमती… pic.twitter.com/CLlH87a5pt

— Nationalist Congress Party - Sharadchandra Pawar (@NCPspeaks) August 4, 2026

The development came after Shashikant Shinde, the party’s Maharashtra unit chief, began a statewide tour to review the functioning and organisational structure of the NCP(SP), reported The Indian Express.

Shinde also appointed Sushil Borde as president of the student wing, Vishal Wakadkar as youth wing chief and Ram Rathod as head of the teachers’ cell.

Speculations about merger

The organisational overhaul follows media reports in July that some leaders in the Sharad Pawar-led party were in favour of a tie-up with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra.

The speculation intensified after leaders of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP faction, which is part of the state’s ruling coalition, and the NCP(SP) held a meeting at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ residence.

The Sharad Pawar-led NCP group is part of the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance that includes Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction and the Congress.

Earlier in June, Maharashtra Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar said talks were underway between the Congress and the NCP(SP) about a merger.

In 2023, the NCP split into two groups when Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, along with several party MLAs, joined Maharashtra’s Mahayuti coalition government comprising the BJP and the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar regarded cows only as animals and criticised the idea of worshipping them, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar acknowledged in a Pune court on Tuesday, Live Law reported.

VD Savarkar believed that to regard an animal as a deity “is an insult not merely to humanity but to the very concept of divinity”, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar said during his cross-examination before a special MP/MLA court in a criminal defamation trial against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

During the examination, Gandhi’s counsel brought a book titled Vigyan-Nishtha Nibandha or Essays based on Scientific Reasoning, Live Law reported. Satyaki Savarkar admitted that the book was written by his granduncle.

Satyaki Savarkar also acknowledged that the Hindutva leader had written that a cow was as useful to humankind as a dog, horse or donkey and, like those animals, should be protected rather than worshipped.

“The animal becomes a god, while a godlike human being is treated as an animal,” VD Savarkar had written. “What better example can there be of how, under the stamp of religion, sheer inconsistency, irrationality, and folly come to appear as wisdom, virtue, and sanctity, and how human reason itself is destroyed?”

Gandhi’s counsel further referred to a passage from the book in which VD Savarkar wrote that when a cow ceases to be useful and instead becomes harmful under certain circumstances, it would be necessary to slaughter it, Live Law reported.

In his book, VD Savarkar further argued that while a cow may be referred to as Gaumata or Mother Cow in a metaphorical sense, the expression should not be interpreted literally. He also criticised the practice of treating cow dung and cow urine as sacred substances and consuming them.

The case stems from a complaint filed by Satyaki Savarkar in April 2023 against Gandhi, accusing him of making false and malicious remarks about the Hindutva ideologue during an event in London in March 2023.

At a hearing of the case on July 1, Satyaki Savarkar had told the court that the Hindutva ideologue was released from prison because of political pressure and not due to the mercy petitions he wrote to the British colonial administration.

VD Savarkar was imprisoned at the Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar islands from 1911 to 1921. He was then transferred to the Ratnagiri jail in present-day Maharashtra, from where he was granted conditional release in 1924. From 1924 to 1937, Savarkar was confined to the Ratnagiri district and was barred from taking part in politics.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Read what VD Savarkar wrote: Care for cows, do not worship them

Maharashtra has banned the production and sale of analogue paneer for a year.

The order also bars restaurants, caterers and cloud kitchens from preparing, using and serving analogue paneer.

A gazette order issued by the commissioner of the state’s Food and Drug Administration on July 30 cited public health concerns to impose the ban.

Analogue paneer is a non-dairy or a partially synthetic substitute for paneer. It replaces milk fat and milk solids with cheaper vegetable oils, making the dairy products cheaper.

The food and drug authority cited a 2016 Supreme Court order as having directed the Centre and state governments to implement the 2006 Food Safety and Standards Act more effectively. The court directions have cast a continuing obligation upon the authority to take effective preventive measures against the adulteration of milk and dairy products, it said.

The gazette order said that the food and drug administration’s Central Advisory Committee set up in October had recorded that no quality parameters had been defined for analogue in the context of dairy. In absence of the standards, analogue paneer was “essentially a sub-standard product” that “only increases deliberate adulteration”, it added.

Analogue paneer provides “no nutritional benefits particularly to vegetarians who depend on paneer as a source of protein, and that the choice between analogue and genuine paneer cannot be left to the discretion of the consumer” given the low awareness levels about what it contains, the committee was quoted as having recorded.

The state food administration authority said that more than 35% of the paneer samples tested between April 2025 and March 2026 had failed quality checks because of vegetable fat adulteration. Laboratory tests showed that the sub-standard paneer contained non-fat milk or foreign fat not naturally present in dairy products.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

United States Congressman Riley Moore on Tuesday alleged that the Indian Parliament was trying to take control of churches and religious charities by amending the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. He warned that the passage of the draft legislation could hurt relations between Washington and New Delhi.

Registration under the Act is mandatory for a non-profit organisation to receive foreign funds.

“Christians have been in India since St Thomas the Apostle travelled to the Malabar Coast just decades after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Moore said on social media.

Despite this long history, India’s Parliament is considering amending the rules “to permit government takeovers of churches and religious charities”, he added.

“This is a clear attack against Christians,” said the Republican representative from West Virginia. “If this bill proceeds in this way, it would be a point of major concern in our bilateral relationship with India.”

The Ministry of External Affairs has not yet commented on the matter.

The bill was introduced in Parliament in March during the Budget Session but has not been cleared by either of the Houses.

The proposed changes

A key provision of the draft legislation allows the Centre to take control of a non-governmental organisation’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses or is cancelled.

Under the proposed framework, such funds and assets will provisionally vest in a government-appointed “designated authority”. If the organisation fails to regain registration, this control would become permanent. The authority would then be empowered to use, transfer or dispose of these assets for “public purposes”.

The provision applies to all institutions, not just churches. The proposed amendment specifies that the religious character of the place of worship would be preserved.

Opposition MPs have opposed the proposed law, describing it as “dangerous” and “draconian”. Civil society groups have also criticised the bill, saying that the changes would expand state control over NGOs.

Between 2016-’17 and 2021-’22, more than 6,600 NGOs lost their FCRA licences, the government had told Parliament in December 2022. In 2023, it informed Parliament that 13,520 registered non-profit organisations had received more than Rs 55,700 crore in foreign contributions between 2019-’20 and 2021-’22.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed social media platforms to take down artificial intelligence-generated deepfake videos linking Union minister Nitin Gadkari to a row about the government’s ethanol-blending programme, Live Law reported.

Justice Arif Doctor ordered that the posts be removed, finding that the material Gadkari had cited in his suit was “per se defamatory”.

On July 27, Justice Abhay Ahuja of the High Court had allowed the road transport and highways minister to file a civil suit against technology firms Meta, Google and X for allegedly defamatory content being shared on their platforms linking him to the ethanol-blending programme.

The Union government has mandated that all petrol sold in the country be blended with 20% ethanol – a substance produced from sugarcane and food grain. The policy is aimed at reducing India’s dependency on fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and boosting income for sugarcane farmers.

The initiative has been criticised by vehicle owners who have alleged that E20 fuel was reducing mileage and damaging cars.

Gadkari, in his petition before the High Court, said that the E20 programme was being administered by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and that he had no role in it.

He alleged that the social media content linking him to the programme consisted of “profane and abusive language” directed at him, which cannot be considered “legitimate political criticism or satire”.

The minister also claimed that the content unlawfully uses his personality and publicity rights without his consent.

Consumer concerns about E20 petrol

The AI-generated videos of Gadkari were posted amid criticism of the E20 policy.

An opinion poll by LocalCircles published on July 5 showed that 53% of the surveyed petrol vehicle owners said that they believe that the government’s handling of the E20 rollout was “disastrous” or “ineffective”.

Sixty-six percent of the respondents said that they were experiencing a more than 10% drop in mileage with E20. Forty-five percent of the surveyed users said that their cars had suffered a moderate to major increase in wear and tear, or needed repairs, according to the polling conducted in June.

A report in October, which analysed government and industry data, said that only about 20% of new petrol vehicles sold in India in the last 15 years were compliant with the E20 fuel blend.

Gadkari has been defending the ethanol blending policy, claiming on July 9 that no car in the country was facing problems because of E20 petrol.

He has also been quoted as having maintained that the policy had been framed collectively by several government departments and was not his decision alone. “The entire process is conducted after consultation with the petroleum ministry, the Cabinet and scientific research,” he had said.

He has claimed that while the average mileage of vehicles may have marginally reduced because of blending petrol with ethanol, the claims made online about damage to cars are “overblown” and part of a “false narrative”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government has informed the Supreme Court that it is deliberating on whether to hold the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) in a single stage or in a two-stage format similar to the Joint Entrance Examination for engineering courses, The Indian Express reported.

The government filed its affidavit on Monday in response to the petition seeking directions to prevent question paper leaks in NEET-UG exams for admission to medical courses.

The government also reiterated that the authorities are deliberating a shift from the existing pen-and-paper format to a computer-based examination, the newspaper reported.

On May 15, Dharmendra Pradhan, the education minister at the time, had announced that the NEET-UG exam will be computer-based from next year.

The government said that a final decision would be taken after the “high-powered task force” formed under the chairmanship of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani submits its recommendations.

The task force was constituted on July 26, a day after Pradhan’s resignation in the wake of youth protests across the country against alleged mismanagement in conducting competitive exams.

The Centre told the court that the National Testing Agency has shifted seven of its eight major entrance examinations to a computer-based, multi-session and multi-day format, The Indian Express quoted its affidavit as saying.

It noted that the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) is the only major examination still being conducted in the traditional pen-and-paper mode.

However, the Centre said that any changes to the structure of the exam would be made only after consultations with, and approval from, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Medical Commission, the newspaper reported.

The NEET-UG exam is conducted on behalf of the health ministry and is regulated by the National Medical Commission.

The matter has been posted for further hearing on Thursday.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Election Commission on Tuesday revised the schedule for the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Delhi and Maharashtra.

Under the revised schedule, the house-to-house verification exercise by Booth Level Officers will now continue till August 17, The Indian Express reported. Earlier, it was scheduled to end on Saturday.

The draft electoral roll will now be published on August 24, while the final list will be released on October 27.

Election Commission SIR first phase extended to 17 August. Now the last day of filling the Electoral Forms EF is 17 August ( instead of 8 August) in Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/N0x8RLBS33

— Kirit Somaiya (@KiritSomaiya) August 4, 2026

This is the second extension within a month by the poll panel for the exercise in Maharashtra and Delhi.

Earlier, the deadline for the house-to-house verification, which began on June 30, was extended by 10 days, from July 29 to August 8.

In Maharashtra, the extension was granted for the first time after the chief electoral officer sought additional time, citing heavy rainfall in the state.

Under the revised schedule announced on Tuesday, the claims and objections window will be open from August 24 to September 23, instead of the earlier dates of August 17 to September 16.

As per the revised timeline, poll officials will dispose of the claims and objections between August 24 and October 22.

Maharashtra and Delhi are among the 16 states where the voter roll revision is underway in the third phase of SIR.

On Friday, the Election Commission had extended the enumeration deadline for the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Telangana by a week to August 10. Earlier, the deadline for enumeration was August 3.

Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision process 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 clarified that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide whether an individual is an Indian citizen.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday quashed the detention order against a school bus driver who was held in Bengaluru after the police alleged that he was an undocumented Bangladeshi migrant, The Indian Express reported.

The order was passed after the Election Commission told the court that the voter identity card issued to Rafikul Biswas during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls was genuine and that his family had been living in India for generations, the newspaper reported.

Biswas was detained in August 2025. He had told Scroll at the time that he was from West Bengal’s Nadia district and had been living in Bengaluru for more than seven years with his wife and daughter. He had stated that the police were threatening to deport him to Bangladesh.

Days after he was detained, Biswas was hospitalised following a heart attack. He was released in December on medical grounds after another cardiac episode.

The 32-year-old had records showing that he is an Indian citizen by birth and was issued a fresh voter identity card in the special intensive revision of Bengal’s electoral rolls. Inquiries conducted by the police and the block development officer in Nadia in October had also found that Biswas is an Indian citizen.

On July 13, the High Court criticised the West Bengal government for requesting more time to examine the matter. After the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state following the Assembly elections in May, the new authorities wanted to review the document submitted before the court.

In May 2025, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs directed the states and Union Territories to verify the credentials of persons suspected to be undocumented migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Since the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April 2025, the police in several states, most of them ruled by the BJP, have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after the state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Meat has been removed from the menu of an Islamic religious event in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly in view of the ongoing Kanwar Yatra, The Indian Express reported.

The organisers said that the decision was taken based on a request by the district administration and the police.

The event is the 108th Urs-e-Razvi, a three-day annual commemoration of the death anniversary of the 19th-century Sufi scholar Imam Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi. Devotees from around the world are expected to attend.

The administration of Ala Hazrat Dargah – the shrine of Barelvi – has also rescheduled the event, which falls during the Hindu month of Sawan this year. It will now be held from August 6 to August 8 instead of August 7 to August 9.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees, called kanwariyas, walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples. The Kanwar Yatra began on July 30 and will end on August 11.

Media in-charge of the Ala Hazrat Dargah Nasir Qureshi said that the decision to “change the dates was taken keeping in mind the presence of large numbers of Kanwariyas in the city, as well as a request from the district administration and police”, The Indian Express reported.

He said that the Kul Sharif, or the final prayer ceremony of the event, had been shifted from August 9 as Kanwar processions were expected in Bareilly that day.

Bareilly Superintendent of Police Manush Pareek confirmed that the officials had requested the shrine to reschedule the Urs because of the expected movement of Kanwar pilgrims.

“We also asked the Dargah administration to instruct all langar committees and groups organising community meals for pilgrims to serve only vegetarian food this year,” The Indian Express quoted Pareek as saying. “Following our request, the Dargah chief agreed to both our demands.”

Meanwhile, schools, colleges and other educational institutions in western Uttar Pradesh districts, including Ghaziabad, Meerut, Baghpat and Muzaffarnagar, have been closed until August 12 because of the movement of Kanwar pilgrims, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

An Indian-flagged commercial ship came under attack on Tuesday in the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

Union Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said that all 14 seafarers, including 13 Indians, who were on board the vessel, MSV Faize Noore Oliya, have been rescued by the Yemeni Coast Guard. The minister said the country “strongly condemns this unprovoked attack on the defenceless mechanised sailing vessel”.

Sonowal said that the vessel was hit by a projectile near Yemeni waters, causing it to capsize and sink. It was not immediately clear who attacked the ship.

The Ministry of External Affairs said that the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh, which also covers matters related to Yemen, is closely monitoring the situation and proactively coordinating with the Yemeni authorities.

The ministry also said on Tuesday night that the “continuing incidents of attacks on commercial shipping in the region” were deeply worrisome.

“The targeting of commercial shipping in the region must end, and free and unimpeded navigation and commerce through the international waterways in the region, in keeping with international law, must be restored at the earliest,” the external affairs ministry said.

In recent weeks, several cargo vessels with Indians on board have been attacked in West Asia amid renewed tensions between the United States and Iran.

On Thursday, the Ministry of External Affairs told Parliament that 16 Indians, including 10 seafarers, had been killed during the conflict. Eight of the deaths were reported in Oman, four in the United Arab Emirates, two in Kuwait, and one each in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the government said.

The US and Iran had arrived at an interim agreement on June 15 to stop the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz for commercial vessels. They also held talks in Switzerland aimed at reaching a final peace deal within two months.

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, had effectively been blocked for most international commercial vessels since the conflict began, triggering a global energy crisis. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

On July 9, the US military launched fresh attacks on Iran hours after President Donald Trump said that the ceasefire was “over”. This came after Tehran’s alleged attacks on commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has been retaliating by striking sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Wednesday, August 5, marks two years since Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule ended in a student-led uprising that raised hopes of a new political beginning for Bangladesh.

The anniversary comes as Hasina is set to make her first public appearance since fleeing to India. She is scheduled to speak at an online event hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi, alongside her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, and cricketer Shakib Al Hasan.

The planned appearance has drawn a strong response from Dhaka.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam said Bangladesh had asked India to clarify its position, warning that allowing a “fugitive” to engage in political activities from Indian soil could affect the recent improvement in bilateral ties.

“India has to be clear about its stance,” she said, adding Dhaka would pursue the matter diplomatically if needed.

The issue is particularly sensitive because Bangladesh has been seeking Hasina’s extradition since she fled the country two years ago.

Last year, a tribunal sentenced her to death for crimes against humanity over the 2024 crackdown, which the United Nations estimated killed up to 1,400 people. Hasina has rejected the verdict as invalid and has repeatedly declared in recent weeks that she intends to return to Bangladesh in December.

For Dhaka, therefore, Hasina’s appearance in New Delhi is more than just another public event.

It also serves as a reminder of how much has changed – and how much has not – since the July Uprising. While many of the movement’s promises remain unfulfilled, tensions over India’s role in post-Hasina Bangladesh have only grown.

The fading of July’s other promises

The 2024 movement was never just about removing Sheikh Hasina. It also promised a discrimination-free, democratic Bangladesh with stronger institutions and a political culture free from the patronage and impunity that many associated with the Awami League’s years in power.

Two years on, many of those ambitions remain unrealised.

At the beginning of July, Nahid Islam, who later founded the National Citizen Party, marked the uprising’s anniversary at the graves of those killed in Rayerbazar by acknowledging that Bangladesh had yet to become the country the movement had envisioned and that justice for many of those killed remained elusive

The National Citizen Party’s own evolution reflects some of that disillusionment.

Formed by student leaders at the forefront of the uprising, the party entered an electoral alliance with the Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, ahead of February’s parliamentary polls. The decision triggered resignations within the National Citizen Party and fuelled criticism that the movement had increasingly come under Islamist influence.

Only a few days ago, Mahfuj Alam, a key leader of the student movement, alleged that the National Citizen Party had failed to meet public expectations after the July Uprising.

The movement’s broader reform agenda has also made only limited progress.

In February, when the country elected the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government under Tarique Rahman to power, it also approved a referendum endorsing the July Charter, which set out a roadmap for constitutional and institutional reform.

Six months later, however, many of those changes have yet to be implemented, while disagreements over their scope and pace continue to test the broad political consensus that emerged after the uprising.

Economist Anu Muhammad, who emerged as a prominent civilian voice during the July Uprising, argued in a recent column that much of the “enthusiasm, emotion and hope” generated by the 2024 movement had faded, blaming the resurgence of what he described as a fascistic style of politics.

Left-leaning organisations have similarly argued that the uprising’s promises of social justice and accountability remain largely unrealised. Many women who emerged as prominent faces of the movement have complained of being sidelined in post-uprising politics while continuing to face abuse and harassment both online and offline.

What has endured

One feature of the post-Hasina period, however, has proved far more enduring: distrust of India and its perceived role in sheltering Bangladesh’s ousted leader.

The border has remained a persistent source of tension. Rights group Ain o Salish Kendra recorded 34 Bangladeshis killed by India’s Border Security Force in 2025 and at least 10 more in the first half of 2026.

Dhaka has also accused the Border Security Force of “pushing” thousands of people – including Rohingya refugees, Myanmar nationals and Indian citizens – across the border since August 2024.

The issue dominated border guard talks in New Delhi in June, but ended without a breakthrough despite the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government’s election pledge to take a tougher stance on both border killings and push-ins.

Diplomatic ties have also remained uneasy. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s decision to visit Malaysia and China, rather than India, on his first overseas trip in June drew considerable attention in the Indian media.

Months later, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation for Rahman to visit India and attend the BRICS summit remains, in Dhaka’s words, “under review”, reflecting the cautious state of bilateral relations.

Even the gradual normalisation of people-to-people ties has been difficult. India resumed issuing tourist visas to Bangladeshis only on June 28, nearly two years after suspending the service following attacks on its diplomatic missions in the aftermath of Hasina’s fall.

However, within days, visa applicants and travel agencies began reporting widespread fraud in the online appointment system, claiming it had become nearly impossible for ordinary applicants to secure slots to submit their passports at Indian Visa Application Centres. The issue remains unresolved.

Hasina herself remains another source of friction. Since relocating to India, she has repeatedly made public remarks that Dhaka considers interference in Bangladesh’s internal affairs.

This week’s diplomatic protest over her scheduled appearance at the event in New Delhi is the clearest indication yet that Bangladesh sees India’s willingness to host her public engagements as a test of bilateral relations.

The controversy has been compounded by recent remarks from exiled writer Taslima Nasrin, who described the July Uprising as “disastrous”, argued that Hasina should be allowed to return to Bangladesh and called for the ban on Awami League activities to be lifted.

If the July Uprising created one lasting political consensus beyond the approval at the fall of Sheikh Hasina, it may well be that Bangladesh’s relationship with India now occupies a far more contested place in the country’s politics than it did before August 2024.

How New Delhi responds to that shift could shape bilateral ties for years to come.

Jannatul Naym Pieal is a Dhaka-based writer, researcher and journalist. His email address is jn.pieal@gmail.com.

Election strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor’s victory in the bye-election in Bihar’s Bankipur Assembly constituency on Monday came as a surprise to many, given that the Bharatiya Janata Party had held the seat for more than three decades. Kishor defeated the candidate from the Hindutva party by over 19,000 votes.

Less than nine months ago, during the Assembly polls, the candidate from Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party finished a distant third in Bankipur. Nitin Nabin had won this seat for a fifth consecutive time. The bye-election became necessary because Nabin, who is now the BJP’s national president, moved to the Rajya Sabha.

When the bye-election was announced, Kishor, whose decision to not contest the Assembly polls himself had been criticised by his supporters, was first to throw his hat in the ring.

On the campaign trail, Kishor trained his guns on the BJP, questioning its choice of chief minister and accusing it of betraying the mandate it had been given by Bihar’s voters. He pitched the contest in Bankipur as a “referendum” on the BJP’s decision to put party member Samrat Choudhary in the chief minister’s chair in April, easing out long-term ally, Nitish Kumar, of the Janata Dal (United).

The result on Monday is likely to provide a fillip to Kishor’s party, which had failed to make a mark in the Assembly elections. Political observers told Scroll that Kishor had benefited from the recent youth protests that began in Delhi but eventually reached Bihar too. They suggested that his party could even emerge as the BJP’s principal opponent in Bihar, replacing the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

लोकतंत्र के महापर्व में बांकीपुर विधानसभा उपचुनाव में जनता ने जनसुराज को चुना है।

मैं जनता के इस निर्णय का सम्मान करते हुए श्री प्रशांत किशोर जी को उनकी जीत पर हार्दिक बधाई देता हूँ।

— Samrat Choudhary (@samrat4bjp) August 3, 2026

Focused campaign

In November, even though the Jan Suraaj Party finished with a 3.3% vote share in the Assembly elections, it did not manage to win any seats. After the elections, Kishor came under fire because his repeated claims that Nitish Kumar’s political career was nearing its end did not seem to bear out: the Janata Dal (United) veteran took oath as chief minister for a record tenth time.

However, political space opened up for Kishor in April when Kumar suddenly stepped down and Bihar got its first chief minister from the BJP. The change of guard allowed Kishor to claim that he was right about Kumar’s political future all along.

Even before the BJP made Samrat Choudhary the chief minister, Kishor had been criticising him for his purportedly dubious educational qualifications and his alleged criminal background. After Choudhary was elevated to the post, Kishor’s attacks grew sharper.

Unlike in the Assembly elections, during the campaign for the Bankipur bye-poll, Kishor focused solely on the BJP. Neither the Janata Dal (United) nor the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the principal Opposition outfit in Bihar, featured in his messaging prominently.

Gen Z impact

The composition of the electorate in Bankipur appears to have helped him as well. The constituency is located in the heart of Patna and upper-caste groups such as Kayasthas and Banias make up a sizeable chunk of the voting population.

While these communities typically vote for the BJP, Kishor’s image as a “new” and “meritocratic” leader appealed to them, contended the political scientist Ashwani Kumar, who hails from Bihar and has authored a book titled Community Warriors: State, Peasants, and Caste Armies in Bihar.

“You can find a UPSC [Union Public Service Commission] candidate in every second or third house of Bankipur and retired ambassadors, bureaucrats live there,” Kumar said. “They used to associate the ideas of sushasan [good governance] and naya Bihar [new Bihar] with Nitish Kumar. Now they are seeing that possibility in Prashant Kishor.”

The political scientist surmised that the youth protests that also played out in Bihar had a part in Kishor’s victory.

The Jan Suraaj Party founder had come out in support of the protesters after July 20, when the Delhi Police had clamped down heavily on the Cockroach Janta Party’s march to Parliament. “The people of Bankipur will respond [to police brutality in Delhi] with their vote and tell the BJP that we are a democracy,” he had said then.

Pushpendra Kumar, a Patna-based social scientist and vice president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, brought up the youth protests as well.

“The Gen Z movement and police brutality against student protests created an environment,” he contended. “There was a feeling even among the core voters of the BJP that the party has become too arrogant and needs an occasional drubbing.”

Caste factor

Kumar also cited the controversial killing of Bharat Bhushan Tiwari, an upper-caste youth from Bihar’s Bhojpur, in a police encounter in June as one of the factors driving discontent in BJP’s upper-caste support base. Kishor had visited Tiwari’s village and blamed senior officials in the state government for the killing.

Throughout his campaign, he directly addressed upper-caste voters, asking them not to cast their ballots as if they were the BJP’s “bonded labourers”.

He also accused the Hindutva party of “insulting” Hinduism for the manner in which it invoked Hindu gods in its political rallies.

At a public meeting in July, Kishor made a reference to a BJP event in Lucknow. “They made Lord Hanuman dance in their roadshow with a BJP flag in his hand,” he said. “They have become so arrogant that they were sitting on a chariot while Lord Hanuman was dancing.”

नितिन नबीन के रोड शो में पहुंचा बाल हनुमान

◆ हनुमान की वेशभूषा में एक कलाकार के पहुंचने और शानदार डांस करने का वीडियो सोशल मीडिया पर वायरल#NitinNabin | Nitin Nabin | Hanuman pic.twitter.com/och6dUw1FK

— News24 (@news24tvchannel) July 6, 2026

For its part, the BJP bungled the campaign by first nominating a candidate who backed out of the contest and later picking 32-year-old political lightweight Neeraj Kumar, who was seen as no match for Kishor.

The Jan Suraaj Party founder framed the BJP’s decision to field a relatively unknown from the seat as proof of its purported arrogance and overconfidence about winning.

On Monday, Kishor once again took a swipe at the Hindutva party while speaking about his performance. “The people of Bankipur have delivered a message to the leadership of the BJP: make a good man the chief minister of Bihar instead of Samrat Choudhary,” he told reporters in Patna.

Bihar’s Vijay?

Ashwani Kumar, the political scientist, argued that the victory in the bye-election would further establish Kishor as a key Opposition figure in the state’s politics. In fact, he went so far as to compare him to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay.

“He, too, enjoys celebrity status and people recognise his name all over Bihar,” Kumar said. “He is talked about in almost every home of the state. People know that he used to work with Modi.”

He pointed out that though the Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav was younger than Kishor, he did not have the same appeal among voters because of the decades-old accusations of Yadav domination against his party.

Pushpendra Kumar, the social scientist, also held that the Rashtriya Janata Dal would be “the net loser in the long run”. However, he was wary of reading too much into the bye-election verdict.

“Prashant Kishor and his party have got a fresh lease of life,” he said. “But the next election is far away.”

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Udhayanidhi Stalin was released from police custody, hours after his arrest on Tuesday, ANI reported.

Stalin had been arrested earlier in the day for his purportedly derogatory remarks about Chief Minister Vijay and actor Trisha Krishnan. The leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly had made the alleged remarks at a protest rally in Thanjavur on Monday.

The first information report against him was filed by a functionary of actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. The complaint alleged that Stalin’s remarks were an indecent double entendre.

Stalin then moved the Madras High Court seeking anticipatory bail. The court directed the Tamil Nadu Police to release him, reported Live Law.

During the hearing, the Tamil Nadu government told Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan that the state does not intend to keep him in custody, reported Bar and Bench. The government’s counsel said that Stalin would be questioned and released on bail.

Taking this into account, the court directed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader to cooperate with the investigation.

The FIR against Stalin was filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, provocation with the intent to cause a riot, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, words intended to insult the modesty of a woman, uttering obscene words in or near public places, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation.

The former deputy chief minister was also booked under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act and the Information Technology Act.

Stalin’s alleged remarks

The alleged remarks were made at protest on Monday about the Cauvery water dispute.

“Not even a drop of Cauvery water has been received,” Stalin said in a video widely shared on social media. “But has the chief minister opened his mouth about it? No. He is only concerned with filing false cases against the DMK.”

As he criticised Vijay, Stalin’s speech was interrupted by supporters shouting “Trisha, Trisha”. Krishnan is Vijay’s former co-star.

As the supporters continued shouting the slogans, Stalin allegedly made a remark that was seen by many social media users as an innuendo about Krishnan.

The TVK and the Bharatiya Janata Party described the remarks it as obscene. Stalin was also criticised by social media users. The TVK, apart from filing a complaint with the police, also approached the National Commission for Women.

However, the DMK denied the allegations, saying that no reference was made to Krishnan.

As he was being taken away by the police, Stalin told India Today: “You decide, you heard the speech. Did I say something wrong? Did I take anybody’s name except the chief minister?”

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Ten passengers and four crew members on board an Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi were injured after the aircraft experienced sudden loss of altitude, the Hindustan Times reported.

An unidentified official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said that the pilot reported “sudden loss” of approximately 300 feet of altitude, PTI reported.

One cabin crew member was severely injured, the official added.

The aviation regulator will conduct an investigation into the incident, the news agency quoted the official as saying.

The plane, an Airbus A320 aircraft, took off from Phuket at 8.25 am and landed in Delhi at 11 am.

#WATCH | Delhi: Several passengers injured after Air India flight encounters severe air turbulence while travelling from Phuket to Delhi pic.twitter.com/OM1lXKRKcm

— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2026

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The All India Institute for Medical Sciences informed the Supreme Court that jailed religious leader Asumal Harpalani, also known as Asaram Bapu, does not need to be hospitalised for treatment of his illnesses, Live Law reported.

However, the institute said that the 85-year-old convict needs round-the-clock assistance by trained caregivers.

The matter will be heard further on Thursday.

The report was filed after the court on July 17 asked the Rajasthan government to examine Asaram’s health reports to determine whether his condition warrants his release on interim bail on medical grounds. The directive had come after the religious leader’s counsel informed the court that he had developed “acute internal bleeding”.

On June 30, the Supreme Court rejected Asaram’s bail plea, saying that it would consider granting it only if there was a grave medical necessity, “such as danger to life”.

The court was hearing the religious leader’s plea challenging the Rajasthan High Court’s decision to uphold his conviction for raping a minor in 2013. He has also sought interim bail while his appeal remains pending.

In April 2018, a sessions court in Jodhpur sentenced Asaram to life imprisonment for raping the minor at his ashram in 2013. He had been convicted under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.

In May this year, the High Court acquitted Asaram on charges related to gangrape. However, it upheld his conviction for rape.

While rejecting Asaram’s petition to set aside the life sentence, the High Court bench had held that the charges of rape under the Indian Penal Code, sexual assault under the Pocso Act and offences under the Juvenile Justice Act had been proved.

In January 2023, a sessions court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar also sentenced Asaram to life imprisonment in a separate case about raping a 16-year-old girl several times at his ashram between 2001 and 2006.

High Court grants 20-day parole

The Rajasthan High Court on Monday approved Asaram’s request for a 20-day parole on account of his age and for having spent over 13 years in jail, The Indian Express reported.

The bench criticised a committee headed by the Jodhpur district collector for rejecting the parole request, the newspaper reported.

The counsel for the state government had placed before the court the minutes of the meeting held by the district collector on Friday. It showed that the panel had rejected the parole request based on concerns expressed by the police that Asaram “may abscond”, Dainik Bhaskar reported.

The minutes also showed the committee as having held Asaram ineligible for parole as per the prison rules as a case was pending against him outside Rajasthan and that he had been convicted by a court in another state.

The panel also said that Asaram was undergoing treatment and that the medical officer had not issued a certificate deeming hi fit for parole. It also pointed to apprehensions “of serious danger to the family of the complainant” if Asaram is out of prison, The Indian Express reported.

However, the High Court said that the arguments were “misleading and figment of the imagination, without any basis” as Asaram had not violated his bail conditions when he had been released earlier.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Madras High Court asked the Tamil Nadu Police to release Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Udhayanidhi Stalin. He had been arrested earlier in the day for purportedly derogatory remarks about Chief Minister Vijay and actor Trisha Krishnan.

The leader of the Opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly had made the alleged remarks at a protest rally in Thanjavur a day prior. The first information report against him was filed by a worker of actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam. The complaint alleged that Stalin’s remarks were an indecent double entendre. Read on.

Fourteen persons on board an Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi were injured after the aircraft experienced sudden loss of altitude of approximately 300 feet. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation will conduct an investigation into the incident, an official said.

One crew member was reportedly severely injured. Read on.

The All India Institute for Medical Sciences told the Supreme Court that jailed religious leader Asumal Harpalani, also known as Asaram Bapu, does not need to be hospitalised for treatment. However, the institute said that the 85-year-old convict needs round-the-clock assistance by trained caregivers.

The report was filed after the court on July 17 asked the Rajasthan government to examine Asaram’s health reports to determine whether his condition warrants his release on interim bail on medical grounds. The directive had come after the religious leader’s counsel informed the court that he had developed “acute internal bleeding”.

On June 30, the Supreme Court rejected Asaram’s bail plea, saying that it would consider granting it only if there was a grave medical necessity, “such as danger to life”. Read on.

The Indian government has brought back 274 fugitives from 36 countries since 2019, stated the Ministry of Home Affairs. Among them, 62 criminals were wanted for murder, robbery or other violent crimes, and 53 for sexual offences, including those booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.

While nine of the fugitives were brought back in 2019, only seven were repatriated in 2020. In 2021, 23 fugitives were brough back and the number increased to 40 in 2022. Thirty-seven of the fugitives were repatriated in 2023, 43 in 2024, 70 in 2025 and 45 so far in 2026, said the ministry. Read on.

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In South Mumbai’s Mandvi Koliwada sits a terracotta-colored building bearing the name Janabai and Madhavrao Rokade Municipal School.

As is the case with public buildings in many Indian cities, the names of the personalities that adorn them are often unfamiliar. Some of them are linked to relatively recent politicians and cultural figures. A few of them have a deeper historical connection. The Rokade municipal school falls in the second category.

The school was established in 1879, making it one of Mumbai’s earliest modern schools. It was started by Madhavrao Rokade.

For anyone interested in Mumbai’s socio-political history from this period, Madhavrao Rokade is remembered as a key member and writer associated with the Satyashodhak movement. This was a movement started by Jotirao and Savitribai Phule in Pune in 1873 to confront the upper-caste dominance in everyday life and to work toward inculcating a sense of collective consciousness among Bahujan communities, especially through education.

Rokade contributed to this movement by starting and running this school for many years with limited support. He was also known for his periodic writings in the late 19th century in newspapers such as Dinbandhu (Brother of the Oppressed) and Shetkaryacha Kaivari (Protector of Farmers).

Along with his role in education, Rokade had garnered immense respect for his engagement with workers’ problems at the Bombay Mill Hands Association and for his role as a mediator in pacifying communal tensions during the Bombay riots in 1893.

But who was Janabai?

Most of the scholarly works on social reform movements in colonial India are marked by copious profiles of men and their contributions. Due to a severe paucity of vernacular archives about lesser-known Marathi women writers and reformers and the haphazard cataloguing of the others, coupled with limited vernacular language skills among scholars to explore the social milieu, our understanding of social reform in colonial India remains limited.

Women, especially if they had Bahujan backgrounds, tend to get only a cursory mention as the wives, sisters or daughters of male reformers.

In this story, too, we know that Janabai Rokade was the daughter of Madhavrao. However, Janabai’s story is not entirely lost to obscurity, thanks to a Marathi biography written of her by Krishnarao Arjun Keluskar in 1929.

Keluskar was one of the most prolific Marathi writers in this period, who was known for his penchant for writing biographies. He wrote popular biographies of historical characters such as the Buddha, the medieval bhakti saint Tukaram, and the Maratha warrior Chhatrapati Shivaji.

Remarkably, for someone who also had an abiding scholarly interest in global topics ranging from ancient Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and Epictetus to the modern political history of France, Keluskar chose to write a biography on a Marathi-speaking Bahujan woman from Mumbai.

At a time when there were innumerable logistical and financial hurdles involved in documenting the social works of figures, a short biography like this one provides valuable insights on less-privileged women in colonial India.

As a family friend of the Rokades, Keluskar eulogised Madhavrao’s social work. At the same time, he had also been privy to how Janabai had steadily managed to amplify her own public presence. Instead of treating her as merely a supporter of the movement, Keluskar’s biography explores her individual contributions, spanning from educational achievements to public service.

In this account, Janabai emerges as one of the most respected public figures in colonial Bombay.

Janabai was born in 1888 in Mandvi Koliwada. A plaque in the school says the building was constructed on the site of the tomb of a spiritual leader named Raghunath Maharaj.

Madhavrao passed away in 1896 when Janabai was merely eight so she was raised by her uncle, Dharmajirao.

Devastated by the loss of her father, Janabai was only able to study to the fourth standard. In the time between her abrupt end to education and her marriage at the age of 14, she taught school children.

Unfortunately for Janabai, her misery continued as her marriage was a disaster. Seeing that her husband was a spendthrift who wasted his ancestral holdings, Dharmajirao called Janabai back home. As he was aware of Janabai’s intellect and her predilection for social service, Dharmjirao realised that she was destined to play a role beyond her current school teaching.

Dharmajirao helped Janabai join Mumbai’s Cama Hospital, which is still reputed for its care of women and children. Janabai’s nursing and midwife skills blossomed here. She performed these roles for women from all strata of society, including for British expectant mothers and women from royal families such as the Queen of Bhuj.

Because Janabai could speak Urdu and Gujarati in addition to Marathi, she was a coveted nurse and midwife beyond her immediate social circle. Soon, she started working independently and became one known as of Mumbai’s most efficient midwives.

Janabai’s public stature helped her uncle Dharmajirao raise funds to run the school. She contacted organisations such as the Wadia Trust to help her with the school as more children moved to the low-cost housing chawls in Mandvi built by the government-run Bombay Improvement Trust.

SM Edwardes, the city’s police commissioner, encouraged the Wadia Trust to increase their annual contribution to the school from Rs 50 to Rs 100. Janabai continued supporting this school even after Dharmjirao died in 1918.

Mindful of the support she had received from Dharmajirao and his family in her early life, Janabai had a profound desire to pay back her debt by running this school, Keluskar said.

For close to 15 years, Dharmajirao had run the school free of cost. This was a time when only a few schools in Mumbai catered to poor students. Understandably, the more pragmatic emphasis was on industrial education.

In a little while, Janabai ventured into other domains. She opened the Ahilyabai Maternity Hospital for poor women, named after Dharmajirao’s daughter. To honor Dharmajirao’s social service, she opened a free reading room in his memory.

Along with her pioneering role in the education sector and providing maternity care for poor women, Janabai also participated in influential social and cultural organisations. She was invited to be a member of the Maratha Aikechyu Sabha, became a partner of the Maratha Provident Fund and accepted the role of the president of the Student’s Brotherhood in Pune.

The Maratha Aikeychu Sabha worked towards spreading awareness about education and inculcating a feeling of brotherhood among people from different caste communities. Established in 1887, it supported students with scholarships.

The Maratha Provident Fund, established in 1894, sought to spread awareness among poor Marathi people about the importance of saving a percentage of their monthly income. Both these organizations had a capacious definition of the word “Maratha”, which was meant to include all non-Brahmin communities.

The Students’ Brotherhood, established in 1911, worked toward helping students in need of financial support by buying books and organising lecture series.

She also engaged in public service alongside the editor of Jagruti.

Jagruti was an important Satyashodhak newspaper that wrote about widow remarriage, education, untouchability and the problems of farmers and workers. It was first published between 1917 and ran until 1949.Even though these organisations were male-dominated, Janabai’s indefatigable persona compelled them to solicit her membership.

For her contributions to the field of education and public service, she was awarded the bronze badge of the Kaisar-i-Hind medal, which was awarded by the British emperor for distinguished service in the advancement of public service in India. Janabai was most probably the first Bahujan woman to receive this award.

Surajkumar Thube is a visiting professor at the political science department at Ashoka University.

The Indian government has brought back 274 fugitives from 36 countries since 2019, stated the Ministry of Home Affairs on Tuesday.

Among them, 62 criminals were wanted for murder, robbery or other violent crimes, and 53 for sexual offences, including those booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, the ministry added.

It stated that 17 of the fugitives were booked for terrorist or anti-national activities, and 16 for offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, which bans the production, possession, use and sale of illegal drugs.

Nine of the fugitives brought back were accused of financial crimes, said the home ministry.

While nine of the fugitives were brought back in 2019, only seven were repatriated in 2020. In 2021, the Indian government brought back 23 fugitives and the number increased to 40 in 2022.

Thirty-seven of the fugitives were repatriated in 2023, 43 in 2024, 70 in 2025 and 45 so far in 2026, said the ministry.

It added that in the last three years, Red Corner notices have been issued against 401 fugitives.

A Red Corner notice is a worldwide alert sent by Interpol to help find and temporarily hold a person who has run away to another country. It asks the police in 195 member countries to look for the fugitive.

Of the total, 115 of such notices were issued against persons accused of financial crimes and 90 for those against whom cases of murder, robbery or other violent crimes have been registered.

The home ministry said that 107 notices were issued in 2024, 112 in 2025 and 182 so far in 2026.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Chhattisgarh High Court has observed that allegations of tampering with the answer sheet of a candidate of the 2026 National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test cannot be accepted solely on the basis of suspicion, conjecture or subjective belief in the absence of evidence, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

A bench led by Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha dismissed the candidate’s petition, holding that judicial interference in the evaluation process based only on a person’s apprehensions would undermine the certainty, sanctity and finality of the examination system.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a candidate who appeared in the undergraduate NEET re-examination held on June 21 after the original test was cancelled following alleged paper leaks. The results of the re-examination were declared on July 16.

Subsequently, some candidates alleged that the optical mark recognition answer sheets uploaded against their roll numbers did not belong to them, had been interchanged or showed fewer attempted answers than they had marked.

Optical mark recognition is a system that reads answers marked by candidates by detecting filled bubbles or marks on an answer sheet.

The National Testing Agency, which conducts the exam, had said at the time that it examined each representation individually and found that its official records were consistent in every case it had reviewed.

It had also said that genuine answer sheets held by the agency carried the correct roll number, booklet number, barcode, candidate details, signatures, thumb impression and invigilators’ signatures, and that the declared scores matched the official answer key and evaluation records.

In his petition, the candidate claimed that after downloading the scanned OMR sheet uploaded by the agency, he found that while the booklet number, roll number and signatures matched his own, several answers shown on the scanned sheet were different from those he had marked during the examination, The Indian Express reported.

He argued that the scanned OMR sheet contained ink marks extending beyond the answer bubbles, which was inconsistent with the manner in which he ordinarily filled answer sheets. He further submitted that after noticing the discrepancies, he emailed the authorities requesting that the original OMR sheet be made available for verification. However, despite these requests, the original answer sheet was not supplied.

The petitioner contended that the discrepancies indicated that his answer sheet had been altered, resulting in a score of 200 instead of the more than 600 marks he said he had expected.

However, the court observed that the allegations rested solely on the petitioner’s comparison of the question booklet with the scanned OMR sheet and a self-prepared comparison chart.

“Apart from such assertions and apprehensions, no independent, credible or cogent material has been produced to establish that the scanned OMR sheet differs from the original OMR sheet submitted during the examination or that any manipulation has been committed by the respondent authorities,” the newspaper quoted the court as saying.

“The petitioner has failed to establish any arbitrariness, illegality, mala fides or procedural irregularity on the part of the respondent authorities in the evaluation of his [2026 undergraduate NEET] examination,” the bench added.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

On July 7, Narendra Modi stood beside Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in Jakarta and declared that India supports “a two-state solution and the pursuit of lasting peace” in Palestine. Modi was repeating a line that Indian prime ministers have recited for decades. It is a comfortable formulation that costs New Delhi nothing and offends no one.

A week later, Indian officials at the Palestine Donor Group meetings in Brussels reiterated the commitment, welcoming diplomatic avenues towards Palestinian statehood and UN membership.

But this language now describes a country that no longer exists in any coherent, contiguous form, and every week that passes widens the gap between rhetoric and reality.

On July 14, just a week after Modi’s Jakarta remarks, Israel’s security cabinet approved a budget of $434 million to establish 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. This is the latest move in a wider settlement project, the scale of which makes the two-state framework difficult to sustain in its classical sense.

Israel’s settler expansion has drawn criticism abroad, but the same chasm between word and deed is visible closer to home. India has kept up its rhetorical support for Palestinian statehood even as it deepens its own ties with Israel.

New Delhi voted in favour of last September’s UN General Assembly resolution endorsing a two-state solution. Yet, in the preceding two years, it abstained repeatedly on resolutions calling for a Gaza ceasefire, a halt on arms’ sales to Israel and an end to the occupation within a fixed timeframe, citing its long-standing preference for dialogue over condemnation.

At the same time, India’s defence relationship with Israel has only strengthened.

Israel’s settler project

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oversaw the decision to establish 34 new settlements in the West Bank, said the move was “killing the idea of establishing a terrorist state in the heart of the country” while strengthening Israel’s hold on “the homeland in Judea and Samaria”, his preferred biblical name for the West Bank. Under Smotrich’s four-year tenure as finance minister, the tally of new settlements now stands at 103.

Around 700,000 Israeli settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the settlements form a dense grid of towns, military zones and connecting highways that has carved Palestinian population centres into disconnected islands.

Under the 1995 Oslo II Accord, the West Bank was divided into Areas A and B, with a Palestinian population, and Area C, under Israel.

Area C, over which Israel retains full civil and military control, makes up roughly 60% of the West Bank and contains the agricultural land, water resources and transport corridors that any functioning Palestinian state would need.

The long-frozen E1 corridor near the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, which successive Israeli governments have moved to advance in recent years, shows what this control means. Building the corridor would sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, splitting Palestinian territory into two disconnected halves rather than one contiguous whole.

The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion of July 2024 found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and called for it to end as rapidly as possible, a finding the UN General Assembly subsequently endorsed. But the legal argument matters less with each passing year against the physical fact of concrete on the ground.

Domestic politics

Israeli politics has shifted in ways that make a negotiated withdrawal increasingly implausible too. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition depends on parties that reject Palestinian sovereignty as a matter of ideology rather than tactics, and settler violence against Palestinians and their property has risen in recent months, often with limited consequence for the perpetrators.

Smotrich leads the Religious Zionism party, whose base is concentrated in the settler movement. He faces a legislative election in October in which his political survival may depend on demonstrating territorial entrenchment.

Polling on both sides shows collapsing faith in the two-state idea itself. Palestinians have watched 30 years of negotiations produce more settlements. Israelis, after the trauma of recent years, have moved towards viewing any Palestinian polity as an unacceptable security risk. Neither public wants the compromise their leaders once signed up to under the Oslo Accords.

That rejection has found its most extreme expression in Gaza, where Israel’s campaign has produced devastation, civilian deaths, and the destruction of housing, hospitals and infrastructure at a scale that amounts to genocide, as documented by UN experts and leading human rights organisations.

A two-state solution requires two things above all: a Palestinian population with the security and institutional capacity to govern itself, and a level of trust sufficient to sustain a negotiated peace. Genocide destroys both, and it removes the conditions under which Palestinian statehood could plausibly be built.

What has emerged instead is a single territorial reality stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, governed by one state that exercises full rights over one population and military or administrative control over another. Describing this arrangement honestly means calling it apartheid.

Alive only in rhetoric

In September 2025, as the war on Gaza continued, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Australia, four of Israel’s closest Western partners, formally recognised Palestinian statehood. They broke with decades of policy specifically to preserve the two-state option.

That even allies unwilling to abandon Israel outright would take this step, rather than simply repeat the formula as Modi did, reflects how directly settlement expansion now contradicts the two-state outcome the international community continues to invoke.

When Modi and other world leaders repeat their support for this outcome, without acknowledging that its territorial basis has been dismantled, they offer a comforting fiction in place of a difficult truth, a fiction that lets governments avoid harder questions: accountability for war crimes, compensation for destroyed land and livelihoods, the withdrawal of settlement infrastructure, and a serious reckoning with what equal rights would look like for everyone living in this single territory.

It is possible that many, including India, genuinely believe restating the two-state principle keeps it alive as a diplomatic anchor. It can even be argued that abandoning the two-state language altogether would remove even the modest international pressure that still exists on Israel to limit settlement expansion. But an anchor only works if there is still a ship attached to it.

India and other governments that value their moral standing on this question would serve Palestinians better by shifting the conversation towards the one territorial reality that now exists, and what justice, security and self-determination for both peoples could mean within it, rather than continuing to defend a geography that no longer holds together on the map.

Vishal R Choradiya is an assistant professor with the Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru.

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has prohibited five manufacturers from selling popular rum and whisky drinks for not complying with regulations, said the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Monday.

The manufacturers had been using added flavours rather than relying on the maturation of base materials such as molasses or malt to develop the products’ taste and aroma, the ministry added.

It said that based on the appeal by two manufacturers, “conditional revocation has been issued”.

“For the existing stock in hand, they have been allowed to sell the product by revealing the true nature of the product on the front of the pack, whereas for future production a clear direction has been passed as to not add identical flavour in the product, such as rum flavour or whisky flavour,” said the ministry.

It pointed out that such products are not only sub-standard, “but are also misrepresented by using the names of standard categories”. “At best, they can be identified as rum-flavoured spirit or whisky-flavoured spirit, etc,” it said.

The ministry noted that the packaging of the products had failed to disclose their true nature, which was in violation of the Food Safety and Standards rules pertaining to labelling.

Among the manufacturers against which the action was taken are Mohan Rocky Springwater and United Spirits in Maharashtra. The other three are Inbrew Beverages, Associated Alcohols & Breweries, and United Spirits in Madhya Pradesh.

They have been prohibited from selling variants of rum and whiskey.

Additionally, notices have been issued to six manufacturers in Maharashtra, said the health ministry.

‘Addition of flavours not justified’

In a press release, the ministry said that the characteristic aroma, flavour and taste of alcoholic beverages are derived from the fermentation of base materials – such as molasses for rum or malt for whisky – along with yeast activity, distillation and the maturation process.

Taking the example of Old Monk Rum, it said that when the products by the manufacturers against whom action has been taken were tested in a lab, they were found to be substandard.

This was because “the addition of artificial flavours is masking its natural flavour”, the ministry said, adding that the failure to describe the product as “flavoured rum” or “rum-flavoured spirit” was misleading and deceptive.

It added that while the use of natural or nature-identical flavouring substances is permitted under the regulations, this applies to flavours such as coffee or vanilla.

“The present matter, however, concerns the practice adopted by certain manufacturers of adding the flavour of the standardised alcoholic beverage itself,” the ministry pointed out.

The addition of rum flavour to rum or whisky flavour to whisky is not supported by any legitimate technological justification, as required under the regulatory framework governing food additives, it added.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: India’s food regulator flagged over 160 misleading claims. Years later, 120 are still around

On a chilly morning in December 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu stepped onto the balcony of the Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest to deliver a speech. The crowd was full with people holding up carrying massive pictures of the version of him, and of his wife Elena.

Ceaușescu was very particular about how he looked on photographs – a team made sure wrinkles were removed and any photo looked perfectly staged. The widely circulated large posters of him had him in his 40s, people in Romania marveled at how his official posters refused to age. Like an unfortunate analogy for South Indian movie stardom, the crowd waving posters of the yesteryear blockbuster, facing an arthritic live version.

At first, the event seemed to be going alright. There were the usual celebratory chants, revolutionary slogans being waved on large red banners, the perfected dictatorship-style choreographed clapping lining the speech. Then something unexpected happened. Someone booed, then another person booed, and another. Within seconds the entire crowd burst into aggressive heckling.

The leader, so used to complete obedience and speeches peppered with the chant “Ceaușescu și poporul” (Ceaușescu and the people) was suddenly caught on camera with an expression his pre-Photoshop airbrushed images hadn’t prepared people for. He looked stunned and helpless, repeatedly asking the crowd to calm down.

His wife, similarly used to her de facto role as the second in command, had no luck trying to get people to quiet down. A row of cronies standing alongside on the balcony seemed likewise shocked, as a feared leader seemed to suddenly fail to instill dread in the people.

The national broadcaster’s television cameras covering the speech quickly turned the lens away from the jeering crowds and up towards the sky.

Ceaușescu had wielded near-complete power over the state and its institutions. The majority of the country’s population had known no leader other than him. There were massive banners and large cutouts of him in city squares, even photos in schools and factories. There were regular television missives from him, typically with him facing the camera directly, often taking only pre-selected questions.

He never did direct, unscripted engagements with journalists. All mainstream media was carefully managed, information that the people got from the government were presented as coming from Comrade Ceaușescu – factories existed because of him, agricultural successes came from his guidance, technological achievements were from his genius.

The common term of reference for this Eastern Bloc Vishwaguru was “Geniul Carpaților” – The Genius of the Carpathians.

The region was in disarray, but unlike Poland or Czechoslovakia there was no functional opposition in Romania. There was no problem with organised and disaffected regional minorities like in Yugoslavia. The state security apparatus, the Securitate, was extremely effective and feared. The standard process was to quickly prosecute and quell any dissenters as enemies of the state. Anyone of institutional significance – the army, bureaucracy, judiciary – had been vetted for loyalty to Ceaușescu and the party.

And yet, within a day of that catastrophic speech, he was reduced to a deposed prisoner.

The downfall of Ceaușescu was among the most unexpected and rapid falls from power in the history of modern politics. While the shock of booing was a massive trigger, the turning point moment of his downfall was when the television cameras turned away from the crowd and up towards the sky. That moment broadcast fear.

The past fortnight, the streets of the capital in India saw chants of protestors describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a coward who hid from the press, people openly asking for his resignation. But even with pliant television, turning the camera from the crowd to the sky was no longer possible. Not only was the fear of the genius leader and his apparatus struck down, even the unwritten rules of liberal civility were out of the window.

Full-frontal verbal assaults that were typically inflicted on the Opposition by the ruling party were now being dished out by protestors taking aim at everything that was sacred to the leader and establishment’s image, things that had been built up over years of branding.

For his 56-inch chest, protesters asked that he “tighten his bra”, for his picture-perfect photoshoots, protesters asked that he spruce up the lipstick, his chaiwala claims, once a marker of his connection to the ground reality of India, became a fodder for a flood of quickly assembled, handheld posters.

In a country where even “liking” the wrong social media message had been grounds for arrest, it felt like all bets were off as the internet eagerly awaited the next hilarious meme. The strong arm of the khaki vardi had seemingly ceased to scare students who stayed upright against swinging sticks of the Delhi Police, as they were also immune to the potential threats of sanskari lynch-happy mobs. This was a true fight or flight moment.

The information environment and the shock event

It could have gone the Tiananmen Square way. The lathis could have turned into armoured cars. But there was a problem. The more aggressive the media control, the more even the smallest bit of dissent could kill all semblance of narrative control. Crowds can be cleared out, but the memes were out. The information environment had been changed.

Insulting the prime minister had suddenly become cool and, as the Bharatiya Janata Party knew very well when it stuck the pejorative “Pappu” Rahul Gandhi, it takes years to roll back the butt of a joke. Within a few days, Modi had bent to the will of the student agitators, accepting all their demands for and conveying his acquiescence on the media platform they decided to use most aggressively to attack him – Instagram.

Regimes that thrive on the belief that they have permanently convinced their people that resistance is futile do not deal well with shocks. In most cases, the information environment is critical in determining if the boiling point will cause an explosion. In the run-up to the events that defined the French Revolution in 1789, for instance, there was discontent brewing and a range of other problems with the flailing finances of Louis XVI’s regime.

But the days leading up to the shock event, the storming of the Bastille by common people in Paris, saw a flood of insecurities surface and detonate. The information environment at the time included newspapers and official royal missives, but these had little impact on the crowds. Instead, it was cafe gossip, tales from travelers, and unverified pamphlets that got around a lot faster.

A range of stories with dubious sources suddenly hit a nerve – the aristocracy was plotting a famine against common people, banquets at the palace were mocking the movement, foreign mercenaries were being organised to attack common Parisians, the king was sending troops to dissolve the national assembly, and of course, Queen Marie Antoinette was asking the people with no access to bread to eat cake instead. The rest is a history podcast.

A few decades later, it was Japan’s turn to lose an information war in what was a far stranger situation than the Paris uprising. For centuries, Japan had a remarkably stable Shogunate, and while the forced entry of Western trade had shaken it up, the relationship between the people and the state remained solidly hierarchical, with feudal lords and the Samurai class on top, and the rural peasantry largely living on subsistence.

In 1867, Japan had a movement, named after the slogan that came to define it, Ee Ja Nai Ka movement, which did not feature wholesale assault on the leadership or security forces, but featured a lot of people behaving wildly in groups and breaking social norms of good behaviour. For some context, the worst lawlessness to come out of the movement was some looting of alcohol – levels of bad behavior that would probably not be worth talking about anyplace other than Japan.

Throughout 1867, especially in the belt between Kyoto and Osaka, common people, mostly peasants, stormed the streets screaming “Ee Ja Nai Ka”, literally meaning “What the hell?” or “Why not?”

The immediate driver was rumours that there were sacred talismans falling from the sky and that they were a sign of change. But the deeper meaning was a “to hell with it” take in which people suddenly started to believe that anything could happen, that the old rules no longer applied, and well, one may as well party.

People who forget that protests can often feel like a carnival were reminded in Delhi that not everyone is out calling for armed insurrection against the regime – many protesters are quite simply having a nihilistic moment in which they plan to share the frenzy of the mob as a simple, even enjoyable act of resistance.

In this form, people went into carnivalesque frenzies across Japan’s towns, abandoning work in the fields, running out in wild costumes and spontaneously dancing on the streets, setting up ad-hoc costume parades, all of which would be considered anywhere between inappropriate and unhinged.

The dancing and parades had clear political undertones – cross dressing, as well as the young dressing as old to undermine gender and hierarchy codes, with the chant of “Ee Ja Nai Ka” used as a refrain for “Old Rules Don’t Matter” rather than the literal translation.

Attempts by merchants and the feudal establishment to stop these and bring workers back to the fields failed. At the time, Japan had a highly organised and strictly hierarchical system of feudal lords, with a range of institutionalised systems in place to stop rebellion. One was called gonin-gumi. It was a small set of households, typically five, ordered like a neighborhood association, in which each household was responsible for the behavior of others.

But it was not like a shiny happy self-help group: it was a means of keeping strict order, acting like a spy agency similar to Ceaușescu neighborhood-level surveillance through the Romanian Securitate. It enabled tax collection through the constant threat of collective punishment. The authorities put out several decrees banning the dancing, and tried at first to ignore these events. Eventually, they tried to repress the events, or threaten punishments.

Word about these talismans and various forms of divine intervention, all of which were taken as signs for people to run wild, came from unverifiable sources such as travelling merchants, entertainers, or pilgrims. On the other hand, formal sources such as missives from local officials or from the Shogunate were expressly ignored.

The two events were very distinct in that the French Revolution crescendoed very quickly, while the Ee Ja Nai Ka was a distributed, disorganised slow burn. Although these shock events were effectively rebellions in that they acted against orders, the French Revolution had clear protagonists and antagonists whereas Ee Ja Nai Ka was more of a catharsis.

Neither event had a well-defined leadership, nor a locus of control with clear instructions or goals. Both led to change, although not immediate. Both events led to concessions for the participants in the events and they were overwhelmingly not prosecuted.

It did not end well for the masters of either society. The protests did not immediately depose them – the Shogun remained in power for several months after, while the much-weakened French king continued to rule for three years. But it eventually also ended badly for the close quarter groups of the leadership. As the Shogunate ended, so did the superior place of the Samurai, the class that aligned most closely with the Shogunate. It went from being on top of the social hierarchy to poverty and scraping the bottom. For the aristocracy in France, there was the guillotine.

In recent years, there have been many more examples of shock events in places where the crowd looked like it may pull something off, but the tide turned.

Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing occurred in 1989, the same time as a series of other protests around the end of the Soviet Union were taking place. China quickly understood that controlling the media was a key element here and started its response by first clearing all journalists out, expelling most foreign journalists from the country. It then responded with overwhelming military force and massive repression of the protestors, undertaking mass executions just over two weeks after the protests.

Iran probably holds place of pride for having had a series of major situations of political unrest and protests (1999, 2009, 2019, 2022, 2025), and in almost all of them, the reaction of the state has been extremely swift and brutal, first using lethal force at the sites of protests, and then carrying out public executions of selected people they wanted to make examples of.

But both China and Iran avoided executing high-profile student leaders both to avoid martyrdom and because students are younger and less prone to the fear of authority compared to family people or labour leaders.

Russia (2012) and Turkey (2013) did not have the same exhibition of state violence through executions of even ordinary protestors, but were nonetheless effective at dismantling the protest movements. Both used targeted strategies to undermine protests. Russia used pre-emptive arrests, institutional undermining of potential protestors or powerful supporters of protestors, assassinations and lengthy prison sentences in dead end prisons.

Turkey on the other hand is probably the closest example for what may work in India. Turkey did not see the same expansion of military into the cities, but a much bolder role played by their leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan came out in the open and spoke directly in rallies in both Ankara and Istanbul, framing the protests not as democratic critique, but as an existential threat to the religious and conservative aspirational classes.

As with Modi, Erdoğan has a core, ideologically-driven following, and his direct show of courage by coming out when a public event could have gone badly wrong, strongly galvanised his base. The media in Turkey avoided covering the protests, and even before 2013, Erdoğan had a massive presence on social media and an ability to present a counter-narrative through his political base. At the same time, he used massive non-lethal force on protesters, specifically chemical water cannons and tear gas to disperse protestors.

Civil society was significantly weakened after the protests, even doctors who treated the wounded were targeted through a judicial system that Erdoğan has functionally captured. The trials of the accused in the 2013 protests lasted for years, underlining for protestors that the state may come after them at any point.

In each of these cases, the regimes have made clear that they mean business, and continue to mean business. As the protesters in Hong Kong would find out three decades later, not all regimes blink. Strongmen come out of these stronger.

When the underdogs win

There were events that did change things – Tahrir Square in Cairo in 2011, Courthouse Square in Libya’s Benghazi in 2011, the Independence Square protests in Kyiv in Ukraine in 2013, the Kasbah Square in Tunis in 2011 all saw strongmen fall. More recently, both Dhaka and Kathmandu saw the same.

A good authoritarian builds as large a core support group, such that they are inherently invested in the status quo. The French and Japanese cases were classic situations of small groups of disconnected elites who were insufficient in pushing back when things got serious, in modern times, the authoritarian leaders in Romania, Tunisia and Egypt had the same problem, few enough people thought it would be a death knell for them if the leader vanished that it was easier replacing them.

For leaders who do have enough of an internal group – whether religious, ethnolinguistic, or organisational, that would be highly imperiled without them, the path to political survival can be easier and the biggest threat is external. Which is why China started its pushback against Tiananmen by removing the foreign press.

In almost all the cases where the shock event managed to change the political leadership, college students and young people were critical in driving the events and consequences.

Most of the shock events had a key public space where the drama unfolded, but also a number of other commonalities. These included a core group of protestors, grievances that have no space to be debated openly, a key individual whose leadership or death triggers events, a second layer of aggrieved people who join the fray, and last, a controlled media environment that either leaves the event discredited or fundamentally changes after it.

In the French and Japanese cases, the protests broke the media outreach of the official missive through sheer gossip, but every successive shock event since has seen some or other crash in the media system. Ceaușescu’s downfall – including his trial and execution – were broadcast by the television system he himself built and controlled. Authoritarian regimes invest in controlling some subset of dominant media, but in the overconfidence of constantly hearing no bad news on the media they control, they often pay scant attention to the evolving media environment.

In Russia in 1917, it was labour papers and pamphlets, in Iran in 1979 it was cassette tapes, in the Philippines in 1986 it was Catholic Radio channels, in Hong Kong in 2019 it was Air Drop.

Since the mid-2000s, social media directly played a role in either the work of converting peoples’ minds or of allowing protestors to organise. But before we give social media some liberating power, it is important to remember that the last two decades have seen several authoritarians master the networks and narratives on social media.

Modi and the BJP learnt from the Arab Spring media moment very well. Rather than reject social media, they actively engaged it and captured it not only institutionally, by bending the platform companies to do their bidding, but also did so organically by capturing the networks through influencers and by flooding platforms with their supporters. They made one critical mistake: in 2020, they banned TikTok.

The reasons for banning TikTok did not matter, the consequences did. The thing with TikTok is that its algorithm fundamentally changed the rules of how social media works. Instead of something going viral because of the person who said it, TikTok’s algorithm made things reach audiences because they were interesting.

TikTok actually understood how long people stayed on content, how quickly audiences liked or disliked something irrespective of who sent it or who amplified it. Almost immediately they started eating into the markets of other social media platforms. Had India stayed on TikTok, the Modi government may have done a much better job over the last few years of understanding what people really want to consume, outside of what is fed to them.

US platforms quickly realised that they could not beat TikTok if they continued to do what they did, and instead changed their algorithms to be more like TikTok. When we think about why Abhijeet Dipke was able to roll out the Cockroach Janata Party so quickly and why the students continued to engage in protest despite the clear danger to them, thank TikTok. It fundamentally changed how social media decides what is saleable.

Dipke sold because what he started to talk about had natural appeal among people. This should have been a warning to a party that thinks any noise can be drowned out by loud screams of anti-national.

The US had fears about TikTok and its Chinese ownership impacting the understanding of data from American citizens. It also became a platform where criticism of Israel started to get buoyancy online in ways that it did not in the other US-owned social media platforms. It became increasingly clear that TikTok would be a place where people would say what was not easy to say on mainstream media. That in turn, it would be a place where political narratives get built and solidified.

So instead of banning TikTok, the US decided to force its sale to an American company.

Modi and the BJP cornered Twitter and Facebook, but the playbook of social media flooding that works so well on Twitter, fails almost entirely on TikTok, and ergo, on the new Instagram. It does not help if actor Salman Khan amplifies your message. Instead, the only action it gains on social media is confirmation that Khan is a blustering clown, a naked emperor of little more than his unspecified corner in Bandra.

For now, the Indian students have won. The win though may not translate to electoral value as quickly because institutional capture matters. But fairly large and diverse electoral systems have eaten dirt of late. If you think Nepal and Bangladesh are not warning enough, you can always look at the fact that a film star who made a handful of public campaign appearances is now the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, having handily eaten up two massive legacy parties with lakhs of boots on the ground.

The worst-case scenario for the students would be some equivalent of the Chinese “Hundred Flowers Campaign”, which pretended to open up the space for dissent but in reality became a means to bring into the open those with opinions opposed to the state – most of whom were quickly quashed.

But we know that Modi is no Erdoğan. He has not demonstrated the gumption of coming out in the open and confronting the students and their narrative. We know that India is no Iran or China, and that Delhi is no Srinagar or Imphal.

The problem with the Indian state is that it has never beaten up on any constituency without first othering and marginalising it. The student protestors were not Kashmiri, North Easterner, Adivasi or Muslim. To take on them needs a different kind of gumption, and Modi must either prepare to turn into Putin or Xi, or at least Sheikh Hasina of 2013. And even China and Iran were careful about not going after the students.

As for the best case-scenario, well that has already been achieved.

It may already be too late for Modi, but he may still decide either to act decisively and unleash prolonged judicial harassment of those who spoke against him. If not, that mythical trip through the Himalayas that Modi keeps posting pictures of may be closer than we think.

Authoritarianism survives on two key factors – the choreographed demonstration of loyalty by those close to the key leader and daily acts of compliance by everyone else. The Emperor’s New Clothes is such a sustaining tale because it is so true to the reality of sycophancy.

The defining image of Ceaușescu was the bewildered expression on his face as he saw people booing him. The Indian prime minister did well not to come out and address the crowds. The clumsy Instagram video he shot got its fair share of trolling online, but at least it was not with the ignominy of having someone from the crowd start chanting for him to fix his bra. I doubt I could say that a month ago.

Joyojeet Pal is a Professor of Information at the University of Michigan.

The Chennai Police on Tuesday arrested Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Udhayanidhi Stalin for his purportedly derogatory remarks about Chief Minister Vijay and actor Trisha Krishnan, ANI reported.

A first information report was filed by a functionary of actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam against Stalin after the alleged comments made by the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly at a protest rally in Thanjavur on Monday.

The complaint alleged that Stalin had made indecent remarks in the nature of double entendres, The Hindu reported.

Based on the complaint, the police filed the case under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, provocation with the intent to cause a riot, intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, words intended to insult the modesty of a woman, uttering obscene words in or near public places, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation.

The former deputy chief minister was also booked under the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act and the Information Technology Act.

The protest on Monday was about the Cauvery water dispute.

“Not even a drop of Cauvery water has been received,” Stalin said in a video widely shared on social media. “But has the chief minister opened his mouth about it? No. He is only concerned with filing false cases against the DMK.”

As he criticised Vijay, Stalin’s speech was interrupted by supporters shouting “Trisha, Trisha”. Krishnan is Vijay’s former co-star.

As the supporters continued shouting the slogans, Stalin allegedly made a remark that was seen by many social media users as an innuendo about Krishnan.

#WATCH | DMK leader and LoP Udhayanidhi Stalin detained by Police from his Chennai residence, following an FIR against him over his alleged defamatory remarks against actor Trisha and CM Vijay. Slogans directed at actor Trisha were raised at his rally yesterday. pic.twitter.com/JUk7cpaTdG

— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2026

The TVK and the Bharatiya Janata Party criticised Stalin’s remark on Monday, describing it as obscene. Stalin was also criticised by social media users. The TVK, apart from filing a complaint with the police, also approached the National Commission for Women.

The DMK, however, denied the allegations, saying that no reference was made to Krishnan, ANI reported.

On Tuesday, as he was being taken away by the police, Stalin told India Today: “You decide, you heard the speech. Did I say something wrong? Did I take anybody’s name except the chief minister?”

DMK MP TR Baalu also said that Stalin had made no reference to any woman and that “these are cooked up false stories”.

Hours before Stalin was detained, the Madras High Court on Tuesday agreed to hear his urgent anticipatory bail petition in the afternoon.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Monday verbally clarified to the Union government that the 2026 amendments to the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act will not retrospectively or by default invalidate transgender cards issued to members of the community under the previous legislation, The Hindu reported.

The amendments to the 2019 Act, cleared by Parliament in March, redefine who qualifies as a transgender person. They remove transgender persons’ right to a self-perceived gender identity. They also limit the scope of the law to those with certain biological or physiological characteristics, intersex variations, or specific socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.

The law makes medical evaluation and certification mandatory for legal gender recognition. It underlines that the authority to permit such transitions is vested in medical professionals operating under a medical board.

On Monday, petitioners against the amendments, who include members of the transgender community and activists, contended that the amendments give the government complete power to determine gender identity, The Hindu reported. Transgender cards issued by the government cannot be invalidated as they are an essential identity document, the petitioners said.

The counsel representing one of the petitioners sought an interim order for the government to maintain the status quo.

Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that the court was concerned about the community’s rights and verbally stated that the 2026 amendment is prospective: it cannot take away the rights of persons who have already been granted cards, Live Law reported.

However, the bench did not pass an interim order.

The judge told the government’s counsel that “even if there is a change in legislation, the rights conferred or accrued must remain the same”, the newspaper reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Union government, was quoted as saying that the lack of clarity about gender may lead to problems in matters of succession and inheritance, and sought more time for the government to respond.

When the bill was being discussed in Parliament, Opposition leaders had expressed concerns that it undermined the right to self-identification recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 National Legal Services Authority v Union of India case. The verdict had formally created the “third gender” category for transgender persons that recognised them as a socially and economically backward class.

The 2014 judgement had also directed the government to ensure that the transgender community gets job quotas, admission in educational institutions, health benefits, separate public toilets and a host of other safeguards against discrimination.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Tamil Nadu government on Monday approached the Supreme Court seeking directions to neighbouring Karnataka to release 3,500 cusecs of water from the river Cauvery for 15 days from the Kabini and Krishna Raja Sagara reservoirs, The Hindu reported.

The Tamil Nadu government contended that the release of 4.5 thousand million cubic feet of water, which corresponds to 3,500 cusecs a day for 15 days by August 12, was in accordance with the July 30 decision of the Cauvery Water Management Authority.

An official release said that Karnataka has “failed” to give Tamil Nadu its due share of water, PTI reported.

Chief Minister Vijay directed the state to move the Supreme Court on the advice of senior advocates and secure a “due order”, the release said.

This comes two days after Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said that the water situation had “slightly improved”, The Hindu reported. He appealed to Kannada organisations to call off their proposed state-wide strike on August 13 opposing the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu.

The Tamil Nadu government said that as of August 3, the combined storage in Karnataka’s four major Cauvery reservoirs – Krishna Raja Sagara, Kabini, Harangi and Hemavathy – was 77.5 thousand million cubic feet, the news agency reported. This indicates that the state was in a position to release Tamil Nadu’s share of water, it said.

Tamil Nadu further contended that the recent rainfall in the catchment areas of the Krishna Raja Sagara and Kabini dams meant the state was entitled to 26.9 thousand million cubic feet of water at Biligundlu under the proportional sharing formula. A water measuring station, set up by the Central Water Commission at Biligundlu in the Krishnagiri district is used to measure Cauvery water flows.

The Cauvery dispute

The distribution of Cauvery water has been a long-standing dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It dates back to two agreements in 1892 and 1924 between the erstwhile Madras Presidency and the Princely State of Mysore.

The Union government set up the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal in 1990, which delivered its verdict in 2007. The tribunal allocated 419 thousand million cubic feet of water per year to Tamil Nadu and 270 thousand million cubic feet of water to Karnataka.

However, this did not settle the dispute as both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka filed petitions to review the decision.

The Supreme Court in February 2018 asked the Centre to set up the Cauvery Water Management Authority within a month to implement the tribunal’s verdict.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Twenty-two children have died due to Chandipura Vesiculovirus infection in Gujarat since the first week of July, The Indian Express quoted the state’s Health Minister Praful Pansheriya as saying.

Seven patients who tested positive are undergoing treatment at various civil hospitals, while six others have recovered and been discharged.

In a statement issued on Monday, the health minister’s office said that Gujarat has registered 184 suspected Chandipura virus cases so far, the newspaper reported. Among them, 35 were confirmed as positive, while the test results of 11 suspected cases were pending as of August 3.

All those infected are below 15 years of age, The Hindu reported.

The virus, also known as the Chandipura Viral Encephalitis, is transmitted primarily by sandflies and mosquitoes, including the Aedes aegypti species that bite during the day and is also known to spread dengue. The infection can lead to encephalitis, or the inflammation of the active tissues of the brain.

Children under the age of 15 years are most susceptible to the virus. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, altered sensorium, convulsions, diarrhoea, neurological deficit and meningeal irritation.

Pansheriya said on Monday that children admitted to hospitals at Gandhinagar, Himmatnagar, Patan, Rajkot and Bhavnagar are being given specialised treatment, The Hindu reported.

The minister said that the cases are not restricted to a particular place or village in the state.

He also appealed to parents to take children showing symptoms such as fever, vomiting, convulsions or any other serious illness to the nearest government district hospital without delay.

“The Health Department has been advised to fill up cracks in mud houses,” The Indian Express quoted Pansheriya as saying. “Also, intensive spraying of pesticides is being done in areas where animal husbandry is practiced.”

No specific vaccine or medicine is currently available to treat or prevent Chandipura virus infection, the minister said.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, who headed a one-man judicial commission to investigate the circumstances that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, died at the age of 87 on Sunday, The Hindu reported.

His last rites were performed on Monday.

Born on November 11, 1938, in a village near Chandigarh, Liberhan was a former Chief Justice of the Andhra Pradesh and Madras High Courts.

He began his career at the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1964.

On February 11, 1987, Liberhan was elevated as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

He retired as the chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court on November 10, 2000, but continued to serve as the head of the Liberhan Commission.

The commission was set up days after the Babri Masjid was demolished on December 6, 1992 by Hindutva extremists who believed that the site was the birthplace of the deity Ram. It submitted its report to the Union government after 17 years, in 2009.

It went on to become one of the longest-running commissions of inquiry in India’s history.

The panel indicted Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members for their alleged involvement in destroying the mosque. It also named several senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, Kalyan Singh, Pramod Mahajan and others.

In a landmark verdict on November 9, 2019 the Supreme Court had ruled that the disputed land in Ayodhya would be handed over to a government-run trust for the construction of a Ram temple. The court said that the demolition of Babri Masjid was illegal and directed the government to acquire an alternative plot of land to build a mosque.

Liberhan had told The Times of India that the court verdict in the case did not represent the sentiments of all communities. “The Supreme Court has decided the title only,” he said. “My views about the judgement are different. Yes, it does not represent the sentiments of all communities but something has to be relied on at some level.”

He had also said that the presence of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram temple vindicated his stand that a team of RSS cadre was involved in the demolition of the mosque.

Six kanwariyas on three motorcycles allegedly attacked a school van in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow on Monday after a minor accident, The Indian Express reported. No children were injured.

During the Kanwar Yatra, devotees, called kanwariyas, walk hundreds of kilometres to collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples.

The incident on Monday took place at Charak Crossing in the Chowk area while the van was on its way to drop students at school. One of the motorcycles hit the rear of the vehicle after the van driver applied the brakes, which led to an argument.

The dispute prompted some of the kanwariyas to allegedly damage the van’s rear windshield and side mirror, before they fled.

In UP's Lucknow, a school van was attacked and vandalised allegedly by men part of Kanwar Yatra in Lucknow. pic.twitter.com/LYHgcNeZjH

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) August 3, 2026

Assistant Superintendent of Police Shubham Kumar told the newspaper that the police had identified the registration numbers of the three motorcycles using surveillance camera footage and videos of the incident. A case will be registered, he added.

He also denied reports that the devotees had thrown stones at the vehicle after some persons made the claim on social media.

In Meerut, a group of Kanwariyas allegedly assaulted police personnel in the Daurala area after allegations of desecration. Videos on social media showed a group of men attacking the police personnel in an official vehicle, and one of the policemen making a desperate call for help.

The Meerut Police said that a collision had taken place on Monday between two groups of kanwariyas, which had led to a physical altercation. The authorities said they brought the situation under control and took both groups to the police station for a medical examination.

The Meerut Police said that neither side filed a complaint, and claimed that the situation in the area is now completely normal.

During the pilgrimage, most kanwariyas come from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. This year’s yatra started on Thursday and will conclude on August 11.

कल रात्रि मोटरसाइकिल से हरिद्वार जल लेने जा रहे एक कांवड़िये की हरिद्वार से जल लेकर आ रहे एक कावड़िया की टक्कर हो गई थी इसके बाद दोनों पक्षों में कहासुनी एवं हाथापाई हुई थी, दौराला पुलिस ने तत्काल मौके पर पहुंचकर स्थिति को नियंत्रण में किया तथा दोनों पक्षों को थाना लाकर…

— MEERUT POLICE (@meerutpolice) August 3, 2026

Edited by Sara Varghese and Neerad Pandharipande.

Shweta Patil, a teacher in Mumbai, is currently working two jobs.

As class teacher, the 37-year-old handles 39 second-standard students in Sion’s DS High School, a private school that is partly funded by the government, from morning till late afternoon. In her second shift, she works as a booth level officer carrying out the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The Maharashtra Election Commission allocated 1,159 voters in Mahim assembly constituency to Patil. She had to map the voters first, then fill their enumeration forms. The deadline for submitting the forms is August 8. But until July end, she had managed to fill forms of only 200-odd voters.

“It is not just me,” she said. “Every BLO is struggling. I have been a teacher for 15 years but I have never been so frustrated in my life.”

Patil pointed to her incessantly ringing mobile phone. “The Election Commission gave my personal number to voters without my permission,” she said. “I get over 50 calls a day. Callers yell at me because their name is not on the 2002 SIR list or because they did not get an enumeration form.”

At home, her dining table is filled with voter forms. Her 11-year-old son complains that she hardly spends time with him. Her one-and-half-year old son is with a baby sitter the whole day. Patil said she had to stop breastfeeding him because she was out all day and back late at night.

“I wake up at 5 am these days,” she told Scroll. “I leave home in the morning and return by 10 pm at night.”

By then, it is too late to cook. So, she has to buy dinner every night. “After that I sit for an hour or so to upload enumeration forms,” she said.

Last month, when several school staffers across Mumbai staged a protest in Azad Maidan demanding relief from the special intensive revision work, Patil joined in. She had hoped that the government would respond positively.

“But nothing happened,” Patil said. “They just extended the deadline from July 29 to August 8.”

As Maharashtra undertakes the special intensive revision, it has drafted teachers from government and private-aided schools to do the grunt work – and their students are bearing the brunt.

Teachers in other states that have undergone the special intensive revision such as Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Nagaland and Bihar have had similar complaints.

Rajendra Pradhan, trustee president of the school where Patil teaches, said that seven out of 12 teachers from the institution’s primary section have been put on election duty. That forced the school to hold classes for its pre-primary section in the morning.

Schools suffer

According to Jalinder Sarode, working president of Shikshan Sena, a teachers’ union, over 6,000 primary school teachers from government and private-aided schools have been put on SIR duty across Mumbai.

“There is already a shortage of teachers. With this deputation, schools are struggling to operate,” he said. “In October, when this is over, teachers have to report for census duty again.”

Sarode works in Tilak Nagar’s Adarsh Vidyalaya, a private aided school, where eight out of 16 sanctioned teachers are on SIR duty.

“In our school, we have combined two sections of the same class into one,” he said.

In schools run by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the crisis is worse. “Two classes are being combined in one,” Sarode said. “A student of Class 2 is studying with Class 3 students.”

The worst affected are Class 8 to Class 10 students who cannot be left unattended and have important exams this year, said Mahendra Ganpule, spokesperson for Maharashtra School Principals' Association.

Ganpule said earlier guidelines by the Election Commission said that teachers must be deputed on SIR duty for three months and be given relief from schools during that period.

In April and May, when students were on a summer break, teachers conducted the mapping exercise for SIR. In June, Ganpule said, schools asked teachers to return to work when classes resumed.

Pradhan, from DS High school, said the Election Commission first suggested that schools operate on alternate days. When schools resisted, it asked teachers to work on SIR after school. That has led to a sharp increase in workload for teachers.

“They don’t get time to prepare for classes,” Pradhan said. “They deliver their lecture and rush off.”

More concerning, Pradhan added, is that most teachers are older than 40 and physically struggle to handle the workload.

“This eventually leads to a compromise in the quality of education,” said Sarode from the Shikshan Sena.

For instance, once Patil leaves at 4 pm, her class is split into two and merged with other classes. “My students get upset when I have to leave,” she said. “Children at this age get emotionally attached to their teachers. It is not easy for them to focus when we put them in a new environment.”

Patil says the election work has made her forgetful about activities planned for her students or homework she has given them. “I cannot focus on class,” she said. “I am always thinking of how many forms I can fill today.”

Haphazard method

When Patil was assigned SIR duty, she agreed because her school was shut during summer. “We worked in April and May thinking it was work for our country,” she told Scroll.

Early on, election officials in Mahim Assembly constituency gave her vague directions, she said, to go and “map voters” to the existing electoral roll.

“They did not provide any enumeration forms then,” she said/ “The forms came much later. So we first went and mapped and now we are going back to the same voters to fill forms. The EC is managing the entire exercise haphazardly.”

Scroll followed Patil as she travelled to a neighbourhood in Prabhadevi by bus after school.

The government does not reimburse her for travel expenses, she pointed out. In Mumbai’s heavy showers, she had to carry the entire bundle of enumeration forms.

“I am still fortunate as the area I am deputed to is residential,” she said. “My colleague has been deputed to the Dharavi slums. It is a struggle to locate voters there.”

In the neighbourhood of Dhuru Wadi, Patil spends three hours going door to door. This is her third visit to the locality.

In each house, she spends 15 to 20 minutes explaining the procedure of filling an enumeration form. In every house, there is the problem of one voter missing from the list or logical discrepancies. For such cases, a hearing will be held in August.

“I have to upload each form after I return home,” she said. “For 30 forms, I take about three hours.”

By the end of the day, she had managed to collect only 25 of 200 enumeration forms.

She will have to return a fourth time. “Do you think we will be able to finish SIR at this pace?” she asked, exasperated.

FIR threats, notices

Many teachers have refused to work for SIR. Tushar Mhatre, a mathematics teacher in Navi Mumbai’s Model School, is one of them. “I did census work earlier this year,” he said. “But now I can’t leave my students. They are in Class 10 and this is a crucial year. Nobody can replace a maths teacher

Mhatre has received two notices from the Election Commission office in Belapur, asking him to explain why he is not reporting for SIR duty.

According to Shikshan Sena, 95 FIRs have been filed against teachers who have refused election duty in Mumbai. Several others are being threatened with FIRs, added Sarode.

“Teachers are hired to teach, not for miscellaneous government work,” said Rajendra Pandya, vice president of the Mumbai Teachers Democratic Front, a union of teachers. “What future do students have if their teachers are not present in classrooms?”

All photographs by Tabassum Barnagarwala.

Karnataka Congress MLA Yashwanthrayagouda Patil resigned from the Assembly on Monday, hours after the DK Shivakumar government announced its first expansion of the state Cabinet, The Indian Express reported.

Patil said that he had been “hurt” for being overlooked for a ministerial berth.

“I have been in politics for four decades,” the newspaper quoted Patil as saying. He added that he would decide whether he would quit the party or not.

Another Congress MLA Belur Gopalkrishna also said that he would resign from the Assembly as well as the chairperson of the Karnataka State Forest Industries Corporation.

“Only if you are children of chief ministers or ministers, will you have a chance [of becoming a minister]...,” The Indian Express quoted Gopalkrishna as saying.

Of the 20 MLAs inducted on Monday, 10 are first-time ministers, The Hindu reported.

Reacting to the developments, Shivakumar said that it was not possible to “accommodate everyone”.

“There are many MLAs,” The Indian Express quoted Shivakumar as saying. “...Earlier, I too missed out on a ministerial berth in the Siddaramaiah Cabinet. But didn’t I become a minister later?”

Shivakumar became the chief minister of Karnataka on June 3, replacing Siddaramaiah.

Shivakumar had served as deputy chief minister in the Siddaramaiah government since May 2023. Siddaramaiah was the longest-serving chief minister of Karnataka with a tenure of more than eight years across two terms. The 78-year-old served as the chief minister between 2013 and 2018. His most recent term had begun in May 2023.

The next Assembly elections in Karnataka are expected to be held in May 2028.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking review of its April decision, which held that no cognisable offence had been made out against Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma for alleged acts of hate speech in 2020, reported Bar and Bench on Monday.

At a rally in January 2020, Thakur was heard shouting “desh ke gaddaron ko” and the crowd responded with “goli maaro saalon ko”. The slogan meant “shoot the traitors”, with an expletive used for “traitors” being a reference to those protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In his speech, Verma had told an audience that the “lakhs of protestors” who had gathered at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh would enter their homes to “rape their sisters and daughters and kill them”.

The speeches were made ahead of the Assembly elections in Delhi in 2020. Soon after, riots had broken out in North East Delhi in February that year, in which 53 persons died and hundreds were injured. The majority of victims were Muslim.

The April 29 decision by the Supreme Court came on a petition filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat against a Delhi High Court order that upheld a trial court’s refusal to direct the registration of a case against the BJP leaders.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta had said that it did not find any grounds to interfere with the High Court order on merits.

Karat then filed the review petition and sought an open court hearing of it. The request was earlier dismissed by Nath and Mehta.

On July 29, they dismissed the review petition itself, reported Bar and Bench.

“We have gone through the review petition as well as the grounds in support thereof,” said the bench. “We do not find any error, much less apparent, in the order impugned, warranting its reconsideration.”

In her petition seeking an FIR against the two BJP leaders, Karat had alleged that the speeches threatened use of force to remove protesters who were agitating at Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship Amendment Act and to promote enmity towards Muslims by portraying them as invaders who will enter houses to rape and kill.

In June 2022, the High Court had upheld the verdict of the trial court and said that the petitioners had not followed the prescribed mechanism under the Code of Criminal Procedure for seeking the registration of an FIR in such cases.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Five years later, Delhi Police’s riots conspiracy case is built on sand

A Delhi court acquitted former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case filed against him by six women wrestlers. Vinesh Phogat, one of the wrestlers who had taken part in protests seeking Sharan’s resignation, said that the complainants were disappointed with the court’s decision and would appeal against the order.

The Bharatiya Janata Party MP said that the judgement was a matter of happiness for him and his supporters. “On the first day, when my first statement came, I had said that if any verdict or any charge is proven, I will hang myself,” he said.

In January 2023, several Indian wrestlers, including medallists Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia launched a protest against Singh, accusing him of intimidation and sexual harassment.

Seven complainants, including a minor, accused the BJP leader of demanding sexual favours for professional help on at least two occasions, and also reported 15 incidents of alleged molestation and other forms of sexual harassment. He was later cleared with respect to allegations made by one of the women. Read on.

Jan Suraaj party chief Prashant Kishor won Bihar’s Bankipur bye-poll on his electoral debut. The bye-election became necessary after the MLA, Bharatiya Janata Party National President Nitin Nabin, resigned after becoming a Rajya Sabha MP.

The constituency near Patna is considered a stronghold of the Hindutva party. Nabin had held it since 2010, after representing the Patna West seat before its boundaries were redrawn.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Datia, Congress candidate Ghanshyam Singh won the bye-election defeating the BJP’s Ashutosh Tiwari. Despite the setback in the two states, in Gujarat the Hindutva party retained the Manjalpur seat. Read on.

The Supreme Court clarified that states can withdraw first information reports filed against youth protesters wherever permissible, in accordance with the law. The clarification came in response to concerns raised by petitioners that the court’s July 28 order, which allowed states to continue investigations into the FIRs, could hinder the withdrawal of cases.

It also came after the Union government submitted that it was “serious” about its assurance that amnesty would be granted to students who had participated in demonstrations. Read on.

The Assam government invoking the National Security Act against activist Pranab Doley was part of a “growing pattern” of the Bharatiya Janata Party “weaponising extraordinary laws to silence dissent”, alleged the Congress. 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 at Ingle Pathar, a village adjoining the Kaziranga National Park. On July 29, a sessions court in Golaghat granted bail to Doley. A day later, the BJP government in Assam detained him under the National Security Act, alleging that Doley had carried out “suspicious foreign transactions from doubtful sources” in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh described the Assam government’s allegations against Doley as “vague and speculative” and claimed that this was a familiar script followed by the Narendra Modi government. Read on.

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Sunday alleged that donations worth Rs 18 crore had been embezzled from the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai every year.

He also claimed that Rs 1,400 crore had been “stolen” from the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The remarks came amid a row over the alleged embezzlement of donations at the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh.

On Sunday, citing a letter purportedly written by eight temple trustees to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Thackeray claimed that employees at Siddhivinayak temple had siphoned off donations from collection boxes.

He also claimed that the temple’s weekly donations were below Rs 50 lakh before the alleged theft came to light, but increased to about Rs 1.5 crore after those allegedly involved were caught.

Sada Sarvankar, chairperson of the Siddhivinayak Temple Trust and a leader of the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, said that nine temple employees had been arrested in connection with the alleged theft, PTI reported.

“We have filed cases wherever required,” the news agency quoted Sarvankar as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

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

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

The toll in rain-related incidents in Kerala has risen to 15, PTI quoted Chief Minister VD Satheesan as saying on Monday.

While he did not specify the period in which the deaths took place, the state has been receiving heavy and incessant rainfall since Friday, triggering flash floods and landslides.

Satheesan said on Monday that seven persons were missing amid the rains. Of these, two persons each were missing from Kollam and Kannur, and one each in Malappuram, Idukki and Muvattupuzha.

Malappuram had reported four deaths, while three persons died in Kottayam district. Two deaths each were reported in Ernakulam and Kollam, and one person each died in Idukki, Muvattupuzha and Kannur.

The chief minister announced that the state government will provide Rs 10,000 in funeral expenses to the families of those who died. Persons returning home from relief camps would receive Rs 10,000 as an immediate measure.

Additionally, an ex gratia of Rs 8 lakh was announced for the families of those who died. A compensation of Rs 12 lakh will be given to those who lost their homes and land due to landslides. Rs 6 lakh will be provided for families to rebuild their homes, said Satheesan.

Standing with our people during monsoon calamities.

The Keralam Government announces immediate financial aid & relief measures for those affected:

🔵₹8 Lakh assistance for families of the deceased.

🔵₹10,000 immediate aid for funeral expenses.

🔵₹10,000 for families… pic.twitter.com/jSpaHmDxZB

— V D Satheesan (@vdsatheesan) August 3, 2026

As of 9 am on Monday, 11,018 persons had been displaced by the rains and flooding and 316 relief camps were functioning in the state, he said at a press conference.

Around 165 hectares of farmland had been damaged, affecting 3,596 farmers, ANI quoted Satheesan as saying.

The India Meteorological Department has warned of rain in all 14 districts of Kerala on Monday.

It has issued an orange alert, signalling a need to prepare for action, has been issued for 12 districts: Palakkad, Thrissur, Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Ernakulam, Idukki, Kottayam, Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta. Meanwhile, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram remain under a yellow alert, advising residents to stay aware

Floods in Assam

The toll in flood-related incidents in Assam rose to 85, the State Disaster Management Authority said on Monday.

The flood situation has improved since Sunday, with the number of affected persons falling to around 1.3 lakh from 1.9 lakh. The number of affected districts has also declined to five.

Since April 29, floods have affected 25 districts and impacted a total of 11.4 lakh persons in the state.

Flood Situation Update | Assam
02 August 2026 | During the Last 24 Hours
Flood conditions continue to affect parts of Assam. Relief and response operations remain underway, with authorities working round the clock to assist affected communities & restore essential services. pic.twitter.com/aNdxeDpmP3

— Assam State Disaster Management Authority (@sdma_assam) August 3, 2026

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Supreme Court on Monday clarified that states can withdraw first information reports filed against youth protesters wherever permissible, in accordance with the law, Live Law reported.

The clarification came in response to concerns raised by petitioners that the court’s July 28 order, which allowed states to continue investigations into the FIRs, could hinder the withdrawal of cases. They argued that closing the FIRs was part of the Union government’s promise to leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign to end the protests.

It also came after the Union government submitted that it was “serious” about its assurance that amnesty would be granted to students who had participated in demonstrations, The Hindu reported.

In its July 28 order, the Supreme Court had directed that minors who had been detained should be released and no coercive action should be taken against protesting students as long as they did not have any “criminal antecedents”.

On Monday, the bench also clarified that the term “criminal antecedents” in the order referred only to “grave and heinous offences”.

The Cockroach Janta Party campaign on Monday said that following the Supreme Court’s clarification it expects all states with Bharatiya Janata Party governments “to immediately honour the assurances given on 25 July to the young of this country”.

“The youth of this country honoured their word,” Saurav Das, a spokesperson for the campaign said. “It is now time for the government to honour its own immediately.”

The Supreme Court’s order had come on a batch of petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20.

During the protest, several demonstrators were injured after the security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

The petitioners also pointed out instances of the police in Bihar using allegedly excessive force against protesters who were demonstrating in solidarity with the youth agitation in Delhi.

On July 25, three protesters were injured after the police opened fire on demonstrators in Bihar’s Siwan district.

Following this, a batch of petitions was filed in the Supreme Court, seeking nationwide guidelines to regulate police action during protests, including a ban on the deployment of plainclothes personnel for crowd-control duties.

The petitioners also sought guidelines to regulate the use of prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. The provision grants the authorities the power to issue orders in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger.

The agitation in Delhi started on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party began a protest at Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time, over the alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive exams. Solidarity protests were held in several states. Pradhan resigned on July 25.

Plea in SC action against organisers of protest

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a petition seeking action against the “organisers” of the July 20 march to Parliament for allegedly inciting violence, Live Law reported.

The petition, filed by a retired Air Force Officer, also proposes that minors who posted purportedly abusive content about Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be made to perform community service instead of facing criminal prosecution.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Follow Scroll’s coverage of the youth protests here

• Youth protests: Can an FIR be withdrawn by political promise?

A Delhi court on Monday acquitted former Bharatiya Janata Party MP and former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case filed against him by six women wrestlers, Bar and Bench reported.

Co-accused Vinod Tomar was also acquitted by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Ashwini Panwar of Rouse Avenue Courts.

Commenting on the verdict, Singh said that the judgement was a matter of happiness for him and his supporters, ANI reported.

“On the first day, when my first statement came, I had said that if any verdict or any charge is proven, I will hang myself,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency. “Today, the court acquitted me with honour…Today is a happy day.”

#WATCH | Delhi | After being acquitted by Rouse Avenue Court in the women wrestlers alleged sexual harassment case, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh says, "... On the first day, when my first statement came, I had said that if any verdict or any charge is proven, I will hang myself.… https://t.co/6O1R8Hj3p5 pic.twitter.com/hR1nsDnfBz

— ANI (@ANI) August 3, 2026

In January 2023, several Indian wrestlers, including medallists Sakshi Malik, Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat, launched a protest against Singh, accusing him of intimidation and sexual harassment.

Seven complainants, including a minor, accused the BJP leader of demanding sexual favours for professional help on at least two occasions, and also reported 15 incidents of alleged molestation and other forms of sexual harassment.

However, the former MP was later cleared with respect to allegations made by one of the women.

Singh was forced to step down from his post after the allegations.

The police had filed a 1,000-page chargesheet in the case in June 2023 after the Supreme Court’s intervention.

After the verdict on Monday, Vinesh Phogat said that the complainants were disappointed with the court’s decision and that they will appeal against the order.

“From the very beginning, the entire system, the government, and this establishment were all trying to protect Brij Bhushan,” Phogat alleged. “...We have not lost hope, and the wrestlers will continue their fight.”

Singh had been charged under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to outraging a woman’s modesty, making sexually coloured remarks, stalking and criminal intimidation.

Tomar, a former assistant secretary of the wrestling federation, was charged with criminal intimidation for threatening one of the complainants.

In May 2025, a Delhi court accepted a closure report filed by the Delhi Police seeking to cancel a separate case against Singh under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. The police had said that there was no “corroborative evidence” against Singh, and that the recommendation was made on the basis of statements of the girl and her father.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Enforcement Directorate whether a limited amount of funds from the Trinamool Congress’ frozen bank accounts could be released to a court-appointed administrator for the party to meet its daily expenses, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench of Justices MM Sundresh and PB Varale was hearing a plea by the Mamata Banerjee-led faction of the TMC challenging the Calcutta High Court order.

The High Court had on July 20 refused to allow the TMC to operate three bank accounts frozen by the ED. The party had approached the High Court challenging the probe agency’s action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The case pertains to alleged financial irregularities, unlawful collection of money and routing of suspected funds through certain bank accounts of the TMC.

On June 19, the Kolkata Police froze debit operations on the accounts, a day after rebel TMC MLA Biswanath Das filed a complaint alleging that funds had been misused. The party has been grappling with factionalism after its loss in the West Bengal Assembly elections in May.

On July 8, the ED said that it had frozen three bank accounts of the TMC, holding deposits worth Rs 440 crore.

The agency claimed that around Rs 160 crore was transferred from the party’s bank accounts to Carewell Aviation India Private Limited and a related company between April 2023 and June 2026.

Carewell Aviation then transferred around Rs 83 crore to another related entity, which was used to buy an Embraer Legacy 600 aircraft and an Agusta 109 Grand New helicopter, the ED claimed. It alleged that Rs 112 crore was spent on the purchases.

On July 9, another bench of the High Court had passed a separate order regarding the same bank accounts, permitting the TMC to use the funds for day-to-day operations under the supervision of a special officer till September 30. The order related to the freeze imposed by the West Bengal Police.

On Monday, when the Supreme Court suggested that the ED should “release some amount”, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju responded that it was already available, Bar and Bench reported. “[Rs] 164 crore is not attached,” he said.

Advocates Kapil Sibal and Menaka Guruswamy, representing the TMC, disputed the ED’s claim and said that no amount could be used by the party as the accounts had been frozen, Live Law reported.

The court granted the ED time to submit a response.

The matter will be heard next on August 11.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Surya river has been a part of our lives ever since 2004, when my husband Ravi began to farm a plot of land in Dahanu in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. We have seen its ebbs and flows for more than two decades so we were not unduly worried when it began to rise almost to the level of our farm on July 23, after three days of unusually heavy rains.

We had no inkling of the ordeal that lay in store for us. Around noon, the Surya crashed through the fences, cascaded through our farm and swept all our rice crops away.

For over five hours that day, the waters swirled furiously around our house before gradually abating.

A few minutes before the water entered the farm, our neighbour, Hemant Gharat, his wife, Hema and their three children, ran into our farm. “The water’s coming,” they yelled as they fled the water rushing into their home.

A little later, their house collapsed.

At the same time, our neighbour, the filmmaker Praveen Kumar, was stuck on the terrace of his house with a visitor as the river swamped his house and submerged his car. The mobile network stopped working so he could not communicate with us.

He had, however, managed to call the helplines of the National Disaster Management Authority, and the police. But no help was forthcoming. It was only at 1.30 am, as the water level fell, that two of his friends rescued him.

Kumar described the hardship he faced, the lack of response from the authorities and the mental anguish and financial loss he has suffered in a petition he sent government officials on July 25.

“We were left to fend for ourselves in the middle of a life-threatening flood, abandoned in our darkest hour by the very machinery that is meant to protect citizens in times of disaster,” he wrote. “This failure of response, coming on top of the failure to warn us before the water was released, is unpardonable and demands the strongest accountability.”

It was only five days after the floods that I was able to visit other villages in the area. Everywhere, I heard horror stories. Shubham Sugandh Gorewala told me how he and his eight-member family – including four children and his mother- in-law – clambered atop the 20-foot-high stack of bricks at their kiln opposite their home in Bharad village around 10 am on July 23 to escape the rising river waters.

They spent the whole day perched on the pile before they were rescued by the fire brigade and the police. Luckily for Gorewala, he still had a phone network and was able to call a revenue official he knew to inform him of his situation.

But the water flowed in through the windows of his home, damaging his possessions, including a fridge and cots. Gorewala said that 40,000 bricks from his kiln were washed away, as was his mini-tractor. He lost several fruit trees, and two acres of rice. He says it will be impossible for him to sell his remaining bricks as the road by the kiln had been washed away.

In Bharad village, the flood destroyed the house of Subhash Mali, who suffers from paralysis. He watched the water inundate his rice field opposite his home and cover it with mud. His wife Ratne said the water gushed into the area and they found it difficult to stay afloat. No one warned them that this would happen. Subhash Mali said he did not have a phone, so there was no question of getting any warnings.

We would later learn that the rain had left 23 people in Palghar dead in July. A preliminary damage assessment report by the district administration said that 15,802 homes had been inundated, The Times of India noted. The damage to private property and public infrastructure was estimated at Rs 180 crore.

The incessant rain had started on July 20 in South Gujarat and the areas bordering Palghar. Dahanu town, about 150 km from Mumbai, was paralysed. The Surya river was flowing much above its normal level but residents had not been warned that the gates of the Dhamni dam upstream were going to be opened to discharge water from its rapidly filling reservoir.

That happened on July 23. According to official information, the Dhamni dam was 94% full at 10 am and the spillway gates were increased by 50 cm, opening to 125 cm. As a result, 18,037 cusecs of water was discharged. The reservoir from the eathern Kawadas dam below Dhamni was also overflowing. It is a pickup weir and has no gates. It discharged a total of 59,599 cusecs of water.

At 11 am, the gates of the Dhamni dam were opened further to 150 cm, discharging 30,671 cusecs. Together with the overflow from Kawadas, this amounted to a massive 116,235.75 cusecs.

According to official sources, the gram sevaks and talatis – village-level revenue officials – were sent Whatsapp messages telling them to inform villagers that a flood was likely. However, the collapse of the mobile phone networks meant the warning could not be passed on to the villages downstream of the Dhamni.

The flood Standard Operating Procedure for Dhamni dam had marked residents of 17 villages downstream to be shifted in case of heavy rain. But it is not clear whether that happened. The Palghar district collector had only issued instructions warning villagers to move to safer locations and be in touch with the gram panchayat for updates.

By the time district officials held a meeting about the flooding at 5.30 pm on July 23, the water had already started abating.

As we realised, electricity was not available for five or six days as many trees and poles had fallen during the heavy rain. Even drinking water was not supplied in most places for several days.

In an emergency, the plan also says that food, clothing and shelter should be provided to the affected population if necessary. But the flood kits that were distributed had only a single bedsheet, a small toothpaste, a bar of soap and a towel – a single packet for each family. Now, grain is also being provided.

On July 27, I sent questions by Whatsapp to the district collector Indu Rani Jakhar and the deputy resident collector on how many villages had been notified about the flood, the extent of flood damage and about relief measures. Newspapers reported that 200 villages in Dahanu and Talasari talukas of Palghar district had been cut off and 800-odd people were evacuated so I also sought information about this.

This article will be updated if they respond.

In the past, we enjoyed the sound of falling rain but it now portends disaster. Extreme weather events like this one will only intensify due to climate change. On average, the district receives 2,458 mm of rain for the entire year. This year, until July 31, Palghar district had already received 1,758 mm.

Just over a week after the deluge, farmers are back to planting rice and going about their activities. There is a crowd at the talati’s office to submit claims for compensation and documents. But our neighbours, the Gharat family, are living in a make-shift shelter with a plastic roof because their house collapsed.

Ravi and I had a narrow escape this time. We suffered only material damage to our crops, trees and fences. But we cannot ride on providence and luck all the time. The administration must take greater responsibility and issue early warnings in situations like this.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and a postdoctoral visiting fellow at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds, UK.

Both Houses of Parliament were adjourned till 2 pm after they reconvened on Monday amid a ruckus following demands by the Opposition that Union Home Minister Amit Shah be present for a discussion on the crackdown on youth protesters on July 20.

The proceedings in the Lok Sabha were paused for an hour, barely four minutes after the House convened at 11 am. At 12.09 pm, the Lower House was adjourned again till 2 pm. The Rajya Sabha was adjourned at 11.20 am.

The Opposition parties have been demanding that Shah make a statement in Parliament about the use of force by security personnel against student protesters in Delhi on July 20. The police in the national capital and the central armed police forces report to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

Opposition MPs also shouted slogans about the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

''अमित शाह कायर है''

बच्चों पर हुई बर्बरता और राम मंदिर में 'चढ़ावा चोरी' के गंभीर मुद्दों के खिलाफ विपक्ष के सांसदों ने पुरजोर विरोध प्रदर्शन किया।

📍संसद परिसर, नई दिल्ली pic.twitter.com/5M6W5DNHkM

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 3, 2026

The student protests in Delhi last month led to the resignation of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union Education Minister on July 25. The protesters, led by the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, had been seeking Pradhan’s resignation on account of alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive exams.

The agitation in Delhi began on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party launched a protest at Jantar Mantar.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital. Their march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the police.

Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators.

The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. The Cockroach Janta Party withdrew the protest on July 25 following Pradhan’s resignation.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has demanded that Shah be removed from his post, alleging that he was responsible for “the brutality carried out against students” on July 20. The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha has also demanded an investigation by a Supreme Court-monitored high-powered committee into violence against the protesters.

Parliament agenda

The Rajya Sabha is expected to take up the 2026 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Amendment Bill for consideration and passing on Monday.

Before the Lok Sabha was adjourned, the Union government introduced the 2026 Indian Statistical Institute Bill and the 2026 Bankers’ Books Evidence Bill.

The Lower House is also expected to take up for consideration the 2026 Supreme Court Number of Judges Amendment Bill.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Assam government invoking the National Security Act against activist Pranab Doley was part of a “growing pattern” of the Bharatiya Janata Party “weaponising extraordinary laws to silence dissent”, alleged the Congress on Monday.

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 at Ingle Pathar, a village adjoining the Kaziranga National Park.

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 evidence.

A day later, the BJP government in Assam detained him under the National Security Act, alleging that Doley 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.

On Monday, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh described the Assam government’s allegations against Doley as “vague and speculative” and claimed that this was a familiar script followed by the Narendra Modi government.

“Similar attempts have been witnessed in Uttar Pradesh, where the NSA was invoked against labour activists protesting against exploitative working conditions in Noida,” said Ramesh.

On 30 July, the Assam Government invoked the National Security Act (NSA) against land rights activist Pranab Doley, just a day after the District Court granted him bail. This is a blatant misuse of preventive detention laws and overreach by the state.

Doley has been arrested for…

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) August 2, 2026

Ramesh was referring to the Uttar Pradesh government booking 60-year-old Satya Verma and 25-year-old Aakriti Chaudhary under the National Security Act for allegedly inciting violence during the workers’ protest in Noida in April.

Verma is a former journalist from Lucknow and Chaudhary, a history graduate from Delhi University, is from Durgapur in West Bengal. The two are members of the Mazdoor Bigul Dasta, a workers’ organisation.

The protest was held on April 13 by workers from several industrial units to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased. A day later, more than 350 persons had been arrested.

Ramesh said on Monday that the court, while granting bail to Doley, observed that “where ecological preservation intersects with indigenous survival, criminal law cannot be used to suppress legitimate local anxieties”.

However, it was “clear that the Assam government invoked the NSA to do exactly that”, alleged the MP.

He also pointed out that the Supreme Court and several High Courts have cautioned against using preventive detention laws “to defeat or circumvent judicial orders granting bail, or merely to prolong a person’s incarceration”.

“BJP governments across the country cannot suppress legitimate grievances of working-class, indigenous, and marginalised communities through arrests and draconian laws,” Ramesh wrote on social media.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.