A burial was disrupted and mourners allegedly assaulted by a mob purportedly associated with Hindutva groups at a church in Sahanagar town of Purba Bardhaman district in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled West Bengal on August 14, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Parish Priest-in-Charge Father Samuel Hembrom of St Claret Church told the newspaper that the mob forced the body, which had already been lowered into the grave, to be taken out. The body was later taken to another cemetery in Bardhaman town, he said.

Hembrom said the mob had demanded to see the “papers for the burial ground”.

“We said give us some time to get them from the church…we protested,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “But they did not allow the burial.”

Hembrom alleged that he sent a complaint by email to the superintendent of police and the block development officer but “nothing happened”.

Purba Bardhaman Superintendent of Police Pushpa told The Indian Express that the woman who died “did not belong to the area”, prompting locals to object to the burial.

The police officer said that the residents had also claimed that the land was a private property and not a cemetery, adding that the land records were being checked.

Pushpa also dismissed reports about the assault on mourners.

“I don’t think there was an assault,” The Indian Express quoted the police officer as saying. “However, I will check with the local police station. There was a law and order problem and police priority was to control that.”

Attacks on Christian gatherings

Several incidents of attacks on Christian gatherings have been reported in West Bengal recently.

On August 26, a prayer meeting at a house in Check Milepost village in Purba Medinipur was disrupted, and the pastor and his wife were allegedly assaulted.

The mob accused Pastor Joy Sutradhar of forcibly converting those attending the prayer meeting to Christianity, The Indian Express reported.

He added that members of the community contacted their lawyers, who came to the police station and helped secure their release. “Out of fear, we did not file a complaint,” he told the newspaper.

Sutradhar said that a police complaint was filed later by email.

On August 25, an attack was reported at a prayer meeting at a house in Ghusuri in Howrah. Father Suraj Saroj of Church of the Grace told the newspaper that community members were beaten and some were injured.

He alleged that police made the group wait for hours at the station and then questioned them about the church, its funds and credentials. The group did not file a complaint and has since suspended house prayers and visits in the area, the newspaper reported.

The police have not commented on the two incidents so far.

On August 23, a mob entered a house in Uluberia town of Howrah district where Sunday prayers were being held, alleging that “forced conversions” were taking place at the gathering.

Pastor Mithun Hazra told The Indian Express that around 60 persons had gathered at the rented house for the prayer meeting. He said a mob chanting slogans entered around 3 pm and assaulted those present before causing damage to the premises.

Hazra said that the police rescued the group and took them to hospital. After receiving treatment, they went to the police station and filed a complaint. “Since that day, we have not held house prayers in the area,” he told the newspaper.

Howrah Rural Superintendent of Police Amit Verma said that police had received a complaint and said a first information report had been registered, The Indian Express reported. No arrests have been made in the case.

Herod Mullick, founder of the Bengal Christian Council said that similar incidents were also reported during house prayers on August 30 in Jagatballavpur in Howrah and Hingalganj in North 24 Parganas.

Debdutta Majhi, president of the Hindu right-wing group Singha Bahini, one of the groups blamed for the attacks, defended the protests.

“In Uluberia and other places, forced conversions with the lure of money are rampant,” The Indian Express quoted Majhi as saying. “We are protesting against this. It cannot be allowed to continue.”

West Bengal Tribal Development and Minority Affairs Minister Kshudiram Tudu told The Indian Express that people have the right to pray and that the government does not believe in interfering with their religious beliefs.

“But if forced conversions – not those by choice – are happening, then law will take its course,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “One has the right to file a complaint.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The authorities in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday demolished a mosque situated within the Saharanpur district magistrate’s office complex, The Times of India reported. The demolition followed a court’s decision to uphold an earlier order declaring the structure illegal.

Samajwadi Party MP Iqra Hasan alleged that she was placed under house arrest by police at her Kairana residence to prevent her from travelling to Saharanpur, ANI reported.

The demolition followed a complaint by a former office bearer of the Bajrang Dal, who alleged that the mosque had been illegally constructed inside the district magistrate office complex, a sensitive government premises where confidential administrative work is conducted, The Times of India reported.

The Bajrang Dal and the Vishva Hindu Parishad are part of a group of Hindutva outfits led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

On July 17, the city magistrate’s court ordered the mosque’s demolition and directed its occupants to pay around Rs 6.41 crore as compensation, citing alleged encroachment and unauthorised use of government land. The order was challenged before the district judge’s court, which on Friday upheld the decision.

On Saturday, the Kairana MP said that the mosque was sealed and barricades were erected around the area after a lower civil court passed its order. “People wanted to speak to the officials to request some time regarding the matter. People wanted to approach the High Court,” she said.

She added that a large police force was deployed at her residence overnight. “I intended to visit Saharanpur to meet officials regarding the Collectorate mosque issue,” Hasan said, adding that she was not allowed to leave her home.

“In a democracy, public representatives are elected to raise the voice of the people,” ANI quoted her as saying. “That voice cannot be suppressed by stopping me.”

Describing the demolition as “shameful”, Hasan said the manner in which the action was carried out showed how “democracy has been murdered”.

“Quick justice is being adopted as the standard approach,” the news agency quoted her as saying.

The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom has agreed to repatriate 39 human remains belonging to the Naga people that were taken during colonial rule and put on display for decades.

The Pitt Rivers Museum, which holds collections from Oxford University, has the world’s largest Naga collection. It has around 8,000 Naga objects, including human remains, mainly skulls, and 178 objects that contain or may contain human hair. The museum removed all human remains from public display in 2020, Reuters reported.

Skulls and other body parts were often taken from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to Britain and other former colonial powers as “trophies”, and were traded, displayed or studied.

There are growing calls worldwide for such human remains, as well as stolen art and artefacts, to be returned to their communities as part of a wider movement seeking reparations for colonialism and slavery.

On Saturday, Naga Tribe Hobos and the Forum for Naga Reconciliation said in a statement that a Naga delegation will travel to the Pitt Rivers Museum to “claim and return” the ancestral remains.

The handover, scheduled for November, will be the largest repatriation of human remains from the museum, The New York Times quoted Pitt Rivers director Laura Van Broekhoven as saying.

Naga representatives have sought the return of the remains for years, with formal discussions with the Pitt Rivers Museum beginning in 2020.

In 2025, a team of Naga representatives visited the museum for talks as part of the repatriation process.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Anamika Pathak.

Also read: Why Nagas want overseas museums to repatriate ancestral human remains in their collections

The toll in the flash flood and mudslide in Nepal and China, which occurred on August 26, rose to 1,375 on Saturday. Of these, 1,344 deaths were reported in Nepal.

The remaining 31 deaths were on the Chinese side of the border, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Nearly 5,000 persons, including 618 foreigners, were missing in Nepal and more than 500 in China. Those missing in Nepal included 275 Indians, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that 166 Indians have been rescued so far. He added that 1,907 Indian citizens had safely crossed into Nepal from China. There are no Indian travellers stranded on the Chinese side, he said.

Jaiswal also said that India had supplied about 95 tonnes of relief material to Nepal on seven aircrafts so far.

The floods occurred in the Rasuwa district along Nepal’s northern border with China. The mountainous district is located about 120 km north of Kathmandu. As there was no rainfall in the area, residents did not have a warning about the deluge.

The United States Geological Survey has said that the floods were caused by a glacial collapse that sent a wall of water and debris downstream, reported AFP.

विपत्तिले भत्कायो, हामी पुनः आशाको पुल जोड्दैछौँ।

नुवाकोटको विदुरस्थित तादी खोलामा एक्रो ब्रिज जडान गर्दै #NepaliArmy #BhotekoshiFlood #नेपालीसेना pic.twitter.com/kJSRguTbfi

— Nepali Army (@NepaliArmyHQ) September 5, 2026

Delhi on Kathmandu’s compensation remarks

On Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal’s remarks on Tuesday that India, China and the US, among the top industrial emitters of carbon dioxide, should compensate Nepal for climate change, Jaiswal said that New Delhi has consistently maintained that climate change is a common challenge.

“Action in this regard must be based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” he said.

Jaiswal further said that developed countries, which are “historically responsible” for emissions and have contributed “overwhelmingly” to climate change, must take the lead in reducing emissions. He added that these countries should support developing nations through financial assistance and technology transfer to address the challenge.

On Tuesday, Khanal had said that Nepal’s greenhouse gas emissions were virtually negligible, yet the country was “paying the ultimate price” for a global crisis it did not create.

However, on Friday, the Nepali foreign minister clarified to ANI that Kathmandu had not formally claimed or asked for compensation from India or any other country.

“Our call has been for the global community to look at this disaster from the perspective of climate change and the impact it’s having in Nepal,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “I’ve also mentioned that all three countries – China, India and Nepal face and share similar environmental ecosystems…”

He said that Kathmandu wants India, China and Nepal to “come together to be better prepared”, but also for the global community not to look at the disaster as a one-time event or a matter of one-time support.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Donations made to six political parties based in Gujarat were more than those made to national parties, except the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the financial year 2023-’24, BBC News Hindi reported on Friday.

The six parties categorised as registered unrecognised political parties were the Aam Janmat Party, Bharatiya National Janata Dal, Garib Kalyan Party, New India United Party, Satyawadi Rakshak Party and the Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party.

The six parties received donations of Rs 1,700 crore during the fiscal year 2023-’24, BBC reported citing data from the Election Commission and the Association for Democratic Reforms poll watchdog.

Five parties recognised as national parties at the time – the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the National People’s Party – had received donations of Rs 1,480 crore.

The Aam Janmat Party had received Rs 620 crore in donations in the fiscal year, more than double of the Congress’ Rs 281 crore, BBC reported.

The financial year included the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections held in April and May that year.

While the five national parties had fielded 893 candidates in the 2024 general election, the six Gujarat-based parties had fielded 15 candidates.

Of the six registered unrecognised parties, four were based in one area of Ahmedabad, Naroda.

In August 2025, Dainik Bhaskar had reported that 10 “anonymous parties” in Gujarat had received Rs 4,300 crore as funds between 2019-’20 and 2023-’24, even though they rarely contested polls.

This period encompassed the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 and 2024, and the 2022 Assembly elections in the state. The 10 parties had fielded only 43 candidates in the polls, who garnered only 54,069 votes in total, the newspaper reported.

The 10 parties included five of the six registered unrecognised parties the BBC reported about on Friday.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had at the time urged the Election Commission to respond to the report, asking how these parties received thousands of crores of rupees and where the money went.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

At least 306 persons have been killed and 49 are missing in Manipur since the beginning of the ethnic violence in the state in May 2023, PTI quoted the government as having told the Assembly on Thursday.

State Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam provided the data recorded till August 31 in response to a question raised in the House. He said that the ethnic conflict had also caused widespread displacement and disrupted normal life across the state.

Ethnic clashes had first broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities.

The state was under President’s Rule between February 2025 and February 2026 after Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh stepped down as the chief minister amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

Yumnam Khemchand Singh became the chief minister on February 4 this year.

He informed the Assembly on Thursday that 60,000 persons were displaced during the violence, which he described as an “unprecedented crisis”, The Telegraph reported. Of them, 36,000 internally displaced persons had been resettled and 24,000 remained in relief camps across Manipur.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

At the rate priceless public heritage buildings are vanishing before our eyes in the Goan capital of Panjim (the Campal lighthouse is the latest infuriating example) or sinister plans seem afoot to hand them over to the casino industry or to the real-estate mafia for “beautification”, “redevelopment” or similar euphemisms for erasure, I felt it necessary to highlight our existing heritage and fervently hope we don’t ever have to mention them in the past tense.

It’s tragic how little we were taught in school about our heritage, and this problem of collective ignorance and apathy has gotten worse over time. It is this endemic ignorance that is partly responsible (apart from corruption and greed, of course) in illogical bureaucratic decisions adversely affecting Panjim’s heritage. What we know little or nothing about, we do not value. The writings of Percival Noronha, Vasco Pinho and Celsa Pinto are invaluable in addressing this lacuna.

The Old Secretariat is probably (after the Panjim church) our capital city’s most iconic landmark edifice, so it felt appropriate to begin with it.

In a different shape and form, it was already standing in 1510 when the Portuguese first arrived in Goa, the “al cazar mourisco” or fort used by Yusuf Adil Shah as his summer residence (the Portuguese called it Palácio de Idalcão), surrounded by a moat. Together with the fortification across the mouth of the river Mandovi (that we know as Reis Magos), it provided crucial defence against naval attack.

It was reconstructed in 1759 and completely remodelled in the Pombaline style (which had developed in Lisbon during the rebuilding following the massive earthquake of 1755) when the Viceroy Dom Manuel de Saldanha de Albuquerque, Conde de Ega shifted his residence from Panelim to Panjim. The moat was filled and converted into a road.

A chapel on the ground floor was dedicated to Nossa Senhora de Imaculada Conceição (Our Lady of Immaculate Conception), the Patroness of Portugal and Panjim. A statue of the crucified Christ with glass eyes from this chapel is now at the chapel of São Sebastião (St. Sebastian), Fontainhas.

The meticulous engravings (above) by cartographer and illustrator António Lopes Mendes (1835-1894) furnish vital information on how the edifice looked when he visited Goa (1862-1871). The river Mandovi lapped its exterior patio, as can be seen.

The high scissor roofs (“tectos em tesoura”) similar to those found in Portugal were replaced in 1887 by the ones we see today, with the major works carried out by Rear Admiral Cardoso de Carvalho. The building remained a residence until 1918, when it was transferred to public administration offices.

Work on the verandah we see today facing the Mandovi and the Abade Faria statue was begun during the tenure of Governor Joaquim José Machado (1897-1900) and completed by his successor General Eduardo Augusto Rodrigues Galhardo (1900-1905).

Most of the footpaths were laid around 1903-1904.

Post-Liberation in 1961, the building was extended along its eastern side soon after the inauguration of the administration of Goa’s first elected chief minister, Dayanand B Bandodkar.

In the words of Vasco Pinho, the Adil Shah Palace as it is also known to us today “was and is undoubtedly Panjim’s most important Portuguese-era landmark”.

He added, “It was Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India, who rightly pointed out that the Idalcão’ established a link with Goa’s pre-Portuguese past.” It is Panjim’s oldest surviving building and Goa’s oldest surviving royal building.

1908: A view of the Secretariat building, Panjim. The 16th century building building was originally the palace of Sultan Adil Shah, a ruler of the Bijapur Sultanate. The building was a summer retreat of the Adil Shah Sultans, and then a Portuguese Rest house. #Goa #Heritage pic.twitter.com/xxYqjpN4AB

— Ananth Rupanagudi (@AnanthOnTrack) September 28, 2025

Those who seem hell-bent on erasing anything remotely connected with the Portuguese and pre-Liberation Goa cannot ignore the fact that the main hall on its first floor was not only the Concelho Legislativo during the colonial period, but in the living memory of most of us was the location of the Legislative Assembly after 1961. The entire building housed offices of Goa’s administrative infrastructure until the move relatively recently to Porvorim in 2000.

Call it what you will, whether the Adil Shah Palace or the old Secretariat, this imposing building in its various avatars over the centuries is of immense historical and heritage importance at the heart of Goa’s capital city.

I have childhood memories of the water fountains illuminated by coloured lights in front of it by the river installed by Chief Minister Bandodkar, quite an attraction for its time.

There was a sense of pride as one walked past its river-facing entrance, with uniformed guards standing at attention. The location of the Independence Day, Liberation Day parades, the daily bugle call at dusk before the lowering of our national tricolour, all these were and are a reflection of the importance given to this important edifice.

In addition, from an architectural perspective, it is a unique blend of so many different styles, worthy of conservation and upkeep for this reason alone.

In fact, the Goa State Heritage Policy 2025 is a comprehensive policy framework aimed at conserving, protecting and promoting Goa’s unique natural, cultural, and architectural legacy. Overseen by the Department of Archives and Archaeology, the policy sets a five-year phased action plan to protect heritage assets like this one.

Instead, the degree of what can only be termed as deliberate and criminal neglect of this heritage site in plain sight is therefore all the more scandalous. All the more so, because it had been given an expensive makeover just before the first edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival (2016). The degeneration that followed after this, in slow motion, unfolding before the eyes of ever passerby, has been quite painful to watch helplessly.

We absolutely cannot allow heritage, historical edifices to crumble as a pre-planned prelude to giving it up for so-called redevelopment. This is our collective inheritance, precious and irreplaceable, irretrievable.

Instead of celebrating and showcasing Panjim’s enviable uniqueness, truly blessed with a riviera, a beach, priceless heritage buildings and tree canopy cover, our city fathers seem single-minded in destroying those very same assets to reduce into another urban mess.

This article first appeared in O Heraldo.

The organised economic boycott of vulnerable and oppressed communities has scarred Indian society for millennia. India’s caste system excluded “untouchable” castes from employment in dignified vocations for since ancient times. This cruel arrangement has trapped them for centuries in want and penury, in illiteracy and in humiliating vocations.

The core of the Sangh project is to thrust Muslims into this same depressed zone.

Boycotts in history have also been a force for good. The boycott of foreign goods in colonial India led by Mahatma Gandhi shook the British Empire. When Rosa Parks in the United States in 1955 was found guilty of violating the Jim Crow racial segregation laws by refusing to vacate her seat in a bus for a white passenger, the Black community boycotted the bus system for 381 days. This brought the bus companies close to ruin, and the US Supreme Court judged the segregation laws to be unconstitutional.

However, the boycotts organised by the Sangh are part of their ambitious malevolent project of Hindu supremacism and anti-Muslim hate. Calls for economic boycott of Muslim businesses and workers dates back to the 1930s. What is remarkable is that these harsh and hateful Hindutva embargoes have remained similar in content and even language from the 1930s until the present day.

Meet BJP MLA from Chikmagalur city, Mr. @CTRavi_BJP, He wants Hindus to boycott Halal products & wants them to 'fight unitedly against Economy Jih@d'.

He also promotes Tender Chicken (Lifeline feeds) based in Chikmagalur which follows 'strict halal norms' while slaughtering. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/UV5ZyxyM5g

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) March 31, 2022

To take just one example, consider Gujarat, where I observed first-hand during many years of my work there among the survivors, the brute power of boycott of Muslims in the aftermath of the 2002 carnage.

An estimated two lakh Muslims were forced to live in relief camps for many months after the carnage, because their homes had been destroyed or they were fearful or prevented from returning. The message from their non-Muslim neighbours of the past was unambiguous. Their preference was that they should never return. But if they did, they would have to live in separate habitations outside the main village, and people would not trade with or employ them.

Consider pamphlets that were widely distributed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in Gujarat in the wake of the Gujarat carnage of 2002. These exhorted Hindus to “Wake up! Arise! Enforce! Save the country! Save the religion!” And in what ways? “Let us resolve! From now on, I will never buy anything from a Muslim shopkeeper”. The pamphlets continued with many similar prohibitions, like “I will not sell anything from my shop to such elements”. “Neither shall I use the hotels of such anti-nationals. Nor their garages”. “From a needle to gold, I will not buy anything made by Muslims”. “Never work in offices of Muslims. Never hire them”. “Do not let them buy offices in our business premises, nor sell or rent our houses to them”. The list goes on.

Through the Modi years, hateful calls for the boycott of Muslims have used similar language but raised this to a new crescendo, amplified shrilly by religious and political leaders and members of the myriad affiliates of the Sangh, wrapped often in dangerous, even genocidal hate speech.

A 2017 video of the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Raja Singh calling for economic boycott of Muslims was shared on a right-wing Telegram group with a caption that said, “Deshadrohi, dharm-drohi, bhaarat virodhi, vidharmiyon ka poorn aarthik bahishkaar.” Which translates to, complete economic boycott of those who are anti-national, anti-religious, anti-India. In the video, the MLA who is notorious for unbridled hate speeches rages to an exhilarated crowd, “Put this in your head, from today, if you buy anything, buy it from a Hindu person not from these traitors [Muslims]. If the 100 crore Hindus living in India follow this ideology, the remaining 25 crore [referring to Muslims] will definitely want to convert into Hinduism.”

Sudarshan News editor, Suresh Chavhanke, can be seen in a video at India Gate on 4 March 2020 asking those gathered to take a vow to economically boycott “rioters”, of course dog-whistling Muslims. “If you want to stop them from slitting your throat”, he roars to a cheering crowd, “then you have to stop donating your money in their ‘green chadar’ now.” He goes on to list the professions of the “rioters” as “barbers, carpenters, puncture fixers, fruit vendors and most importantly, the meat businesses” and says that “we need economic boycott, if we want to stop riots”.

Even BJP chief ministers and senior ministers stoke boycott calls with fake hate conspiracies. A serial offender is the chief minister of Assam, Hemanta Biswa Sarma. When prices of vegetables in the capital city of Guwahati escalated, he blamed Miya Muslims (of Bengali origin) of the state for this, and called on young Assamese to organise their boycott.

A more recent particularly baleful example of religious leaders making boycott calls is of a saffron-clad Anand Swaroop, president of Varanasi-based Shankaracharya Parishad, declaring, “One who reads the Quran becomes a beast, they are no longer human. For those who wish to remain connected to India, they must give up the Quran and namaz. If we start boycotting Muslims socially and economically, they will embrace Hinduism.” He went on, “We want an army of one crore Hindu youth. We don’t need a Swayamsevak (volunteer workers), we need a swayam-sena (a volunteer militia) now. Pick up swords, guns or whatever you have, war has been declared and it will go on till we have a Hindu Rashtra.”

Similar narratives surge on other right-wing groups on a range of social media platforms, lectures by Hindu religious leaders and far-right TV channels like Sudarshan News. A Facebook page called, Economic boycott of Muslims, Hindu should do business with Hindu, has over 6,000 followers and posts photos of street vendors that carried a saffron flag on them to identify themselves as Hindu.

Sushil Tiwari, the head of an outfit that calls itself the Hindu Army, posted a long and detailed Facebook status on how to boycott Muslim businesses. Many more Facebook posts are found that called for an economic boycott of Muslims.

A group that was created to mobilise people for a controversial hate speech event on August 8, 2021, at Jantar Mantar, also called for an economic boycott of Muslims. “Do not buy any goods from a Muslim’s place, do not ride in his car, these people will have to die financially, only then they will be calm. Boycott them in every field, one message on the group exhorted.

Another one listed 24 professions where one should choose “Sanatani” sellers to make India a Hindu Rashtra in a month. Similar slogans were raised by Uttam Malik alias Uttam Upadhyay during the gathering in Jantar Mantar. In an interview with Newslaundry, Malik said, “The economic boycott of Muslims has to be done to save the country. Stop buying goods from them. Only then we’ll be able to break them.”

Deccan Herald reports that under the Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government in Karnataka, there were calls in 2021 for boycotts of Muslim scrap dealers, bangle sellers, dosa hawkers and tongawallahs. In 2022, the boycott list expanded further to include Muslim tour operators, cabbies, street vendors and meat shop owners.

This extended next to Muslim fruit sellers, with videos surfacing of surly-looking men sporting saffron scarves slicing watermelons being sold by Muslims near a Hindu temple. They even called for boycotting Muslim mango farmers and sellers, claiming that Hindus must break the Muslim monopoly in the mango business.

The communal skirmish in Khargone in Madhya Pradesh in April 2022 following a Ram Navami procession raising provocative slogans outside a mosque followed by stone-throwing was first met by government bulldozers. They razed many Muslim properties, including a medical store, a grind mill, a mechanic shop, a utensils and grocery store.

This was followed by calls for boycotting Muslim businesses by Khargone’s Mahajan community in Khargone. WhatsApp messages were circulated by Hindutva groups, listing 40 Muslim-run shops like Pakeeza Showroom, Samir Sports, Ali Gifts in Khargone, with a direction to Hindu women to stop buying from these establishments and to stop going to certain neighbourhoods.

In A Riot-Torn MP Town, Hindus Organise An Economic Boycott Of Muslims
Messages circulating among residents show lists of 40 Muslim owned shops and a direction: “Kripaya Khargone mein in dukanon se kharidari na karein"
Reporting: https://t.co/9um8GjPP34 pic.twitter.com/3pv5HxEU3G

— Vijayta Lalwani (@VijaytaL) April 29, 2022

The Muslim shop owners were asked to vacate their shops by their landlords. Muslim traders reported that most landlords asked them to vacate their shops. The boycott call, they said was preceded by at least 20 free screenings of The Kashmir Files – a film about the killings of Hindus in Kashmir in the 1990s that generated anti-Muslim sentiment countrywide – in March 2022 laid the ground for a receptive audience to the boycott calls. Activists even went to rural areas across 11 tehsils to persuade traders to boycott Muslim businesses at weekly trade fairs.

The communal clash in 2023 in Nuh, neighbouring Gurugram, led to massive retrenchment of Muslim workers and domestic workers in retaliation. A mahapanchayat was called in Tighara village of Gururgam to oppose the police crackdown on village youths for communal violence in Gurugram, including the torching of a mosque and the murder of the Imam. The participants went into an overdrive and gave a call for the boycott of Muslim shops and denying them houses and shops on rent. Hindutva far-right organisations called for an economic boycott of Muslim businesses and keeping Muslims out of villages after the Nuh violence.

Al Jazeera reports that a Bajrang Dal activist warned “Any shopkeeper who keeps any Muslim employed in his shop, then we will paste posters for their boycott outside their shops and will declare them traitors of our community,” via a loudspeaker in a rickshaw on a busy road. He walked with hundreds of followers and with police officials. “Only Hindu hawkers will be present here. If after two days any Muslim hawker is found, then whatever will happen to him only he will be responsible.”

“There are hundreds of Muslim men working in Gurugram as carpenters, barbers, vegetable vendors, mechanics, and cab drivers, and we have always supported them. But now we will ensure they don’t get any support from anywhere as they are responsible for disrupting peace in the city,” said Bajrang Dal’s Kulbhushan Bhardwaj in a gathering.“Muslims should not be allowed to live or work in the city. We appeal to the people of the city not to rent out apartments or slums to them.”

More than 50 village panchayats in three districts – Mahendergarh, Rewari and Jhajjar- of Haryana issued statements that they had banned the entry of Muslim traders in their areas. The official orders issued by them states, “No Muslim will be allowed to do any kind of business in the village such as selling things, buying cattle, begging.”

The local traders’ association in Dharchula, Uttarakhand, cancelled the registrations of 91 shops after a Muslim youth was alleged to have eloped with two girls to Uttar Pradesh. Mahesh Gabrayal, the general secretary of the Dharchula Vyapar Mandal, stated that the registrations were revoked after consulting with the local administration. The owners, mainly from western Uttar Pradesh and belonging to the minority Muslim community, were asked to leave the area. They claimed that many of them were “luring our daughters”.

Gabrayal mentioned that many of these shopkeepers were doing business illegally without registering with the Vyapar Mandal. The association decided to cancel the registration of traders who arrived before 2000, identifying a total of 175 businessmen. Riyaz Ahmad, one of the affected shopkeepers, argued that punishing all traders for one person's crime was unjust. A delegation of traders met with administrative officials to request permission to continue their businesses. Manjit Singh, the sub-divisional magistrate, assured that the issues raised by the shopkeepers would be discussed with their leaders. Many believe this issue could be used as a political strategy to polarise voters in the region.

The idea of boycotting Muslims has even reached tribal regions of central India. A video surfaced, for instance of a village in Sarguja in Chhattisgarh where villagers can be heard saying, “From today, we Hindus pledge to not buy any item from a Muslim shopkeeper and not to sell them anything. We pledge to not sell or give our lands on lease to Muslims. We Hindus pledge to buy from vendors coming to our villages only after ascertaining their religion. We also pledge to not work as labourers for them.”

Often, appeals for boycotting or shutting Muslim shops are dressed up as necessary to defend Hindu religious sentiments. Karnataka saw a medley of campaigns by Hindutva formations against Muslim vendors operating near temples, although this has been the norm for generations. The Hosa Mariguda Temple in Udipi was the first in Karnataka to ban Muslim traders near the temple, followed by the Mahalingeshwari Temple in Bappanadu and the Sri Durgaparmeshwari Temple in Dakshin Kannada.

Members of the Hindu outfit Sriram Sene vandalised four stalls owned by Muslim merchants at the Nuggikeri Anjaneya temple premises on the outskirts of the city, creating tension that led to increased police security. The attack followed a 15-day ultimatum issued by Sriram Sene to the temple's management to evict Muslim merchants, a demand the temple body did not meet.

Hindutva activists went so far to demand that shoe shops run by Muslims close to the Sri Anjaneya Temple in Bengaluru be shut because they somehow desecrated the temple’s sanctity. Nabisab, a long-time merchant, reported that his stall was ransacked, and his produce destroyed. The concerned minister claimed to media persons to be helpless as he refused to intervene to uphold the constitutional right of people to trade anywhere they choose.

In Mandya, Karnataka, Hindutva groups initiated a campaign opposing Muslim artisans sculpting Hindu idols, arguing that they lack adherence to traditional practices. Additionally, there was a demand to rename the “Salaam Aarti” ritual at the Cheluvanarayanaswamy temple to “Sandhya Aarti”, citing concerns over Islamic terminology in Hindu worship.

The PUCL Karnataka issued a statement against boycott campaigns, recalling that Dr BR Ambedkar was a vociferous opponent of social and economic boycotts. He described it as a “tyranny of the majority”. In Ambedkar’s words, “The method of open violence pales before it, for it has the most far reaching and deadening effect.” It is more dangerous because it passes as a lawful method consistent with the theory of freedom of contract.

Warning that such a trend as seen in Karnataka and other parts of India could lead to widespread exclusion even crimes against humanity like in Rwanda and Hitler’s Germany, PUCL called on the government of Karnataka to ensure that criminal action is undertaken against the organisations pressurizing and attempting to cause an economic boycott of Muslim businesses.

Lawyer Shahrukh Alam, who challenged hate speech before the courts, called the economic boycott calls against Muslims “part of a pattern of structural violence against them”. These demands, she said, “somehow presume that Muslims have a lesser right to this country, and thus they can be ordered out of towns and districts. Moreover, such demands violate the integrity and security of the Indian nation. They are violative of guaranteed fundamental rights in the Indian Constitution,” Alam said.

The boycott of Muslim livelihoods in contemporary India closely mirrors the boycott of Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany. This was one of the first markers of the genocide that was to follow. Just three months after Hitler became chancellor, the Nazi party called for a national boycott of the German Jewish people. Armed stormtroopers stood outside Jewish shops and professional establishments holding up menacing boycott placards, which were marked with yellow crosses. Crowds pulled out Jewish judges and lawyers and disgraced them on the streets, and smashed Jewish shop windows and furniture. This marked the beginning of the sustained torment of the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust.

In this darkness, are there any glimmers of hope? Many historians of Nazi Germany I spoke with told me that a significant act of silent resistance against the Nazi boycott calls was to continue to purchase your groceries from the Jewish store in your neighbourhood. They told me that this was not rare. I observe a similar quiet resistance to boycott calls by Hindu buyers everywhere in India as well. I see Hindu employers in eateries, for instance, refusing to retrench their Muslim staff. I take note of how, even amid the darkness of hate boycotts that threaten to erase the livelihoods of vulnerable minorities and vintage traditions of peaceful shared living, light still pierces through the cracks.

I am grateful for the research support of Syed Rubeel Haider Zaidi.

Harsh Mander, peace and justice worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign in solidarity and support to victims of hate violence. He is a visiting faculty in the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University. His recent books are Under Grey Smoggy Skies: Living Homeless on the Streets of India’s Cities; and A Matter of Life and Death: The Unfinished Journey to Secure Healthcare for All.

The number of names deleted from the draft voter list in Delhi as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls exceeded the 2025 winning margins in 68 of the national capital’s 70 Assembly seats, a study by Sabar Institute showed on Friday.

In the draft voter list released on Monday, more than 47 lakh names were deleted. The names account for about 33% of the Union Territory’s electorate.

Of those removed, 43.3 lakh names, or 29.8% of the electorate, were marked as absent or permanently shifted. About 2.8 lakh persons were marked as dead and 1.4 lakh as excluded for having been enrolled at multiple places.

More than 20 lakh deletions in Delhi were in the 30 to 44 age group.

Voters can file claims and objections against their exclusion from the draft list between August 31 and September 30. The appeals will be heard by October 29. The final electoral roll will be published on November 4.

Deletions and winners’ margins

In 24 seats, more votes were cast in the 2025 polls than the number of electors in the draft list published on Monday. In 36 seats, more voters have been removed than all votes polled by the winner.

In the Assembly polls held in February 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won 48 of the 70 seats, and defeated the Aam Aadmi Party. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party had won 22 seats.

“The uncollectable rate [names deleted] is high everywhere and markedly uneven, ranging from a sixth to nearly a half of an Assembly [constituency]’s pre-revision electors,” the institute said. “It is systematically higher where the 2025 contest was closer...”

However, the institute said that a “high uncollectable rate in a marginal seat is consistent with genuine population churn in the kinds of dense, tenanted, migration-heavy neighbourhoods that also tend to produce close contests” and that no causal claim can be made based on the data.

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

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

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

During the third phase, more than six crore names have been deleted from draft lists.

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Hyderabad: SIR deletions equal 89% of 2023 Assembly election turnout, shows study
• Scroll’s SIR experience is a microcosm of what urban India is facing

The names of some women voters stood out while I was looking up my parents’ details in the 2002 voter list for the Special Intensive Revision exercise being conducted in Haryana.

“Bhateri” and “Bharpai” seemed to be common names that were repeated across voter lists. Bhateri comes from the Haryanvi word “bhatera”, which means enough, while the word “Bharpai” indicates something that is surplus or plentiful.

It was an unsettling realisation that these names for women were common up until a few decades ago.

They are a reflection of Haryana’s deep-seated preference for sons. The 1981 Census noted that Haryana had only 870 females per 1,000 males, far below the national average of 933 females per 1,000 males. Voters born around 1981 would have been at least 21 years old when the SIR was conducted in 2002.

Conversations with women in my family and neighbourhood revealed that these names were quite common in Haryana till some decades ago. For the women bearing such names, it was humiliating but also something they had come to live with.

I asked my neighbour, also named Bhateri, what she felt about her name. She sighed and said, “Bebe, bhunda to lagya ae kare.” Sister, it does feel deeply unpleasant.

She added: “It is humiliating to be labelled as a burden to your family.”

An aunt recalled how in her village, Dubaldhan Majra, a neighbour’s daughter-in-law had seven daughters, the youngest named “Khatam”, which means finish or stop. The woman’s eighth child was a son.

The older women I spoke to expressed little distress about such names, saying that it was common, and some even believed that such names were effective in stopping more daughters from being born in a family.

Younger women with such names, though fewer in numbers, were more indignant and critical. A 36 -year-old woman named Maafi, which means forgiveness, recalled that when she moved to Rohtak for higher education, her name evoked surprise, discomfort and even ridicule from her classmates.

When Maafi would introduce herself, she would be asked, “Ayein, kitni bhaan ho tham? Tu aakhri hai ke?” How many sisters are you in total? Are you the last one?

Maafi said names like hers were humiliating but also conveyed how her family viewed women and gender rights. She said her name was also an indicator of her family’s social and economic background as one with limited access to education and not very well-off.

Maafi considered getting her name officially changed, but the long-drawn out, legal-bureaucratic process dissuaded her. Although she is known as Maafi in her natal village, she introduced herself as “Tamanna” in her marital village, a name she has informally taken on. She asserts that it is a step towards changing how the world sees her.

The unwanted women

The history of such disparaging names likely stretches back to the 1940s and 1950s. According to my broad estimate, some of the women with such names in the electoral lists for my neighborhood were in their late 60s and early 90s.

Conversations with women in my neighbourhood uncovered more unpleasant names. Older and even younger women as they remembered the names of their friends, aunts, neighbours, relatives and grandmothers.

Some of these names included Dadka, which in Haryanvi refers to the sound produced when something burdensome falls unexpectedly from above; Dhapa, comes from Dhap in Haryanvi, which refers to a state of being “full”, here, referring to the number of girls in a family; Rambhateri literally translates to a request to God that “we have had enough girl children”.

Bohti, is a translation of the Hindi word “bohot”, which means more than enough; Sarli, which refers to something being suitably enough; Baadho, comes from the Haryanvi word for extra; similarly themed names were Anchahi, or unwanted, and Manbhari, which means no more is required.

In the 1970s, advances in prenatal diagnostics came to India as well. Women I spoke to pointed out that usually, it was not the first or the second daughters who were given disparaging names but the fourth or the fifth daughter.

After the introduction of sex determination technologies, the possibility of having five or more daughters in a family reduced significantly. Women I spoke to believe this led to a decrease in the number of girls with such names, which suggests that this decline in the later decade was prompted by the misuse of sex determination technology and not necessarily due to a progressive change in the outlook of Haryanvi society.

In the later years, around the 1970s, women I spoke to said that popular names included Seema, the Hindi word for limit; Mafi, which suggested forgiveness from continuous female births; Kafi, or enough; Antima, which means last; Khamosh, or quiet, and Santosh, which means satisfied. These names reflect a remodelling of disparaging names where the prejudice was wrapped in an indirect and softer vocabulary.

Another set of names that caught my attention in the 2002 voter list were of women named after fruits and other edible items. Some of these names included Santro, derived from the Hindi word santra for the fruit orange; Angoori, from the word angoor, which in Hindi refers to grapes; Kelo/Kelapati from the Hindi word kela for banana; Anaro, from the Hindi word anar for pomegranate; Pataso, from the Hindi word patasa, which is a kind of sugar candy, and Barfi, the milk-based sweet.

These names were not openly disparaging but nonetheless indicated a careless or even patronising attitude towards girl children, reducing them to objects of consumption.

The men’s names starkly differed: Mahaveer, or great warrior; Balwan, referring to one who is strong and well-built; Paramjeet, who is supreme in victory; Kuldeep, the light of the family; and the like. These names indicate the fondness with which sons were welcomed in the family, and the potential they were expected to achieve in their lives.

The names in Haryana’s 2002 voter rolls seem to reflect gendered prejudice from a previous era. But the state’s sex ratio in recent years indicates that Haryanvi society still favours male children.

Haryana’s sex ratio at birth showed signs of improvement, rising from 879 in 2011 to 923 by 2019. But it had plummeted to 895 girls per 1,000 boys in the first half of 2026.

Names constitute one’s identity but they are also repositories of the social values and cultural histories of communities we belong to. The names marking out the undesirability of women forced them to carry the weight of the perceived insignificance for their lifetime.

Though no longer pervasive anymore, these names are remnants of the state’s legacy of gender bias which persists in different forms, with different names.

Samiksha is a PhD student at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Rajasthan High Court Acting Chief Justice Sanjeev Prakash Sharma on Friday claimed that the allegations by a Supreme Court judge that he had misused his administrative powers were baseless and made out of resentment, Live Law reported.

Justice Sharma said that he had full faith in the judicial system and urged all those concerned to wait for the decision of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant before arriving at a conclusion.

Last month, Supreme Court Justice Sandeep Mehta, in letters to Kant, accused Sharma of manipulating the listing of cases to favour rich litigants and using his position to appoint persons close to him to administrative posts. Mehta had sought that Sharma be replaced with immediate effect.

The Supreme Court collegium on August 31 recommended the appointment of Justice Sanjay K Agrawal as the chief justice of the Rajasthan High Court. Sharma is due to retire on September 26.

The acting chief justice of the High Court, in a statement to the media, said he has explained his position to Kant and refuted the allegations against him with evidence, Bar and Bench reported.

“I have full faith in the Indian judicial system,” he was quoted as having written by Bar and Bench. “Once the appropriate time arrives and I receive approval from the CJI, I will personally appear before the media to present my side; until then, I request everyone to remain patient.”

Sharma was appointed as a Rajasthan High Court judge in November 2016 and transferred to the Patna High Court in 2022.

After Sharma sought to return to Rajasthan on health grounds, the collegium headed by DY Chandrachud, the chief justice at the time, declined his request in March 2023. Sharma was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court instead.

In May 2025, a fresh collegium recommended his return to Rajasthan. He later became the acting chief justice of the Rajasthan High Court.

The allegations

In his letters, Mehta wrote that Sharma had held the position of acting chief justice for “more than 10 months”.

The Supreme Court judge has also claimed that several judges of the Rajasthan High Court had approached him during his visits to the state and expressed concerns about Sharma’s conduct.

He alleged that Sharma had “frequently” threatened fellow judges with “retributive action”, including transfers, while “claiming his closeness” with the chief justice of India.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Kenyan President William Ruto on Thursday said that he has ordered India’s Tata Chemicals to stop operations in the country, saying that its presence had failed to benefit his country, the BBC reported.

Ruto said that the Indian company had been exporting soda ash instead of processing the mineral locally to produce glass and chemicals. Soda ash, or sodium carbonate, is a chemical that is widely used across industries, especially in glass production.

The Kenyan president made the remarks during a visit to Magadi in Kajiado county, where Tata Chemicals operates a soda ash plant. He said that the company had held a contract for about 100 years but had done little to develop local industries.

“I told them the other day to pack up and leave,” BBC quoted Ruto as saying in Swahili. “They have not built anything in Kajiado, they have not built any factory in Kajiado.”

Tata Chemicals said that it respected the authority of the Kenyan government and remained committed to “constructive engagement through the appropriate legal and regulatory channels to resolve the outstanding matters”, Reuters reported.

The company added that its "priority continues to be the well-being of our employees, the Magadi community, ⁠our ​stakeholders in Kenya and the continued economic ​development of Kenya". It added that it has provided a “comprehensive” reply to the matters raised by the Kenyan government.

Tata Chemicals Magadi employs around 500 persons and claims its community programmes benefit about 30,000 persons around Magadi through water, healthcare, education, infrastructure and other support, BBC reported.

However, Ruto said that the company was not doing enough for Kenya and accused it of taking the country's resources abroad. He added that his government would bring in two new companies to take over the operations and process the mineral locally.

Tata Chemicals is one of Kenya’s largest mineral exporters and Africa’s biggest soda ash producer. The company exports more than 3.5 lakh tonnes of soda ash annually to markets including India, Southeast Asia, West Asia and other parts of Africa.

Kenya is the world's fourth largest producer of natural soda ash accounting for 1% of global production, according to the United States Geological Survey.

In July, the Kenyan government had ordered Tata Chemicals to suspend operations at the Magadi soda factory, Reuters reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A student activist was injured in Bordumsa town of Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district during a protest against the inclusion of Chakma people who arrived in the state after 2006 in the special intensive revision of voter rolls, India Today NE reported.

A member of the All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union, Khoda Lazer, was injured in clashes between Chakma organisations and student groups, during which stones were thrown. He was taken to a hospital, Northeast Now reported.

Security personnel were subsequently deployed in Bordumsa and adjoining areas to maintain law and order.

The Chakmas and Hajongs were displaced by the construction of the Kaptai Dam in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh in 1957. In the 1960s, the Indian government settled them legally in the territory now known as Arunachal Pradesh.

The violence on Friday took place a day after a hearing on claims and objections at a polling station in Bordumsa was disrupted by members of the students’ union.

The All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union has alleged that bogus names were being included in the electoral rolls, and that this would threaten the identity and interests of the state’s indigenous communities. Student groups in Arunachal Pradesh have been demanding that Chakmas who arrived in the state after 2006 not be included in the voter rolls.

On the other hand, the Chakma Development Foundation of India has approached the National Human Rights Commission, seeking that Chakma and Hajong voters be protected.

It said that there were “serious threats” to the life and liberty of Chakmas and Hajongs during upcoming hearings.

“The CDFI has therefore sought directions from the NHRC to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the State of Arunachal Pradesh, and the Election Commission of India to ensure the right to life and personal liberty of Chakmas and Hajongs during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision,” it said in a press release.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Arunachal chief minister’s threat to remove Chakmas and Hajongs is the long tail of the Assam Accord

US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor recently claimed that the US-India trade agreement is on the verge of finalisation and that “almost everything” about the agreement was done “in principle”.

However, even as Ambassador Gor was exuding confidence regarding the deal, two initiatives taken in Washington in just over a month have brought yet another round of tariff war at India’s doorstep. These initiatives have the potential of increasing friction between the two countries, and could even torpedo the deal.

The most egregious of these developments is theLindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill tabled in the US Senate, which has the backing of the US President.

This Act proposes imposition of tariffs of up to 100% on all goods from three sets of countries: the five largest importers of Russian crude oil; the five largest importers of Russian natural gas; and countries facilitating Russian oil sanctions evasion.

India, the second largest buyer of Russian crude oil, is an obvious target of the proposed excessive tariffs. This is a continuation of the actions successive US administrations have taken against the Russian Federation since its war against Ukraine.

The second development is Donald Trump’s proposal to impose 100% tariffs on generic medicines from 2028, unless the firms exporting these medicines do not reshore their operations to the US. This proposal could significantly affect India’s pharmaceutical industry since the US is its largest export market.

The bipartisan Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, named after the Republican Senator, who was the bill’s strongest proponent, was overwhelmingly voted by the Senate (86-11) in early August. The House of Representatives would take up the bill for consideration after it reconvenes in early September, and could push for its early adoption.

The primary objective of the bill is to tighten the economic sanctions on Russia for its continued war on Ukraine. The bill proposes 500% tariffs on all goods imported into the US from Russia. It also proposes 100% tariffs on all goods imported into the US from the five largest importers of crude oil or natural gas, by total volume, originating in the Russian Federation. As one of the largest importers of Russian-origin crude oil, India also faces penal tariffs for facilitating Russia’s sanctions evasion.

Market analysts put India as the second-largest buyer of Russian crude oil in July 2026, valued at over USD $7.3 billion, or about 37% of Russia’s global exports.

According to Indian government data, India’s dependence on Russian crude oil increased from 30% to nearly 43% of its total imports between January and June 2026. In February 2026, after the US and India reached a framework for an Interim Agreement as a step towards finalising the trade deal, President Trump announced that the 25% tariffs imposed on India in August 2025 for importing Russian crude oil was withdrawn.

India, according to Trump, had “committed to stop directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil, has represented that it will purchase United States energy products from the United States”.

However, after the conflict in West Asia, India’s dependence on Russian crude increased to record levels, and simultaneously, its imports from the US dropped from 13% in April 2025 to 3% in June 2026. Trump would surely have viewed this development as a trigger for action against India.

India’s generic pharmaceutical industry faces uncertain times following President Trump’s post on Truth Social announcing his decision to impose a 100% tariff on all generic medicines from 2028, and increased to 200% a year by 2029. The objective of this proposed increase in tariffs is to “Reshore Generic Pharmaceutical Production into America, with a penalty to those Companies that decide not to build Plant and Equipment within the stated period of time given to them”.

This announcement followed an earlier decision of the US President to impose a 100% tariff on patented pharmaceuticals and associated pharmaceutical ingredients from July 31, 2026, if the companies exporting them do not declare plans to start producing in the US. Thus, Trump has put in place an expansive plan to control the global pharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceuticals are the second largest products in India’s export basket to the US, accounting for about 13% of total exports in 2025-’26. More importantly, the US is the largest export market for all major Indian pharmaceutical companies.

The US accounted for about a third of the total sales of most companies, but two Indian pharma companies – Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and Zydus Life Sciences – are considerably more dependent on the US market: their shares of sales to the US were close to 50% in 2023-’24.

Besides, all the top Indian companies have invested in production capacities in the US through their subsidiaries, with the largest company, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries having 21 subsidiaries in 2025-’26.

Trump’s insistence that the generic pharmaceutical companies must invest in the US to escape 100% tariff in 2028 has had its desired effect as Indian companies, including pharmaceutical companies have already announced their plans to invest over $19.1 billion to increase their production capacities in the US.

Only time will tell whether these investments will result in diversion of India’s domestic pharmaceutical production to the US, and the implication this could have on the availability of medicines in India.

Biswajit Dhar is Honorary Fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. Earlier, he was Director General, Research and Information System for Developing Countries and a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Former civil servant Ashish Joshi, who was picked up during his morning walk on Wednesday by plainclothes police personnel and interrogated for several hours, said on Friday that a first information report had been registered against him for a social media post. It was filed under sections pertaining to provocation with the intent to cause a riot.

Sharing a video posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Joshi asked if Section 192 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, under which he was charged, would also be invoked against the Hindutva party as the clip “clearly meets the threshold of provocation”.

The video posted by the BJP had called on its state units to “rip apart the propaganda” of ‘dimagi Naxals’, or persons with “Naxal mentality”. Read on.

‘Dimagi naxals’: The freedom to disagree is a political right – and is economically valuable, writes Freddy Thomas

The Delhi Police have detained a Hindutva influencer who allegedly assaulted the father of a student activist during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar. This came after a row sparked by a purported video of the influencer, Swatantra Bharadwaj, claiming that a call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest.

On July 23, Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Aazad, was assaulted at Jantar Mantar during demonstrations against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations. Recently, a purported video of Bharadwaj that was widely shared online showed him claiming that he was not jailed despite having “cracked the skull” of Kumar.

Following the controversy over the video, members of the Cockroach Janta Party held a protest outside the Parliament Street police station, demanding that charges under provisions relating to attempt to murder be added to the first information report registered in the case. Read on.

HarperCollins India said it will publish Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, in the subcontinent. This came after Penguin Random House India, which was supposed to publish the book originally, backed out.

Last month, media reports said that Penguin India had dropped the memoir after Gandhi rejected certain “editorial changes and deletions” that the publisher wanted in the manuscript. However, said this was not accurate. Read on.

The toll in the flash flood and mudslide in Nepal and China, which occurred on August 26, rose to 1,311. Of these, 1,290 deaths were reported in Nepal.

The remaining 21 deaths were on the Chinese side of the border. Nearly 5,000 persons were missing in Nepal and more than 500 in China. Those missing in Nepal included 601 foreigners.

Two men were rescued from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project on Friday, nine days after the flood. Read on.

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

In July, officials in Balaghat were alerted to the mysterious deaths of three Adivasi children in Bondari, a village in eastern Madhya Pradesh.

“We initially thought it was a seasonal flu. But when we went door to door, we found sick children in every house, ” said the then sub-district magistrate Arpit Gupta.

The kids suffered from fever, their bodies erupted in rashes, and their eyes swelled and turned yellow. The disease, which spread like wildfire across neighbouring villages, killed 29 children in Birsa block.

“In just four days, two of my children passed away. One in the morning, the other the next evening,” said Mahasingh Parte from Matla village.

Scroll travelled to Balaghat to find out what exactly happened and who is responsible.

The Delhi Police has detained a Hindutva influencer who allegedly assaulted the father of a student activist during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar, PTI quoted unidentified officers as saying.

This came after a purported video of the influencer, Swatantra Bharadwaj, claiming that a call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest over the assault sparked a row.

On July 23, Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Aazad, was assaulted at Jantar Mantar during demonstrations against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations.

Recently, a purported video of Bharadwaj that was widely shared online showed him claiming that he was not jailed despite having “cracked the skull” of Kumar.

Following the controversy over the video, members of the Cockroach Janta Party staged a protest on Friday outside the Parliament Street police station, demanding that charges under provisions relating to attempt to murder be added to the first information report registered in the case.

CJP co-convenor Saurav Das said that the additional deputy commissioner of police had promised to adding charges of attempt to murder and provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act to the case, PTI reported.

“Goons like Swatantra Bharadwaj came to Jantar Mantar,” ANI quoted Das as saying. “Did Delhi Police not identify them? He committed attempt to murder. Delhi Police is saving him, no action was taken.”

Meanwhile, Bharadwaj has claimed that he acted in self-defence and had he not done so he could have “lynched by the mob or killed”.

“There was no attempt to attack [Kumar],” ANI quoted him as saying. “I have proof in the form of videos. I was gheraoed by 10-15 people. When I acted in self-defence, he was hit on the head.”

He added: “As per his medical report from Delhi Police, he did not suffer major injuries.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Former civil servant Ashish Joshi, who was picked up during his morning walk on Wednesday by plainclothes police personnel and interrogated for hours, said on Friday that a first information report had been registered against him under sections pertaining to provocation with the intent to cause a riot for a social media post.

Sharing a video by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Joshi asked if Bharatiya Naya Sanhita Section 192, under which he was charged, would also be invoked against the Hindutva party as the content it had posted “clearly meets the threshold of provocation”.

The section relates to “wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot”.

The FIR against Joshi was registered for a social media post he made on August 26, in which he had called for a “Nuremberg-style trial” of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, reported The Wire.

The Nuremberg trials were held between 1945 and 1949 to hold leaders of Nazi Germany responsible for World War 2 and the Holocaust that killed six million European Jews, and around four million to six million non-Jew persons, including Poles, Sinti, Romani and disabled people.

Joshi, however, said that he had been questioned about another social media post from last month, in which he had alleged that there had been a “massive showdown” between Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Home Secretary Govind Mohan after the police action against students protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

The post was withheld in India, with X stating that the action was taken “in response to a legal demand”.

The video by the BJP that the former bureaucrat shared on Friday contained a scene from the television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The subtitles in the video spoke about “protecting India from ‘dimagi Naxals’”.

This was in reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day, when he said that “dimagi Naxals”, or persons with “Naxal mentality”, are a threat to Indian society and called for them to be “found and isolated”.

Modi had also claimed that persons with Maoist ideology had for years “established themselves in the corridors of power and influenced policy-making, including as advisers on government committees”.

The BJP video, originally posted on August 28, said that state units of the party should “rip apart the propaganda” of “dimagi Naxals”.

Dear @CPDelhi @DelhiPolice,
​The Delhi Special Cell on 2nd September, 2026 initiated a suo motu FIR against me under Section 192 BNS.
​A fair application of the law must be consistent. The content in this quoted post clearly meets the threshold of provocation under BNS 192. To… https://t.co/NCfU8omgUe

— Ashish Joshi (@bismil_prasad) September 4, 2026

On Friday, Joshi asked if suo moto action would be taken against the video “to maintain public trust and constitutional neutrality”.

“If BNS 192 is being enforced against provocation and intent to cause unrest, look at the quoted video,” he said on social media. “If the rule of law applies equally to all, initiate the same suo motu action here.”

Joshi, a 1992-batch Indian Post and Telecommunication Accounts and Finance Service officer, retired on March 31. He was earlier posted in the Union Department of Telecommunications.

In February 2019, he was suspended by the Union government after he sought action against “incendiary” posts of former Aam Aadmi Party MLA Kapil Mishra, who later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.

His suspension was revoked in November 2021.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Of the 2,873 persons that the facial recognition software identified as allegedly having criminal records among those present during the youth protest at Jantar Mantar, 25 were in jail according to police and court records when they were spotted, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The police had submitted the data to the Supreme Court on August 17 during the hearing in a case alleging that the police used excessive force against the protesters during the march to Parliament on July 20.

It said that its facial recognition software identified persons at the protest site whose “particulars matched with existing records available in official police databases”, reported the newspaper.

However, the police did not specify if those identified were accused, convicts or only named in criminal cases.

The Indian Express reported that an investigation of the records showed that of the 25 persons, allegedly in jail but present at the protest site, 17 face charges of murder, four of rape and four more of attempt to murder.

In its affidavit, the police had told the court that “no actions are taken solely based upon the result of the facial recognition system”.

After the face is recognised, field verification is done as the person’s details are already in police records, the police said. If it is found during the process that the person was present at the site, action is taken, the police added.

In 2022, in response to a Right to Information query, the police said they considered a match “positive” if the facial recognition system achieved an accuracy rate of 80%. This could, however, depend on the algorithm, camera angle, lighting, image quality, masks and the database being searched.

In response to the newspaper’s questions about the findings, the police said on Friday that further investigation was pending.

Action against identified individuals

The Union government had moved the Supreme Court on Monday seeking to quash all first information reports filed in connection with the youth protests. However, it said that it would continue the investigation against the 2,873 persons with criminal records at the protest site.

The government said that the investigation would focus on “bodily harm or destruction of property”, proposing to register a single, fresh FIR against the identified persons.

On Tuesday, the court allowed the government to proceed with the proposal, while ordering that all other FIRs registered in connection with the protests be quashed.

Subsequently, the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign withdrew its call for a march on Saturday, which it had called, alleging that the Union government had failed to “honour its July 25 commitments”. The commitment had led the campaign to call off its protest at Jantar Mantar at the time.

One of the demands was that “no punitive action would be taken against any protester, either now or in the future” in any state ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party or its National Democratic Alliance partners.

The youth protests began on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar demanding 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 police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis and fired tear gas shells and pellet guns at 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.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The committee set up to conduct a survey and study of the Aravallis has informed the Supreme Court that the mountain range’s complex landscape cannot be defined using a single terrain or height-based criterion, The Times of India reported on Friday.

It has sought time till February to complete the exercise.

The committee, formed in May, was tasked with defining the Aravallis after the Supreme Court’s adoption of a definition by a Union environment ministry panel led to widespread protests, particularly in Rajasthan. The definition recognised only hills with an elevation of 100 metres or more as part of the Aravallis and was adopted by the court in November.

The court stayed its decision in December amid concerns that the changed definition of the Aravallis could lead to unregulated mining and severe environmental degradation.

In the report submitted to the court, the committee said that it needed to carry out detailed mapping, field inspections, expert assessments and consultations with stakeholders before submitting its final recommendations, The Times of India reported.

“Defining the ancient, and in parts severely degraded, ranges that run between Gujarat and Delhi isn’t an easy task because the Aravallis lack uniformity,” the newspaper quoted the committee as having stated.

The 700-km Aravalli mountain range stretches diagonally from southwest Gujarat, through Rajasthan, to Delhi and Haryana. Its highest point is Guru Shikhar in Mount Abu, which rises to an elevation of 1,722 metres.

The committee also warned that a narrow definition could leave connected hills, forests, aquifers and other environmentally important areas unprotected, harming the ecology of the northern plains and increasing the National Capital Region’s vulnerability to dust storms.

The committee said that it would, therefore, consider information on the region’s geography, ecology, geology, water systems, social and economic conditions, and views from stakeholders, the newspaper reported.

It is considering an Aravalli Ecosystem Landscape framework that would look at the range as a whole rather than just a collection of hills and ridges, the newspaper reported.

The committee is also studying how mining, stone quarrying, stone crushing and unregulated sand mining have affected the landscape, water resources, drainage and biodiversity.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The toll in the flash flood and mudslide in Nepal and China, which occurred on August 26, rose to 1,311 on Friday. Of these, 1,290 deaths were reported in Nepal.

The remaining 21 deaths were on the Chinese side of the border, reported Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Nearly 5,000 persons were missing in Nepal and more than 500 in China. Those missing in Nepal included 601 foreigners.

त्रिशूली-3A मा जलविद्युत् आयोजनाको सुरुङभित्रबाट दुई जना व्यक्तिको जिवितै उद्धार #NepaliArmy #नेपालीसेना #BhotekoshiFlood pic.twitter.com/PLiOsN7KjM

— Nepali Army (@NepaliArmyHQ) September 4, 2026

Two men were rescued from a tunnel at the Trishuli 3A Hydropower Project on Friday, nine days after the flood.

The men have been identified as Sanjay Sah and Kabir Maharjan, The Kathmandu Post quoted an official as saying. They were rescued after the search teams heard voices from inside the tunnel.

Several more persons could still be inside the tunnel and rescue teams were continuing to search for them, the newspaper reported.

As of Friday, 166 Indians were rescued from Nepal, ANI quoted Indian Ambassador to Nepal Naveen Srivastava as saying.

The floods occurred in the Rasuwa district along Nepal’s northern border with China. The mountainous district is located about 120 km north of Kathmandu. As there was no rainfall in the area, residents did not have a warning about the deluge.

The United States Geological Survey has said that the floods were caused by a glacial collapse that sent a wall of water and debris downstream, reported AFP.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: Warming may have induced glacial floods in Nepal, but the damage downstream is manmade

The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday asked states and Union Territories in the Himalayas to step up preparedness against glacial lake outburst floods and snow avalanches.

A glacial lake outburst flood is a sudden release of water from a lake formed by melting glaciers when a natural dam holding it back breaks. Such lakes can form beside, in front of, within, beneath or on the surface of a glacier.

Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan chaired a meeting attended by the chief secretaries and disaster management officials of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir, the ministry said.

The meeting came against the backdrop of flash floods on the Nepal-China border on August 26, which led to more than 1,300 deaths. Over 5,000 are missing.

Officials reviewed the risk of glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalayas, focussing on early warning, monitoring vulnerable glacial lakes and snow-covered areas.

The review also focused on identifying high-risk locations and flow paths, timely dissemination of alerts, evacuation preparedness and strengthening response mechanisms.

The home secretary said that preparations for natural disasters should focus not just on responding to them, but also on planning ahead, reducing risks and preparing local communities, the ministry stated. He added that there was a need for continuous and proactive monitoring of vulnerable glacial lakes and areas prone to avalanches, especially during periods of increased risk.

He also said that the states should expedite work on the glacial lake outburst flood mitigation projects sanctioned by the Union government in 2024.

The meeting was also attended by officials of the National Disaster Management Authority, Central Water Commission, India Meteorological Department and Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Flood risks to Nepal hydropower project were known – but banks ignored them
• Nepal: Warming may have induced glacial floods, but the damage downstream is manmade

The Supreme Court on Thursday held that the Bar Council of India and state bar councils do not have the statutory power to take disciplinary or punitive action against law students, Live Law reported.

The bar councils get disciplinary powers over law students only after they enrol as advocates, the court said.

It also held that the directions issued by Bar Council of India chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra on August 13 with respect to the graduating batch of students at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research were unlawful, Live Law reported.

Mishra had directed state bar councils to defer the enrolment of the graduating batch as advocates after the students campaigned against inviting Chief Justice Surya Kant to their convocation over his remarks on police action against youth protesters. The Bar Council of India’s order had also sought an inquiry against the students and faculty members. The council, however, withdrew the directive hours later.

A day after the directive was issued, the Supreme Court had passed an interim order protecting NALSAR students and faculty members from punitive action by the Bar Council of India or any state bar council. Kant had described the bar council’s order as “absolutely uncalled for”.

On Thursday, a bench headed by Kant disposed of the petition and made the interim order absolute, Live Law reported.

Mishra, a Bharatiya Janata Party-nominated Rajya Sabha MP, had on August 16 apologised to law students for having issued the directive. He wrote in a three-page letter that “if anything connected with the present controversy, any of my words, or letter, has hurt the feelings of our law students, I sincerely regret and apologise for the same”.

NALSAR row

NALSAR had extended an invitation to the CJI for the upcoming convocation despite students urging the university to reconsider the decision, citing Kant’s response to a petition alleging that police had used excessive force against protesters in Delhi on July 20.

Kant had reportedly told the lawyer not to “waste our time” and said the bench was not interested in watching video evidence of the alleged police action.

In a communication addressed to state bar councils and NALSAR Vice-Chancellor Srikrishna Deva Rao, the bar council chairman had asked the university to submit a factual report within three days about the persons involved in mobilising the “organised campaign” against the CJI’s participation.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

West Bengal wants to open at least 1,000 schools run by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s education wing Vidya Bharati within a year, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said on Thursday. The schools would be established in every district, municipality and panchayat, he said.

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

Speaking at an event to mark the 74th anniversary of Vidya Bharati in Kolkata, Adhikari also threatened to stop government aid for schools if they refused to sing the full version of Vande Mataram, The Telegraph reported.

“I told them that government aid would stop,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “Then they budged, but only partially. They stood up, but did not move their lips. Then I told them that lips must move as well.”

The chief minister urged Vidya Bharati to set up more schools in Murshidabad and South 24 Parganas, alleging that “more anti-national activities take place” in the districts, The Times of India reported.

He accused the previous Trinamool Congress government of “polluting” the educational institutions and urged Vidya Bharati to take the responsibility for imparting “nationalistic learning”.

He also said that Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s slogan of “One Nation, One Constitution, One Flag, One Leader” should be applied to the education department as well.

Mookerjee is among the ideologues of the BJP and was the founder of the Hindutva party’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Adhikari said that the government would not allow an arrangement where the higher education department would look after all universities, while another department would look after Aliah University.

Aliah University is managed by the state’s minority affairs department.

“I felicitated the board toppers,” The Times of India quoted the chief minister as saying. “Later, the minority affairs department sent me a separate file with the names of 27 Muslim students.”

He questioned why the department had sent the names when he had already felicitated 20 students, including Muslims, Jains and Buddhists.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

A journalist has alleged that she and her colleague were detained by the Delhi Police from an event attended by Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, and assaulted at Saket Police Station.

The assault became more violent after the police found out that the two women are Muslims, journalist Shaheen Khan alleged in a video posted by the YouTube channel 4PM News Network.

The Delhi Police has not yet commented on the allegations.

When Shaheen Khan was attempting to ask Gupta a question during the event at a private hospital, the police “caught hold of her…and took her to the police station while beating her”, 4PM News Network alleged in a social media post.

The channel added: “[Shaheen Khan] has also alleged that when police personnel asked her name and heard ‘Khan,’ the assault intensified.”

क्या मुख्यमंत्री से सवाल पूछना अब इतना बड़ा अपराध हो गया है कि पत्रकार को पुलिस बेरहमी से पीटेगी?

आज दिल्ली में 4PM की पत्रकार शाहीन के साथ जो हुआ, वह बेहद गंभीर और डराने वाला है.

शाहीन दिल्ली की मुख्यमंत्री रेखा गुप्ता से सवाल पूछने की कोशिश कर रही थीं. शाहीन का आरोप है कि इसी… pic.twitter.com/KB3p3kGKDK

— 4PM News Network (@4pmnews_network) September 3, 2026

In the video, Shaheen Khan can be seen at a police station alleging that she and her colleague, Nafisa Khan, were assaulted and “subjected to mental harassment”. She also showed injury marks on Nafisa Khan’s body.

Several Congress and Aam Aadmi Party leaders expressed concern over the alleged assault and criticised the police’s conduct.

The AAP’s Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj remarked that the police had “brutally beaten” two women reporters for asking questions to the chief minister. “Shame on woman CM Rekha Gupta,” he said in a social media post.

Breaking

Two women reporters have been very brutally beaten by Delhi Police for asking questions from CM Rekha Gupta

Shame on woman CM Rekha Gupta

— Saurabh Bharadwaj (@Saurabh_MLAgk) September 3, 2026

Another AAP leader, Somnath Bharti, urged Delhi Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu to intervene and ensure that the officials involved face action.

Congress leader Pawan Khera said that the alleged assault was “utterly reprehensible” and asked whether the city was a “police state”.

“Women journalists being beaten and thrashed for asking questions about the Delhi CM,” he remarked. “And when the police allegedly discovered that one of these journalists was Muslim, the assault intensified.”

What are these horrifying visuals coming out of a Delhi police station?

Women journalists being beaten and thrashed for asking questions about the Delhi CM.

And when the police allegedly discovered that one of these journalists was Muslim, the assault intensified.

Is this a… https://t.co/jHH7E6metC

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) September 3, 2026

In a joint statement, the Press Club of India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Delhi Union of Journalists, Press Association and Kerala Union of Working Journalists called for punitive action against police officials posted at the Saket police station.

The journalist bodies also urged Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar to launch a free and fair investigation into the allegations.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Congress on Thursday claimed that there was “growing evidence of irregularities” in the gross domestic product growth numbers released earlier this week, and said that the Narendra Modi-led government must explain the figures.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that if the methodology behind the numbers was examined, “the whole thing starts looking rather shaky”.

According to figures released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the Indian economy grew by 7.8% in the April-June quarter. The Centre said that the manufacturing sector grew 9.2% during the first quarter of the financial year 2026-’27. This was up from 8.3% in the same period last year. The services sector grew 10%, compared with 8% a year ago, it added.

Ramesh noted on Thursday that the numbers for the previous year’s April-June quarter were revised four times from around Rs 86 lakh crore to around Rs 80 lakh crore.

“If you keep shrinking the base you’re comparing against, this year’s number will automatically look much bigger than it really is, even if nothing has actually changed on the ground,” the Congress said in a statement on social media. “That is simple arithmetic, not economic growth.”

Ramesh referred to an estimate by former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg that if the base year had not been revised down, nominal growth would be closer to 2.6% rather than the government’s claim of 10.3%.

The Congress further noted that the government had revised GDP growth figures for all four years since 2022-’23.

“Taken together, the GDP has been revised down by Rs 43 lakh crore across 4 years,” the party said. “This is a very large ‘correction’.”

Our statement on the growing evidence of irregularities in the just-released GDP figures. The Modi Government must answer 4 straight questions pic.twitter.com/JTOcRPusXS

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 3, 2026

Ramesh also asked why the Union government’s deflator for the April-June quarter came down to just 2.5%, arguing that it did not accurately reflect inflation.

Real GDP is calculated by nominal GDP by the deflator and then multiplying by 100, with the aim of eliminating the effect of inflation.

“Now ask any household running a kitchen budget whether prices have gone by only 2.5% this year and you will get quite a different answer,” the Congress leader remarked.

Ramesh said that the figures appeared most suspect on the indicators of manufacturing and consumption. “According to Mr Garg’s calculations, manufacturing GVA [Gross Value Added] has actually shrunk by 5.2% compared to last year, while private consumption has fallen by 5.4%,” he noted.

On Tuesday, Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, in an interview to India Today, denied allegations of data manipulation.

Sanyal said that there had been a problem with the methodology to calculate GDP until the base year was updated last year.

The base year is updated at the beginning of each decade, he told the news channel. However, it could not be revised at the start of this decade as the Covid-19 pandemic did not reflect normal economic conditions, he said.

“We had to wait till 2024 before we could get a typical year which we could use as base year,” he added.

On Tuesday as well, the Congress described the GDP numbers as “statistical gymnastics” being used to hide “India’s bleak economic reality”.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A Delhi court on Thursday granted bail to Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain in the case related to alleged irregularities in the tendering process for sewage treatment plant projects in Delhi, reported Bar and Bench.

Jain was arrested on August 18, along with former Delhi Jal Board Chief Executive Officer Udit Prakash Rai and four others, by the Anti-Corruption Branch. It is unclear if the other accused persons have also been granted bail.

While granting bail to Jain, Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh of the Rouse Avenue Courts questioned the timing of his “sudden arrest”, noting the unexplained 27-month gap between the registration of the first information report and his arrest, Live Law reported.

The judge observed that the Anti-Corruption Bureau had not considered Jain’s physical custody necessary for more than two years and had also failed to point to any new circumstances that warranted his arrest.

“When an investigating agency has conducted its investigation for years without arresting an accused, and the accused has joined the investigation process, a sudden arrest at the tail end of the investigation, without strong reasons and without a change in circumstances, tends to invite criticism that it is arbitrary,” the court was quoted as saying by Live Law.

The judge also said that, prima facie, none of the WhatsApp chats linked Jain to the other accused persons. There were also no phone call records or SMS messages that could, at this stage, connect him to the alleged kickbacks and hawala transactions involving the other accused in the case.

On August 19, the court had refused to declare his arrest illegal and had remanded him to judicial custody.

The case

The case had been registered on May 11, 2024, based on a complaint by the Directorate of Vigilance.

The Anti-Corruption Branch alleged that technical specifications and other conditions in the tender for upgrading sewage treatment plants were manipulated to give undue advantage to a firm named Euroteck Environment by limiting competition.

A pilot project was not conducted and essential parameters relating to treated effluent were left out of the tendering process, alleged the agency.

These irregularities allegedly resulted in “significant financial implications” for the government exchequer.

Apart from Jain and Rai, the agency had arrested Ankit Srivastava, a former contractual consultant with the water board, Nagendra Yadav, proprietor of M/s AN Enterprises, Raja Kumar Kurra, owner of M/s Euroteck Environment Private Limited and Pankaj Verma, proprietor of M/s Srijanhar.

The Anti-Corruption Branch alleged that private persons, public servants and intermediaries regularly communicated about the tender process. It also claimed that it had found a financial trail linking them.

It alleged that Srijanhar and AN Enterprises, which are allegedly linked to Eurotek, routed bribe payments to the former Delhi Jal Board chief executive officer and his relatives.

Rai and his family members received Rs 1.52 crore through the company and used it to buy immovable property, the agency alleged.

The Enforcement Directorate, which is conducting a parallel money laundering investigation, had earlier filed a chargesheet against Jain and 13 others.

The central agency had alleged that a fraud of Rs 17.7 crore took place in the award of four tenders linked to sewage treatment work.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A Delhi court, while granting bail to Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain, said the Anti-Corruption Bureau had arrested him in an arbitrary and hurried manner in the case related to alleged irregularities in the tendering process for sewage treatment plant projects in the national capital. Jain had been arrested on August 18 along with former Delhi Jal Board Chief Executive Officer Udit Prakash Rai and four others.

The court noted that there was an unexplained and extraordinary delay of 27 months between the first information report being registered and Jain being arrested.

The judge also said that there were no phone call records or text messages that could, at this stage, connect him to the alleged kickbacks and hawala transactions involving the other accused persons. It is unclear if the other accused persons were also granted bail. Read on.

American writer and feminist activist Gloria Steinem died in New York at 92. Her foundation said on social media that her “near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end”.

Steinem started as a journalist in the 1960s, writing a feature on contraception that detailed how women were forced to choose between motherhood and careers. She followed this with an expose on sexism faced by cocktail waitresses at nightclubs owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises.

In the 1950s, Steinem lived in India for nearly two years after graduating from college. During her time here, she worked as a clerk at the Supreme Court and helped women organise non-violent protests against government policies, according to media reports. Read on.

Gloria Steinem (1934–2026): What we learnt from her 2015 memoir, ‘My Life on the Road’

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Raghav Chadha claimed that his name was deleted from the draft voter list prepared during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Punjab. He alleged that this was a “clear case of political vendetta” by the Aam Aadmi Party government in the state.

On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party maintained that the voter roll revision exercise was conducted by the Election Commission and the state government has “no role in deciding whose name is included or deleted”.

Chadha had quoted the guidelines issued by the poll panel for the exercise as stating that public representatives should be included in the draft rolls. Read on.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain a petition challenging orders by the Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan governments restricting entry into public schools of outsiders, journalists, YouTubers and civil society representatives. The BJP government in both states had also mandated that permission must be taken for photography, videography, interviews, audio recording and livestreaming inside schools.

The orders had come against the backdrop of a nationwide drive of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign to improve the condition of government schools. The campaign has been sharing videos of schools on social media recorded by its volunteers in several states. Read on.

The final details of India’s trade deal with the United States will be announced once Washington is able to give New Delhi a tariff advantage over competing countries, said Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal. He also claimed that India had secured a good deal in “every sensitive sector”, such as agriculture, fisheries and micro, small and medium enterprises.

The minister added that the country’s goods exports had continued to grow in August and urged industry associations to set ambitious export targets. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain a public interest litigation challenging orders by the Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan governments restricting the entry into public schools of outsiders, journalists, YouTubers and civil society representatives, Live Law reported.

The Bharatiya Janata Party government in both states had also mandated that permission must be taken for photography, videography, interviews, audio recording and livestreaming inside schools.

The orders had come against the backdrop of a nationwide drive of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign to improve the condition of government schools. The campaign has been sharing videos of schools on social media recorded by its volunteers in several states.

The Rajasthan government had issued the order on August 16. In Uttar Pradesh, the basic education officer in Ayodhya issued a similar order on August 19.

The authorities in other districts of Uttar Pradesh, including Azamgarh, Ballia, Basti, Balrampur, Shamli and Agra, followed suit, Live Law quoted the petition as stating.

The petitioner argued that the restrictions violate the fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution. The three articles protect the rights to equality, freedom and life and personal liberty.

The petition also contended that the freedom of speech and expression includes legitimate journalism and dissemination of information concerning public institutions, while recognising the state’s obligation to protect children’s privacy, dignity and safety, Live Law reported.

There is a distinction between recording identifiable children and documenting the physical condition of a government school, the petitioner told the court.

The petition argued that restrictions intended to protect children should not automatically prevent public-interest documentation of classrooms, buildings, toilets, drinking-water facilities, electricity, mid-day meals and other school infrastructure.

It urged the Supreme Court to quash the Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh orders to the extent that any regulation of public-interest documentation meets the tests of reasonableness, necessity and proportionality, Live Law reported.

Edited by Sneha.

The final details of India’s trade deal with the United States will be announced once Washington is able to give New Delhi a tariff advantage over competing countries, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

At an event in New Delhi, Goyal claimed that India had secured a good deal in “every sensitive sector”, such as agriculture, fisheries and micro, small and medium enterprises.

He added that the country’s goods exports had continued to grow in August and urged industry associations to set ambitious export targets.

Goyal also pointed to India’s 7.8% gross domestic product growth in the April-June quarter, saying it was “no mean achievement” against the backdrop of global uncertainty. He urged stakeholders not to be swayed by “naysayers”.

The Congress had questioned the GDP numbers on Tuesday, describing them as “statistical gymnastics” being used to hide “India’s bleak economic reality”.

Trade deal uncertainty

After an interim bilateral trade deal was agreed on February 2, US tariffs on Indian goods would have been reduced to 18% from a combined rate of 50%. The earlier rate of 50% had included a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

However, negotiations on the final deal were postponed after the US Supreme Court on February 20 struck down global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, ruling that he had exceeded his authority.

On February 21, the US president said that he was increasing the tariffs to the “fully allowed, and legally tested” level of 15% from 10% with immediate effect. However, it is not clear when the increased tariff rate would take effect.

This has left the status of US’ trade deals with countries, including India, unclear.

On July 13, India’s Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal was quoted as saying by The Hindu that although the trade deal between India and the United States was “ready” to be signed, the countries were discussing a comparative advantage for New Delhi over competing economies.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Madras High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin challenging the victory of his opponent from the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in the Kolathur constituency in the Assembly elections, Live Law reported.

The plea was not maintainable, said a bench of Chief Justice SA Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan.

In the election results declared on May 4, the former Tamil Nadu chief minister lost the Kolathur constituency in northern Chennai by more than 8,700 votes against the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam’s VS Babu.

TVK had emerged as the single largest party in the state and formed the government in alliance with the Congress, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, the Indian Union Muslim League, and outside support from Left parties.

On May 7, Stalin filed an application seeking verification of 14 of the 286 electronic voting machines used in Kolathur, reported Bar and Bench.

He had said that burnt memory of the machines should be checked for tampering or modification, Live Law reported.

A burnt memory of the EVM stores recorded votes, settings and operational data even after the machine is switched off. It is verified as part of post-election checks.

The verification process after the Tamil Nadu polls began on July 29.

Stalin submitted in the court that two of the 14 EVMs had stopped working immediately after being taken up for verification. The checking of another machine did not follow proper chain-of-custody procedures, with blank address tags on the carrying cases and seals affixed on the reverse side, he alleged.

The former chief minister claimed that the district election officer had declared that the verification was conducted successfully despite the irregularities, Live Law reported.

He later approached the High Court seeking directions to the Election Commission to count 100% of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail slips and verify all 286 EVMs used in the constituency during the Assembly elections.

A Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail or VVPAT is a machine that prints a paper slip of the candidate’s name, serial number and the party’s symbol after a voter has cast their vote. To avoid election fraud, it displays the paper slip for seven seconds for the voters to check if their vote has been cast correctly.

The paper slip then drops down to a locked compartment that only the polling agent can access. The slips are not handed over to the voters. The collected slips can be used to audit voting data stored electronically.

The Election Commission had opposed Stalin’s plea, saying that the recount would amount to challenging the poll result, which could only be done through an election petition.

Edited by Sneha.

A Trinamool Congress office in Kolkata was vandalised on Thursday morning. TMC General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee accused the supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of carrying out the attack.

Sharing videos of the ransacked Camac Street office on social media, Banerjee alleged that “BJP hooligans” armed with weapons had stormed the office at about 4.30 am. “They attacked our people, snatched their phones, smashed furniture, ransacked the premises and destroyed electronic equipment,” he wrote.

What happened at Camac Street this morning is a disgraceful assault on the rule of law.

At around 4.30 am, BJP hooligans, armed with weapons, stormed our party office in the heart of Kolkata. They attacked our people, snatched their phones, smashed furniture, ransacked the… pic.twitter.com/J3LrSsmKJI

— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) September 3, 2026

One of the videos showed shards of glass, broken chairs, televisions and other equipment lying on the floor. The security camera footage of the office shared by Banerjee also showed masked men carrying away televisions and air purifiers.

The TMC leader called for Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s resignation.

“If this is how the Opposition is to be treated in West Bengal, through violence, vandalism and intimidation, then the chief minister has no moral authority to remain in office,” he said.

The Lok Sabha MP also asked whether the West Bengal governor, the Union home minister or the prime minister’s office will take any action in the matter.

This is what the BJP has done to my party office in the early hours of this morning.

Will the Governor of WB act? Will the Union Home Minister act? Will the PMO act? Or will they continue to look the other way?

It is high time the judiciary, particularly the Calcutta High… pic.twitter.com/SLNwNQ6u7k

— Abhishek Banerjee (@abhishekaitc) September 3, 2026

Banerjee also alleged that the Kolkata Police did not respond for nearly two hours despite repeated calls and emails from the party’s workers and lawyers.

“This is not democracy,” he wrote. “This is political thuggery.”

Banerjee demanded the immediate arrest of persons involved in the attack, along with an investigation into who “planned, organised and directed this violence” and “why the police failed to act” despite being informed.

He also urged the Calcutta High Court to take note of the situation and act to uphold the rule of law in West Bengal.

A series of attacks on TMC offices and its leaders have been reported since the BJP came to power in West Bengal on May 4.

Banerjee was attacked by a mob with eggs and stones during a visit to Sonarpur on May 30.

On July 1, vegetables and eggs were thrown at the party office in Krishnanagar while party MP Mahua Moitra was inside.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Census 2027 questionnaire seeking details about the respondents’ parents, spouses and number of bank accounts requires justification from the Union government, said a group of former bureaucrats on Wednesday.

Such information should not be gathered “merely because it can be collected”, the Constitutional Conduct Group pointed out.

The questionnaire for the 2027 enumeration exercise includes 12 questions that were not asked in the previous census. These include questions seeking parents’ names, spouses’ names, permanent residential addresses, their nationality, the place where they got their Covid-19 vaccine, number of bank accounts, mobile phone, and details of Aadhaar, voter ID, passport and driving licence.

“Much of this information appears to have little relevance for generating population statistics or informing public policy,” said the group of retired bureaucrats in an open letter.

They also pointed out that some of the newly introduced questions, particularly those seeking details about the respondents’ religion and the place of birth of both parents, “could facilitate preparation or updating of the National Population Register, which in turn is associated with the proposed National Register of Citizens”.

The National Population Register is a list of all the usual residents of India. The National Register of Citizens is an exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.

Critics fear that the NRC, when used in conjunction with the Citizenship Amendment Act, will allow the government to force many Muslims to prove their citizenship. The government and its supporters insist that the CAA and the NRC are not linked.

In their letter, the bureaucrats said that they did not oppose the preparation of a register of citizens. However, the exercise must be undertaken “transparently, through an explicitly defined process, and not by using the census as a surrogate mechanism”, they said.

The retired bureaucrats also said that the collection of census data should be driven by the statistical outputs it is intended to produce. They added that the census exercise should not create opportunities for profiling communities or individuals.

“The question asking for the name of a spouse is especially intrusive,” they wrote. “The government may have statutory authority to ask questions under the census framework, but citizens retain constitutional protections of individual liberty and privacy.”

They also raised concerns about the enumerators asking open-ended questions to record caste details of the respondents.

They said the questionnaire does not provide a reliable means of establishing the numbers of Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic communities. The ex-bureaucrats pointed out that their identities cut across Schedules Castes, Schedules Tribes and Other Backward Classes classifications.

In the Census 2027, surveyors will ask respondents if they belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and will also include an open-ended question for other communities about the caste that they belong to.

This will be the first time in independent India that caste will be enumerated across communities. Until now, the census only recorded the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

India had last conducted an exercise to count the population of all caste groups in 1931.

The 108 signatories to the letter include Punjab’s former Director General of Police Julio Ribeiro, Delhi’s former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, former Indian ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and former Indian Administrative Service officer and activist Harsh Mander.

Written by Sneha. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• ‘Planned failure’: Is the Modi government sabotaging its own caste census?

• Is Census 2027 the first step to a National Register of Citizens?

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Raghav Chadha on Thursday claimed that his name was deleted from the draft voter list prepared during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Punjab.

Chadha claimed that the Election Commission had classified him as having shifted from his registered address in Mohali. He is a Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab.

He alleged that this was a “clear case of political vendetta” by the Aam Aadmi Party government in the state.

The Aam Aadmi Party said that the voter roll revision exercise was conducted by the Election Commission and the state government has “no role in deciding whose name is included or deleted”.

In a social media post, Chadha said that he was marked “shifted” by an official of the AAP government. “Who verified that classification?” he asked. “Again, an officer of AAP’s Punjab government.”

Chadha quoted the guidelines issued by the poll panel for the exercise as stating that public representatives should be included in the draft rolls “so that necessary documents can also be collected during the period of claims and objections”.

The guidelines require his name to be included in the draft roll as he is an MP, Chadha added.

He further alleged that the officers had deleted his name from the rolls because their transfers and careers were controlled by the state government. “This is how the AAP government applies political pressure through state officers to execute the political revenge,” he alleged.

He claimed that the party had acted this way because its leadership “has been burning with anger” since he joined the BJP.

On April 26, seven of the AAP’s 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, led by Chadha, split from the party and joined the BJP’s legislature unit in the Upper House. Rajya Sabha chairperson CP Radhakrishnan had accepted the merger on April 27.

The AAP government in Punjab has now taken its politics of revenge to the Draft Electoral Rolls.

I am a sitting Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, with my voter ID registered in Mohali, Punjab. Yet my name has been classified as “shifted” in the draft electoral rolls.

Thankfully,… pic.twitter.com/laAFAAWYiQ

— Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) September 3, 2026

The AAP, however, claimed that it was a “matter of public record” that Chadha was living in Delhi and not in Punjab. “If he no longer resides in Punjab, maintaining or shifting his voter registration was his own responsibility,” it said.

The party further alleged that Chadha was trying to get his voter registration transferred to Rajinder Nagar in Delhi through a “backdated process”, and said that this should be investigated.

Raghav Chadha has been caught by a National Daily English Newspaper, trying to get his voter registration made in Delhi through a backdated process, and is now attempting to put the entire blame on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Punjab government.

SIR is conducted by the Election… https://t.co/RDXkoGkGeI

— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) September 3, 2026

Punjab is among the 16 states where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR. The final electoral roll is scheduled to be released on October 12.

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

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

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Sneha.

Social activist Santosh Pandit was arrested by the Pune Police at 1 am on Thursday for making allegedly defamatory and obscene remarks about state Higher Education Minister Chandrakant Patil and a woman corporator, The Times of India reported.

Pandit posts videos on social media about civic problems and alleged violations of traffic rules by public representatives in Pune. His YouTube channel has 13 lakh subscribers and 117 crore total views.

The complaint against him was filed by a corporator, who is an associate of the minister, the newspaper reported. The complainant alleged that Pandit had made derogatory remarks about Patil, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, in a video.

This was done to tarnish Patil’s image, the newspaper quoted the complainant as alleging.

It was unclear which video the complaint was referring to. In recent days, Pandit had posted a video criticising the quality of infrastructure projects in Pune’s Kothrud area, of which Patil is the MLA.

Pandit has been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to making sexually-coloured remarks, defamation and insult with intent to provoke breach of the public peace, The Times of India reported. He was also booked under the Information Technology Act for transmitting allegedly obscene material.

Acting on the complaint, the police detained Pandit at 1 am from his Pune home, showed a video posted on his YouTube channel.

Edited by Sneha.

A decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act was passed, its vision of empowering people with disabilities and removing barriers to accessing justice is unfulfilled.

This failure is most evident in the functioning of the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and its state counterparts, even though they were strengthened as part of the 2016 law to ensure substantive rights and meaningful access to justice for disabled persons.

The 2016 act envisaged a government-wide effort, requiring ministries, departments and public institutions to review and align their laws, policies, procedures and practices with its mandate.

In the absence of these reforms, persons with disabilities have been forced to assert their rights one legal case at a time. Contradictions in employment, education, accessibility, and public services quickly surfaced, with many disputes reaching the courts and generating a growing body of disability jurisprudence.

However, litigation was meant to be the exception, not the primary mechanism for securing rights guaranteed by law.

Here, the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and its state counterparts were supposed to address such concerns brought before them and order corrective measures. But rather than envisioning a robust quasi-judicial body capable of enforcing disability rights, Parliament replicated the model of the National Human Rights Commission.

This choice imported the structure of the National Human Rights Commission and also its limitations: commissioners can investigate and recommend, but lack binding enforcement powers, raising longstanding concerns about their ability to secure meaningful remedies.

Further, there has been no full-time Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities since 2019, a lawyer for the petitioner in the Rajive Raturi case told the Supreme Court on July 29. The court, during the hearing, also noted that 10 states had yet to appoint State Commissioners. It has sought compliance by the next hearing in January 2027.

The result is a deliberate paradox where rights are generously inscribed into law but the institutions meant to enforce them are starved of real authority.

Chronic dysfunctionality

During parliamentary debates on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, concerns were raised about whether institutions like the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and its state counterparts had been equipped to fulfil that promise.

In Lok Sabha, Congress member KC Venugopal argued that the Commissioners required greater powers. Telangana Rashtra Samithi member Kavitha Kalvakuntla questioned the persistent disregard of commissioners’ orders by courts and public authorities, warning that such institutional weakness would undermine the rights-based framework the legislation sought to establish.

Those concerns were never adequately addressed.

Consider a person who brings a complaint to the commissioners under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. There are, in effect, two destinations. Either the Commissioner rules against them. Or the Commissioner finds their favour, but the ruling is only a recommendation, which can be ignored.

Under Sections 76 and 81 of the Act, the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities may recommend that an authority act within three months, but it cannot compel the authority to act. The consequences of this design failure are visible in the data. Between 2020 and 2023, the Chief Commissioner issued 513 recommendations to 32 ministries and departments. Some action was taken in only 148 cases, which means a compliance rate of just 29%, said the report.

Put differently, nearly three out of every four recommendations issued by the statutory disability regulator were ignored. The Ministry of Railways accounted for the highest number of pending recommendations, underscoring the persistent gap between legal obligations and administrative action.

The government’s response to a question in Lok Sabha in 2024 conceded that it lacks an explanation for this non-compliance and any mechanism to compel ministries to act. The reply stated that reasons for not forwarding Action Taken Reports or non-acceptance of recommendations by ministries/departments despite statutory provisions and reminders from the Office of Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities is “not known”.

A rights-enforcement body whose recommendations can be disregarded with impunity offers a remedy in form, but not necessarily in substance.

The annual report of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, last published for 2022, tells a story of institutional retreat. Complaint registrations and disposals have both fallen by 39% since 2014.

In a petition before the Supreme Court filed in September 2024 by disability rights activist Satendra Singh, the government’s figures completed the picture.

In 2024, the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities issued recommendations to primarily ministries and government departments in 107 cases, showed a counter affidavit filed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. Two in three drew no response, around 28 were actually implemented. Three years ago, non-response accounted for six in 10 recommendations, according to the counter affidavit. Today it is seven in 10.

The state’s absence of political will to ensure an efficient remedy is further evident in the budgetary allocations made to the Commission. In the 2024-’25 financial year budget, the Central Information Commission received Rs. 42.49 crore, the National Human Rights Commission Rs 75.53 crore, and the National Green Tribunal Rs 52.68 crore. The Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, in comparison, got Rs 5.5 crore and did not even spend the full amount – Rs 4.54 crore.

Rights and remedies

It is a settled principle in law: where there is a right, there must be a remedy. For most complainants with disabilities who win their cases, the problem is that the ruling ends on paper.

A grievance body that cannot enforce its findings creates the fiction of a remedy, draws in complaints, attempts resolution, but delivers relief in only a fraction of cases, that too after months of paperwork and hearings that exhaust already vulnerable people.

The asymmetry that the act was meant to correct between a lone citizen with disability and a well-resourced employer or state becomes entrenched rather than challenged.

The mechanism of such inaction is simple: the state points to the Commission, which points to its recommendations. The disabled citizen is left with a paper that carries no weight. It is a system that drains time, energy and hope while offering little in the way of effective redress. For complainants already exhausted by disability and discrimination, this erodes both energy and trust in the system itself.

Shrutika Pandey is a lawyer and researcher working on issues of access to justice with a focus on persons with disabilities. She leads the Access to Justice Network at Nyaaya and manages the Samvidhaan Fellowship currently active in Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Shashank Pandey is a legal professional and founder of the Politics and Disability Forum, with a focus on fostering inclusivity in legal and political systems.

Views are personal.

Two religious leaders in the United States who appeared alongside Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat at an event in New York on Saturday said that the organisers had not told them that the Hindutva leader would also be taking part.

Bhagwat addressed about 5,000 Hindu Americans and Hindu non-resident Indians at Madison Square Garden at an event titled “One World One Humanity”.

The RSS is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

View this post on Instagram

Adriene Thorne, a minister of the Riverside Church, said that she was “duped” into participating in the event.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Thorne said that she received repeated invitations over six weeks from a group called The World Council of Religious Leaders. She said that the organisers described the event as an interfaith gathering.

She added that the organisers “withheld critical information” as she did not know that Bhagwat would be the central figure at the event.

“I was never told that the RSS was involved, I was never told about AHEAD or any organisation connected to Hindu nationalism,” she said. Thorne described her appearance at the event as a “terrible mistake”.

The American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue Forum, one of the organisers of the event, is a nonprofit organisation that promotes civic engagement among communities in the US, according to its website.

View this post on Instagram

Another interfaith leader, Shamsi Ali described his attendance as a “serious error in judgement”.

Ali said that at no point during the meetings with the organisers or in the official invitation was he told that Bhagwat would be the event’s chief guest.

He said that he was invited by organisers Bawa Jain and Dileepji Kumar of Yoga International USA, but “felt deceived and entrapped” by their lack of transparency.

“Had I known the event was organised to honour Mohan Bhagwat, I would have declined immediately,” he said on social media.

Ali described Bhagwat’s remarks of peace at the event as an act of “lip service”. He said that it contradicts the reality on the ground, where “Muslims and other minorities in India face discrimination and violence as a result of the ideology he [Bhagwat] promotes”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• At New York event, Bhagwat preaches ‘oneness in diversity’ amid a storm of protests
• Ahead of Mohan Bhagwat visit, UK groups urge mayor to deny London Authority venue for RSS event

Former civil servant Ashish Joshi was picked up while on his morning walk by men in plain clothes, purportedly Delhi Police personnel, and asked to follow them to the special cell police station in New Friends Colony, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit alleged on Wednesday.

Just before 7.30 pm, Joshi said on social media that he had been dropped off at his home by the special cell.

Dikshit told Scroll that the former bureaucrat had been “interrogated”, but no case has been registered against him.

Just got back home.
Delhi Special Cell dropped me home .
Details later .

— Ashish Joshi (@bismil_prasad) September 2, 2026

A friend who was with Joshi on his morning walk in Nehru Park told Dikshit that the officers said that this concerned a post on social media platform X that the former bureaucrat had made about Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Last month, the former civil servant had claimed on X that there had been a “massive showdown” between Shah and Home Secretary Govind Mohan on the matter of police action against students protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

Joshi had claimed that the home secretary was “against severe police action against students” and that there was “resistance” by junior officers who were on the field.

The post was withheld in India, with X stating that the action was taken “in response to a legal demand”.

After Joshi was allegedly detained, there was widespread concern on social media. Several activists and Opposition members urged the Delhi Police to clarify if they had taken him into custody. The police in the national capital report to the Union home ministry.

Scroll had attempted to contact Joshi, but received a message saying that his phone was switched off or not reachable.

Hours after returning home, in a social media post addressed to Delhi Police chief Anurag Kumar, Joshi said that informing a person’s family while they are interrogated or detained is a legal mandate and not an optional courtesy.

Joshi said he had been taken for interrogation after his morning walk “under the assurance that it would take very little time”. However, even after several hours of his repeated requests to inform his wife about his whereabouts, the police officers “simply stated they were ‘following instructions’”, he stated.

The former bureaucrat said that he was allowed to make a call at 6.38 pm, “leaving my family and friends in total panic the entire day”.

Joshi requested the police chief to issue clear instructions to all units directing officers to “strictly uphold the legal duty” of immediately informing the family of any person taken for interrogation, “so that no citizen’s family has to endure the distress that mine suffered”.

This morning my good friend and someone assisting me in reaching out to civil society Ashish Joshi @bismil_prasad (retired Additional Secretary) has been taken away by two police constables from Nehru Park. I came to know after his wife spoke to me in the morning. We have been…

— Sandeep Dikshit (@_SandeepDikshit) September 2, 2026

Joshi, a 1992-batch Indian Post and Telecommunication Accounts and Finance Service officer, retired on March 31. He was earlier posted in the Union Department of Telecommunications.

In February 2019, he was suspended by the Union government after he sought action against “incendiary” posts of former Aam Aadmi Party MLA Kapil Mishra, who later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.

His suspension was revoked in November 2021.

On Wednesday, Congress leader Supriya Shrinate asked whether the Narendra Modi government was “so uncomfortable with his social media posts that it has to resort to this”.

Apart from Dikshit, several Opposition leaders and activists also expressed concern about the former civil servant’s disappearance.

Former bureaucrat Ashish Joshi @bismil_prasad was picked up by two plainclothes Delhi policemen during his morning walk in Delhi earlier today.

His whereabouts remain unknown.

Is the Modi government so uncomfortable with his social media posts that it has to resort to this?

— Supriya Shrinate (@SupriyaShrinate) September 2, 2026

Transparency activist Anjali Bharadwaj had urged the police to immediately clarify if they had picked up Joshi, disclose his whereabouts and state the legal provisions under which he was allegedly taken into custody.

Inputs from Ayush Tiwari. Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The trust that administers the Ram temple in Ayodhya on Wednesday named retired Air Marshal Jeetendra Mishra as its first chief executive officer.

Jeetendra Mishra commanded the Air Force’s Western Air Command during Operation Sindoor, the military operation against Pakistan-based terrorist bases launched after the Pahalgam terror attack. He was among seven military officers awarded the Sarvottam Yudh Seva Medal for their roles in the operation.

The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust also appointed three new members: Mahesh Bhagchandka, Madan Mohan Pandey and Nirmala Yadav. The appointments came against the backdrop of a controversy about the alleged embezzlement of donations at the Ram temple.

The three new appointments followed the resignation of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Champat Rai and trustee Anil Mishra, who stepped down after the allegations emerged. The third vacancy was created by the death of Vimlendra Pratap Mishra, a member of Ayodhya’s erstwhile royal family, on August 23.

श्रीराम जन्मभूमि तीर्थ क्षेत्र के न्यासियों की बैठक आज अयोध्या में सम्पन्न हुई। बैठक में न्यास से जुड़े विभिन्न महत्वपूर्ण विषयों पर विस्तार से चर्चा हुई तथा अनेक महत्वपूर्ण निर्णय लिए गए। बैठक के पश्चात न्यास द्वारा जारी प्रेस विज्ञप्ति

A meeting of the Trustees of Shri Ram… pic.twitter.com/5JdfgAUNUE

— Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Teerth Kshetra (@ShriRamTeerth) September 2, 2026

Jeetendra Mishra told The Hindu that he did not know about the appointment till the announcement was made on media outlets. “I also got to know about my selection through television,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “I am elated for the same.”

Donation embezzlement case

Following the allegations about theft of donations to the temple, Rai and Anil Mishra resigned from their posts on “moral grounds” on June 26.

A first information report was registered against eight persons in the case a day earlier. The FIR was filed based on a complaint by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust.

On June 23, the Special Investigation Team probing the alleged irregularities at the Ram temple submitted its preliminary report to the Uttar Pradesh government.

In its preliminary report, submitted to the Uttar Pradesh home department on June 23, the SIT found 70 instances of counting staff hiding bundles of notes and loose cash in their clothes, pockets and shoes. Scroll has seen a copy of the report.

The report alleged that offerings were stolen during the counting process, with staff routinely hiding cash on their bodies and walking out with it, as systems meant to stop this were not enforced. It also flagged serious lapses by the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust and the State Bank of India, the banker to the trust.

In July, a new special investigation team set up by the Uttar Pradesh government looking into the alleged embezzlement of donations made to the Ram temple.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday declined urgent hearing for Anandabazar Patrika journalists against whom a first information report has been filed after the newspaper used the phrase “saffron hooliganism” in a headline, Live Law reported.

The headline was about clashes between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student groups at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University on August 20. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

An FIR was registered against the editorial team of Anandabazar Patrika, including editor Ishani Dutta Roy and chief reporter Soma Mukherjee, PTI reported.

On Wednesday, the High Court indicated that the appropriate course of action for the journalists would be to file a petition seeking the quashing of the FIR, Live Law reported.

Lawyer SN Mookherjee, appearing for the journalists, told the court that such a petition had already been filed. He sought urgent relief, arguing that the case warranted immediate intervention.

The bench, however, said the matter should be filed in the regular course and would be heard according to the applicable procedure.

The clash on August 20 took place during a general meeting of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students’ Union. The ABVP and Left-affiliated groups blamed each other for the violence and accused the other of bringing people from outside the university onto the campus.

Several students were injured and taken to a hospital.

In its report, Anandabazar Patrika had described the clashes as “gerua gundami”, or saffron hooliganism.

The High Court hearing came a day after a group of men purportedly associated with Hindutva outfits staged a protest outside the newspaper’s office and smeared saffron paint on its building.

Videos of the incident, widely shared on social media, showed several police personnel standing nearby as a group of men wearing saffron clothing painted the walls and shouted slogans, such as “Hindustan will not tolerate the insult of saffron”.

The newspaper’s authorities repainted the walls to their original colour a few hours later.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Allahabad High Court quashed the preventive detention of 25-year-old Aakriti Chaudhary under the National Security Act. The Delhi University graduate has been in jail for nearly five months in connection with the workers’ protest in Noida.

The court held that she was detained by the Uttar Pradesh government based on a “concocted story”. The Noida authorities were directed to pay Chaudhary Rs 5 lakh as compensation.

However, she will remain in jail as she is yet to secure bail in other cases registered in connection with the April protests. Read on.

Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida, reported Ayush Tiwari

Former civil servant Ashish Joshi was picked up by men in plain clothes, purportedly Delhi Police personnel, and taken in for questioning about an X post he had made about Home Minister Amit Shah, alleged Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit. Joshi said in social media post just before 7.30 pm that the Special Cell of the Delhi Police had dropped him home.

Dikshit said that a friend who was with Joshi when he was asked to accompany the officers to the Special Cell said this concerned a tweet the retired bureaucrat had posted last month, claiming that there had been a “massive showdown” between Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Home Secretary Govind Mohan over police action against protesting students at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

After Joshi was allegedly detained, there was widespread concern on social media. Several activists and Opposition members urged the Delhi Police to clarify if they had taken him into custody. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court declined an urgent hearing to Anandabazar Patrika journalists against whom a first information report has been filed after the newspaper used the phrase “saffron hooliganism” in a headline. The bench said the matter should be filed in the regular course and would be heard according to the applicable procedure.

The headline was about clashes between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student groups at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University on August 20. Read on.

Fifteen civil society organisations and individuals in the United Kingdom wrote to London Mayor Sadiq Khan asking him to confirm that no venue owned by the city authority should be available for any event of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat. He is expected to arrive in the United Kingdom on Wednesday after having visited the United States and Canada.

The civil society groups also asked whether the mayor would write to the home secretary to ask if Bhagwat’s visit had been assessed against criteria to prevent “extremists entering the UK”.

They urged Khan to confirm that no mayoral representative will attend any RSS-linked events. Read on.

Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar “never hated Muslims” but rather “showed the way for their progress”, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar told a Pune court. He made the statement while being cross-questioned in a defamation case he has filed against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his speech in London in 2023.

Satyaki Savarkar alleged that Gandhi claimed in the speech that VD Savarkar had written a book, in which he described him and his friends beating a Muslim man. He alleged that Gandhi claimed VD Savarkar found the act enjoyable.

With this, Gandhi portrayed VD Savarkar as “an extreme hater of Muslims and as a mob lyncher”, claimed Satyaki Savarkar. Read on.

The Bombay High Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. She had allegedly died by suicide on June 8, 2020, in Mumbai.

Six days later, Rajput was found dead at his residence. The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found in her death.

However, her father Satish Salian moved the court in March 2025, alleging that Disha Salian was gangraped and murdered. He also claimed that there had been a politically-driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”. Read on.

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The Allahabad High Court quashed the preventive detention under the National Security Act of a 25-year-old Delhi University graduate who has been in jail for nearly five months in connection with the workers’ protest in Noida in April, reported Bar and Bench on Wednesday.

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

On Tuesday, a bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev held that Aakriti Chaudhary was detained based on a “concocted story” by the Uttar Pradesh government, reported Live Law.

The bench also directed the Noida authorities to pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to Chaudhary, Bar and Bench quoted advocate Charlie Prakash as saying.

Chaudhary will remain in jail as she is yet to secure bail in other cases registered in connection with the protests, reported the legal news outlet.

On April 13, about 40,000 to 45,000 workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of the city to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased. The protests came amid increasing gas prices because of the supply disruption caused by the war in West Asia.

The demonstration had turned violent, with videos widely shared on social media showing some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property.

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

A month later, the Uttar Pradesh police booked Chaudhary and 60-year-old Satya Verma under the National Security Act.

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

The police had alleged that the role played by the two was “significant in instigating violence, arson and creating chaos” during the protest. It also claimed that Verma and Chaudhary “provoked” persons in different areas to “disturb public order”.

Chaudhary’s family had claimed that she had been picked up by the police from a metro station in Noida on April 11. Her father, Arun Chaudhary, had asked how a person who had been picked up on April 11 could be charged with violence that took place on April 13.

Violence during protests

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Noida and beyond: India’s workers are being shortchanged. They deserve a fair deal

• Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida

India is currently in the middle of its summer monsoon, but this year’s rainfall presents an interesting paradox. Much of the country has received less rain than usual so far, yet has still been hit by severe floods and landslides. In Kerala, for example, devastating floods occurred despite the overall monsoon rainfall remaining well below average.

A weaker monsoon does not necessarily mean an absence of extreme rainfall. Rainfall can be highly uneven, with long dry spells broken by intense cloudbursts that cause flooding and landslides. This year’s experience in Kerala illustrates the apparent contradiction: a season that is dry overall can still produce devastating rainfall.

Amid this highly uneven monsoon, attention is also turning to something happening thousands of kilometres away in the tropical Pacific Ocean: El Niño.

It is well established that El Niño years, when certain parts of the Pacific are warmer than usual, are often associated with weaker Indian monsoon rainfall. Meanwhile La Niña – the opposite state to El Niño – tends to favour wetter conditions. This year, El Niño conditions have developed rapidly in the Pacific, with forecasts suggesting it could become exceptionally strong.

A super-strong El Niño could have important implications for hundreds of millions of people across India, particularly later in the monsoon, when the relationship between the two tends to become stronger.

An uneven monsoon

Before the monsoon even began, the India Meteorological Department was already expecting a weaker-than-usual season, partly because of the anticipated development of El Niño. Its first long-range forecast in April predicted June-September rainfall at around 92% of the long-term average. So far, rainfall has broadly followed this below-normal outlook, although with considerable fluctuations.

By mid-June, rainfall across India was nearly 40% below normal, before several active monsoon spells reduced the deficit. By early August, cumulative rainfall was still around 12% below average nationally.

But these national and seasonal averages hide an important part of the picture. Take Kerala. Between June 1 and August 5, the state received around 22% less rainfall than normal. Yet during the single week from July 30 to August 5, the state received more than double its usual rainfall.

This intense spell of rain triggered severe flooding and landslides, despite the state still being rainfall-deficient when viewed over the season as a whole. By August 5, it was reported that 26 people had died in monsoon-related incidents across Kerala. Among them were a mother and son who were killed when a landslide buried their home in Poonjar, Kottayam – a tragedy that felt especially close to home because my aunt knew the family.

But the relationship is more complicated than simply saying that El Niño causes drought over India. El Niño is one of the most important large-scale phenomena that influences the Indian monsoon, but it does not determine the season on its own. Of the 16 El Niño years recorded since 1950, only seven were associated with below-normal monsoon rainfall over India. Other factors play a role, including the Indian Ocean temperatures and wind patterns, snow cover in the Himalayas and Eurasia, along with the monsoon’s own natural variability from year to year.

More importantly, a weaker monsoon does not necessarily mean an absence of extreme rainfall or floods. A study published in Science in 2025, analysing more than a century of rainfall observations, found that El Niño summers can produce lower rainfall overall while simultaneously intensifying extreme daily rainfall, particularly over parts of central-eastern India and the southwest coast (where Kerala is located). In other words, El Niño could potentially create an apparently contradictory situation: less rain over the season as a whole, but heavier rain when it does rain.

How rainfall during the 2026 summer monsoon has differed from normal. Brown areas received less rain than usual; blue-green areas received more. (Boundaries shown on the map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance). Ligin Joseph (Data: IMD)

The recent experience in Kerala – a seasonal rainfall deficit interrupted by an exceptionally wet week and severe flooding – is consistent with this broader pattern, although the individual flood itself cannot be attributed to El Niño without a dedicated analysis.

What happens next?

There is certainly reason to keep a close watch on the Pacific. El Niño is already strengthening rapidly, and is expected to be very strong throughout the northern hemisphere autumn and winter of 2026-’27.

However, this does not mean that India is destined for drought. An El Niño of this magnitude increases the likelihood of drought, flooding and other typical impacts, but they are not guaranteed.

This El Niño is expected to peak after the core summer monsoon season, but it is already strengthening while the monsoon is still underway. For India, the important question isn’t how much rain will fall in total, but where, when and how intensely it will fall.

El Niño is predicted to become the strongest ever observed in September, beginning a six-month run at record strength with a peak of +4.15°C.

That's according to the new CanSIPS model update, which also suggests that La Niña is possible during the second half of 2027. pic.twitter.com/3lEagOZH4S

— Ben Noll (@BenNollWeather) August 31, 2026

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

A group of 15 civil society organisations and individuals in the United Kingdom on Wednesday wrote to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, seeking that no venue owned by the Greater London Authority be made available for any event of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ahead of a visit by its chief Mohan Bhagwat.

They described the Hindutva organisation as “an authoritarian and militarist group which drew explicit inspiration from European fascism”.

In their letter on Wednesday, they also urged the mayor to confirm that no mayoral representative would attend any RSS-linked event.

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

Bhagwat is expected to arrive in the United Kingdom on Wednesday after having visited the United States and Canada.

The groups took note of allegations of the involvement of RSS-affiliated groups in the 2002 Gujarat riots, and mentioned that a report by the British High Commission from that time had described the riots as having “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”.

The 2002 riots had led to a de facto travel ban on BJP leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the UK. It was lifted in 2012.

In their letter, the organisations also said that there was “overwhelming evidence” of the RSS and its affiliates perpetrating violence against marginalised communities, including caste-oppressed groups.

“Over the past decade, United Nations mechanisms have advanced a mounting body of allegations that senior RSS and BJP figures have incited hatred and discrimination, and that authorities have targeted religious minorities and sought to render them second-class citizens,” they noted.

“Bhagwat himself has cautioned India’s Muslims to ‘abandon their boisterous rhetoric of supremacy’, has denied the reality of mob lynching in India,” the letter read. “...and claimed that the country’s ‘real freedom’ dates from the Hindu nationalist consecration of the Ayodhya temple rather than 1947.”

The Ram temple in Ayodhya was built on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists on December 6, 1992, because they believed that it stood on the spot where the Hindu deity Ram was born. The Ram temple was inaugurated in a ceremony led by Modi in January 2024.

The civil society groups also referred to a recent report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which recommended that the US impose “targeted sanctions” on the RSS and its leadership.

The signatories also asked whether the mayor would “write to the Home Secretary asking what assessment has been made of this visit against the Home Office’s unacceptable behaviours criteria for exclusion, and against the commitment in Protecting What Matters to prevent extremists entering the UK”.

They also highlighted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “clear statement” that he did not support an event at the city’s Madison Square Garden on August 29, during which Bhagwat gave a speech.

Among the civil society groups that wrote to the London mayor were Hindus for Human Rights, UK-Indian Muslim Council, India Labour Solidarity and South Asia Solidarity Group.

Call for sanctions

On Tuesday, a group of civil society organisations – including several of those who wrote to the London mayor – also addressed a letter to David Smith, the UK special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, and Jim Shannon, the head of an all-party parliamentary group on freedom of religion.

“Mr Bhagwat’s planned visit to Britain…is part of a charm offensive of public outreach, supported by his allies in the UK,” they wrote. “The British government should not allow him this opportunity.”

The letter urged the officials to recommend that the UK government should impose sanctions on RSS members and its affiliates.

British MP Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK-based Your Party, also said that the country should not be hosting “the leader of a hate group with a grievous history of far-right violence”.

Corbyn said: “This is a deeply authoritarian, exclusionary and discriminatory organisation which has suppressed religious freedom and inspired horrific attacks on minorities. There should be no space for this kind of hatred in our city, and it is truly appalling that this is going ahead”.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• At New York event, Bhagwat preaches ‘oneness in diversity’ amid a storm of protests
• Two days after Bhagwat’s speech in New York, 90 US politicians pledge to not take RSS-linked funding

Hindutva ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar “never hated Muslims”, rather “showed the way for their progress”, his grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar told a Pune court on Tuesday, reported Bar and Bench.

Satyaki Savarkar made the statement during his cross-examination before a special MP/MLA court in a criminal defamation trial against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. He has accused Gandhi of making false and malicious remarks about his uncle during an event in London in March 2023.

Gandhi’s lawyer Milind Pawar had asked Satyaki Savarkar what about the Congress leader’s speech had he found defamatory.

Satyaki Savarkar alleged that Gandhi claimed in the speech that VD Savarkar had written a book, in which he described him and his friends beating a Muslim man. He alleged that Gandhi claimed VD Savarkar found the act enjoyable.

“By these words, Savarkar was portrayed as an extreme hater of Muslims and as a mob lyncher,” Live Law quoted Satyaki Savarkar as saying. “Savarkar never hated Muslims. Rather, in his writings, he showed the ways and means for their progress.”

He further said that he does not know if the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh follows Savarkar’s ideology.

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

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had inaugurated a statue of VD Savarkar in the Andaman Islands on December 12, 2025.

“We had no information about that programme,” said Satyaki Savarkar. “Further, no permission of our family was obtained while unveiling the said statue. I do not know whether the RSS follows the ideology of Savarkar.”

The cross-examination will continue on September 3.

During the previous hearing on August 17, Satyaki Savarkar told the Pune court that his maternal grandfather Gopal Godse and MK Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse were active members of the RSS.

He also acknowledged before the Pune court that Gopal Godse and VD Savarkar were among those accused of conspiring to kill Gandhi.

Gopal Godse was the younger brother of Nathuram Godse, who shot Gandhi dead in 1948. He was found guilty of taking part in the assassination conspiracy and spent 18 years in prison. VD Savarkar was acquitted due to the lack of evidence.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, Bar and Bench reported.

Disha Salian had allegedly died by suicide on June 8, 2020, in Mumbai. Six days later, Rajput was found dead at his residence. The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found in her death.

A division bench of Justices Sarang V Kotwal and Ranjitsinha R Bhonsale directed the CBI to register a first information report based on a statement by Disha Salian’s father, Satish Salian, who had filed the petition.

The court said that no one should be treated as a suspect in the case unless the investigating officer finds enough material to reasonably suspect their involvement, the legal news outlet reported.

The celebrity manager’s father had moved the High Court in March 2025 seeking a CBI probe into her death and the filing of an FIR against several persons, including Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray.

Satish Salian claimed that his daughter had died under suspicious circumstances. In his petition, he alleged that she was gangraped and murdered. He also claimed that there had also been a politically-driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”.

Satish Salian said that he initially believed that the investigation was “genuine, but later found it to be a cover-up”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

While the youth protests were underway at the Jantar Mantar in the first week of July, the Central government published two crucial reports on higher education enrollment: the All India Survey on Higher Education for 2022-’23 and 2023-’24.

The findings were alarming. For the first time since 2011, there has been a decline in the number of Indian students pursuing undergraduate degrees. In 2023-’24, undergraduate enrolment decreased by 93,321 students compared with the previous academic year, representing a decline of 0.29%. This decline at national level might look small. But for a developing country like India enrollments for higher education are supposed to grow fast.

Maharashtra was among the states with the sharpest declines: 5% of Class 12 students here did not enroll in the undergraduate enrollment. This means that nearly 200,000 fewer young people in the state opted for degree programmes compared to the previous year. The number dropped from 35,04,046 in 2023-’24 from 36,88,956 in 2022-’23.

The case of Maharashtra is striking, as it is one of the most industrially advanced states in the country. It is home to cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Nashik and Aurangabad which provide jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors. The declining importance of degrees among young people in such a state is telling because a graduate degree is a prerequisite for good jobs in the organised sector.

Is it possible that these youth simply pivoted to short-term, skill-based certificate or diploma courses? Unfortunately, this is not the case. The same government report shows only an insignificant increase in enrollment in diploma and certificate courses.

Why would the vast majority of Maharashtra’s youths turn their backs on higher education and why has this number suddenly swelled?

The answer lies either in a waning enthusiasm for education or a decline in the financial capacity of their parents – two factors that are inextricably linked.

Most parents evaluate further education as an investment of time and money. If this investment does not yield better employment opportunities and stable jobs, they inevitably question its necessity. When household incomes stagnate or fall, the probability of abandoning higher education rises sharply.

In the United States, for instance, approximately 64% of high school graduates enroll in degree-granting institutions (which formally encompass both two-year associate degrees and four-year bachelor’s programmes). This is nearly double India’s rate of gross enrollment ratio for higher education. Across most developed nations, participation in formal post-secondary education is more than twice that of India – and the quality of education delivered is significantly superior.

Ironically, the AISHE data was released against the backdrop of reports about the Central government reducing education expenditure as a percentage of the gross domestic product.

The decline also makes it clear that graduate degrees have lost their “signaling value”. Theoretically, a degree serves as a signal to the job market, guaranteeing that the holder possesses the knowledge and skills necessary for employment. However, due to the plummeting standards of Indian colleges, degrees have been reduced to a mere minimum formal requirement rather than vouching for a student’s actual competence.

Under the present regulatory system, establishing innovative educational institutions that impart the modern skills and knowledge demanded by the market is nearly impossible. Established institutions are shielded from genuine competition. They face no pressure to raise their teaching standards, to update their curricula or to offer innovative teaching methods. As a consequence, passionate educational entrepreneurs are systematically demoralised.

Instead, this regulatory framework has been exploited by politicians, who have emerged as the largest suppliers of new educational institutes in the country. This is a dominant cause of the collapsing quality of higher education.

Indians often complain about the “commercialisation of education” but this is true only in a limited sense. In a truly free market, poor quality is punished. But in India’s distorted system, institutions can easily survive – and even receive encouragement to expand – without ever providing high-quality education.

When the signaling value of a degree diminishes relative to the money and time invested, turning away from higher education becomes a highly rational economic decision for parents and students. They simply choose to exit a broken system. Against this incredibly bleak backdrop, the Cockroach Janata Party effectively placed the quality of education on the political agenda. It is imperative that it stays there for the long haul.

Milind Murugkar writes on economic and social issues.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government to submit its views on introducing a totaliser system to count votes recorded in a cluster of electronic voting machines, reported Live Law.

At present, votes cast in elections are counted booth-wise. A totaliser would allow votes recorded in multiple machines to be counted together. This can make it difficult to determine how any particular booth voted.

The petitioners in the case have argued that introducing a totaliser system can prevent a candidate or a political party from knowing how much support they received at a particular booth, thereby reducing the chances of post-poll violence, reported Live Law.

They have sought that election results be declared at the parliamentary constituency level, instead of disclosing booth-wise figures separately.

On Tuesday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana asked the Union government to state if there were hurdles in introducing the system and whether it could have any adverse effects, reported Live Law.

The bench also asked the Election Commission to submit its proposal on the matter to the government.

During the hearing, Kant asked if there was a need for the totaliser system, saying that the booth-wise counting process allows discrepancies or tampering to be detected.

One of the petitioners told the court that the system would ensure that the privacy of voters is maintained.

The court asked the Union government and the Election Commission if a provision similar to Rule 59A of the 1961 Conduct of Elections Rules, which allows the use of a totaliser in ballot paper counting, could be introduced for electronic voting machines.

The proposal had been examined earlier but did not receive support from the government-appointed expert committee, the counsel appearing for the Election Commission told the court. The counsel added that most political parties were against the proposal.

“Fifty percent of national parties opposed, 68% state-level parties opposed,” The Indian Express quoted the counsel as saying.

The petitioner said that the poll body had supported introducing a totaliser for years and had recently changed its stance, Bar and Bench reported.

Referring to a January 2018 order by the Supreme Court, the petitioner said the Election Commission had stated that “a time has come for introduction of totaliser for counting of the votes”.

Edited by Sneha.

The Delhi government on Tuesday directed bus operators to ensure that panic buttons are operational at all times on their vehicles and that there are no curtains or films blocking the windows, reported PTI.

They were also told that vehicle tracking devices on buses should be functional at all times.

The directions came days after a driver and a conductor raped a 17-year-old girl inside a moving sleeper bus.

The crime took place on August 4, while the bus travelled nearly 47 km from Greater Noida to Old Delhi’s Kashmere Gate. The persons accused in the matter, 39-year-old bus driver Kuldeep and 26-year-old conductor Sandeep, have been arrested.

The bus had curtains around its berth, which prevented persons who were outside from seeing what was happening inside the vehicle, The Hindu quoted unidentified police officers as saying.

In the order on Tuesday, the Delhi government told bus operators that stopping at unsafe or unauthorised locations, particularly in the middle of the road or at intersections, was strictly prohibited, reported PTI.

It also said that all bus drivers must have a valid driving licence and should be wearing a uniform while driving.

The bus operators have also been told that if an incident of harassment of any woman is reported to them, they should inform the police and take the vehicle to the nearest police station or post.

Buses must be parked only during night and idle hours in authorised, secure and adequately lit locations, PTI quoted the order as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.