India’s retail inflation rose to 4.8% in August from 4.4% in July, and the wholesale price inflation increased to 9.9% from 9.7%, according to government data released on Monday.

Retail inflation measures the change in consumer prices in a month on a year-on-year basis.

The wholesale price index tracks the average changes in prices of a basket of goods that are sold in bulk before they make their way to retail consumers. The base year for calculating wholesale price index is 2022-’23.

The rise in retail inflation was largely driven by higher food prices. Food inflation increased to 5.9% in August from 5.5% in July, according to the National Statistics Office.

Prices of staples such as ginger, onion and garlic rose sharply. Inflation in food-serving services also increased to 8.4% from 7.7%. The transport inflation rose to 4.6% from 4.4%.

The wholesale inflation has also been rising since the beginning of the financial year because of the war in West Asia and the resulting blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, PTI reported. India imports 88% of its crude oil and about half of its natural gas, much of it through the strait.

The disruption has also had a spillover effect on food prices.

The wholesale food inflation also rose to 7% in August from 6.6% in July. Inflation in primary food articles increased to 5.6% from 5.4%, while inflation in manufactured food products rose to 9.6% from 8.8%.

The overall wholesale inflation has remained close to double digits for four consecutive months. It rose from 3.9% in March to 8.3% in April and 9.8% in May. June inflation was later revised up to 9.9% from the provisional estimate of 9.8%, before easing to 9.7% in July, Moneycontrol reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal surrendered before a Goa court to serve his 10-year sentence for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. He had been convicted by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court on August 6, overturning a 2021 sessions court verdict.

On August 20, the journalist moved the Supreme Court, challenging the High Court’s decision. A bench of Justice Alok Aradhe had on August 25 directed Tejpal to surrender to the authorities within two weeks. The court agreed to list Tejpal’s appeal, provided he submits his surrender certificate by September 22.

He has been sent to Central Jail in North Goa. Read on.

Seventeen of the 20 Trinamool Congress MPs who had merged with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India in June will join the Bharatiya Janata Party, rebel TMC leader Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia said. “Since more than two-thirds of the 20 members will be moving, the anti-defection law will not apply to us,” Basunia added.

He said that the MPs will join the Hindutva party “before or after Durga Puja”, which will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year. Basunia added that Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman and Yusuf Pathan would not formally join the BJP but extend support to the National Democratic Alliance.

However, the BJP’s West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya said that “no one from the TMC or NCPI is joining” the Hindutva party. Read on.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has named former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya in the first information report filed in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Actors Dino Morea and Rhea Chakraborty, ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh and suspended police officer Sachin Vaze have also been named.

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.

On September 2, a division bench of the Bombay High Court directed the CBI to register an FIR based on a statement by Satish Salian, the celebrity manager’s father. Read on.

The Allahabad High Court has stayed the suspension of a teacher even as an enquiry against him is pending for allegedly forcing students at a government school to take part in Islamic religious practices. Mohammed Anzar Ahmad was booked in May after it was alleged that he had forced girl students at a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district to wear hijab and boys to wear skull caps.

It was also alleged that he made the students recite poet Muhammad Iqbal’s Urdu verse Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua before the morning prayers. In the order passed on September 7, the bench directed that the enquiry against the teacher, Ahmad, be concluded at the earliest, preferably within 15 days. Read on.

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Rebel Trinamool Congress leader Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia claimed on Monday that 17 of the 20 party MPs, who had merged with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India, will join the Bharatiya Janata Party in October, reported PTI.

“We are 17 MPs going to the BJP together,” Basunia was quoted as saying by the news agency. “Since more than two-thirds of the 20 members will be moving, the anti-defection law will not apply to us.”

However, the BJP’s West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya said that “no one from the TMC or NCPI is joining” the Hindutva party.

“People of the state have not forgotten the kind of atrocities these leaders and MPs have done during the TMC regime,” Bhattacharya was quoted as saying by PTI.

He also said that the BJP would not take in anyone “merely because they want to join it”.

Basunia had said that the rebel MPs will join the Hindutva party “before or after Durga Puja”, which will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

He added that Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman and Yusuf Pathan would not formally join the BJP but extend support to the National Democratic Alliance. They “may be given important responsibilities or portfolios”, said the Cooch Behar MP.

However, fellow rebel MP Satabdi Roy said Basunia had made the remarks in his personal capacity, reported PTI.

Twenty of the TMC’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs had in June announced a merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India. The group has been supporting the NDA in the Lower House of Parliament.

The Nationalist Citizens Party of India did not have any MPs before the merger.

Ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament in July, the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla accepted the request of the rebel MPs to sit separately in the Lok Sabha. However, the group is yet to be recognised as the Nationalist Citizens Party of India in the House.

After the rebel MPs merged with the BJP, TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee had, on June 19, submitted petitions to Birla demanding that they be disqualified on the grounds of leaving the party.

He had argued that the 10th Schedule of the Constitution was clear that if a member voluntarily gives up the party’s membership, they are to be disqualified as MPs.

The speaker had asked Abhishek Banerjee to present his case against the Dastidar-led faction’s decision.

Citing the 10th Schedule, Abhishek Banerjee had also contended that the merger can be considered valid only if two-thirds of a political party, not the legislature party, merges into another party.

The TMC has been beset by internal divisions and rebellions after it lost the Assembly elections to the BJP in May. Nearly 60 out of the TMC’s 80 MLAs have rebelled against the party leadership to choose Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

The group has been recognised by the Assembly speaker as the party’s legislature party in the House, and Ritabrata Banerjee has been recognised as the leader of the Opposition.

On July 9, three TMC Rajya Sabha MPs who had resigned from the House in June joined the BJP. They were elected unopposed to the Upper House on BJP tickets on Friday.

On July 16, one more TMC MP resigned from the Rajya Sabha. With this, the Trinamool Congress’ strength in the Upper House fell to nine from what was 13 in May.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Gurugram Police on Monday registered a first information report after a video shared on social media showed a car ramming into a woman biker, throwing her off the two-wheeler and speeding away.

The collision was captured on an action camera mounted on her bike.

The police have registered a suo moto case on charges of rash driving, The Print reported.

The woman, who runs the Instagram page “rebelwheels_sia_”, posted a video of the incident and alleged that persons in a white car had been chasing her for some distance.

गुरुग्राम में महिला बाइक सवार ने शेयर किया हिट एंड रन का वीडियो, पुलिस से कार्रवाई की मांग

- गुरुग्राम के Golf Course Road पर रविवार को कार चालक ने एक महिला बाइक सवार को टक्कर मारी और फिर भाग निकला

- महिला के दोस्त ने लाल बत्ती पर कार चालक को रोकने की कोशिश की, लेकिन आरोप है कि… pic.twitter.com/7L7KJWmWl9

— 4PM News Network (@4pmnews_network) September 14, 2026

She said that they repeatedly came close to her two-wheeler while she was riding with members of her biking group.

The biker alleged that despite signalling to the driver to maintain a safe distance, the vehicle continued pursuing her before hitting her.

The woman also said that she would file a complaint with the police.

Meanwhile, in the suo motu case, the police said that the suspect had been identified and would be arrested soon.

“We are investigating the matter and have also reached out to the owner of the accused vehicle,” Station House Officer Manoj Kumar told The Print.

The owner of the car, Manish, claimed that a friend, Kalyan Singh, had borrowed the vehicle from him two days ago, ANI reported.

“I found out about the accident this morning,” he was quoted as saying. “I called him, but he didn’t pick up.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has named former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and his son, MLA Aaditya Thackeray, in the first information report filed in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, NDTV reported on Monday.

Others named in the FIR include actors Dino Morea, Rhea Chakraborty and Sooraj Pancholi, ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, and suspended police officer Sachin Vaze, IANS 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 March 2025, the celebrity manager’s father, Satish Salian, had moved the High Court seeking a CBI probe into her death.

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 been a politically driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”.

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

On September 2, a division bench of the Bombay High Court directed the CBI to register an FIR based on a statement by Satish Salian.

The bench said the failure of the police to register an FIR for six years “raises more questions than answers”, PTI reported.

It also pulled up the police for continuing to treat the matter as an accidental death case and pointed to “glaring discrepancies” in the investigation.

The court also 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.

In the FIR filed on Sunday, the CBI has accused Uddhav Thackeray, the chief minister at the time, and others of playing “a significant role in the conspiracy and subsequent cover-up”, IANS reported.

“The concerned public servants and police officers are also liable to be investigated for destruction or suppression of case papers, files and other public records, fabrication of official records, and misuse of public funds, manpower and police machinery for unlawful purposes and for shielding the offenders,” the FIR stated.

Further, the agency called for an investigation into the alleged “commission of the principal offences, criminal conspiracy, subsequent creation and propagation of the false suicide story and suppression, destruction and/or fabrication of evidence”.

Edited by Sneha.

The Allahabad High Court has stayed the suspension of a teacher while an enquiry against him is pending for allegedly forcing students at a government school to take part in Islamic religious practices, Bar and Bench reported on Monday.

Mohammed Anzar Ahmad had been booked in May after it was alleged that he had forced girl students at a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district to wear hijab and boys to wear skull caps, the Deccan Herald reported.

It was also alleged that he made the students recite poet Muhammad Iqbal’s Urdu verse Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua before morning prayers.

In the order passed on September 7, the bench directed that the enquiry against Ahmad be concluded at the earliest, preferably within 15 days.

The court was hearing a plea by Ahmad challenging the suspension order against him.

The Sambhal administration had ordered an inquiry in May after videos of the students wearing hijabs and skull caps were widely shared online.

Ahmad and an assistant teacher were suspended on May 10. Another teacher had been suspended for failing to bring it to the notice of senior officials, Deccan Herald reported.

In his plea, Ahmad denied the allegations and argued that he was on medical leave when the alleged incident took place.

The state argued that he was present at the school at the time of the incident.

Edited by Sneha.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal surrendered before a Goa court on Monday to serve his 10-year sentence for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013, reported PTI.

Overturning a 2021 sessions court verdict that had acquitted Tejpal, the Bombay High Court on August 6 convicted the journalist under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her.

On August 20, the journalist moved the Supreme Court, challenging the High Court’s decision.

A bench of Justice Alok Aradhe on August 25 directed Tejpal to surrender to the authorities within two weeks. The court agreed to list Tejpal’s appeal, provided he submits his surrender certificate by September 22.

On Monday, he surrendered before the Additional Sessions Court at Mapusa, after which he was sent to Central Jail at Colvale in North Goa, reported PTI.

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

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

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

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

The state has also moved the Supreme Court seeking life imprisonment for Tejpal instead of the 10-year sentence.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

After Tejpal: A letter to progressive men from a feminist

A 21-year-old man accused of brewing the spurious liquor that has killed 16 persons in Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar was arrested on Sunday, PTI quoted unidentified police officials as saying.

The police claimed that the man, Shivanjay Rajput, was arrested after a gunfight, in which he was injured in the leg. He had allegedly been absconding since the first deaths due to the spurious liquor poisoning were reported on September 5.

Rajput allegedly fired three rounds at the police team during a search operation near Kathua Nala forest area, reported PTI. The police claimed that security personnel opened fire in retaliation.

He was subsequently taken to a hospital and his condition is stable, Sagar police control room in-charge Sub-Inspector RKS Chauhan was quoted as saying by the news agency.

So far, the police have arrested 19 persons accused in the case. Five first information reports have been registered.

Rajput was carrying a bounty of Rs 30,000. The police recovered a country-made .315-bore pistol, three live cartridges, three empty cartridges, a mobile phone and a motorcycle from him, reported PTI.

On Friday, another accused, Ravi Lakhera, was arrested after an alleged gunfight, reported The Hindu.

He had been hiding in a forest in Barayatha village near the Uttar Pradesh border and allegedly opened fire at the police team that had been searching for him. The police claimed that they fired at him in retaliation, injuring his leg.

Lakhera is a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur district and allegedly supplied the raw material for the spurious liquor to Chandrabhan Rajpoot, another key accused person who is in police custody, reported the newspaper.

Those who died after consuming the spurious liquor hailed from six villages – Ghooghra Khurd, Nauraj, Bamoora, Patan, Chauka and Dalpatpur.

The police had earlier claimed that during their investigation, a link emerged between some persons in Lalitpur and a local liquor outlet owner.

Two police officials – the Banda Police station house officer and an outpost in-charge – were suspended after the deaths. Sagar Assistant Excise Commissioner Kirti Dubey, Additional District Excise Officer Dilip Kandaka and Sub-Inspector Roshani Urathi were also suspended.

Further, Area Deputy Commissioner Neerja Shrivastava was transferred out of Sagar and attached to the department’s headquarters in Gwalior.

Saxena had also said that the packaging of the spurious liquor looked original, like that of locally made brands. “The agent of the licensed liquor seller sold it and people thought it was genuine,” he had added.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Parbin Khatun remembers the night of July 29 vividly.

Khatun had returned to her home in Bengal’s Murshidabad district from Kolkata shortly after midnight.

Around 12.30 am, she was in bed, when a group of men knocked on the door of their home in Ramakantapur village.

“They called out my father-in-law’s name,” Khatun said.

When 61-year-old Ibrahim Sheikh opened the door, Khatun said, a group of seven or eight men surrounded him. They were in civilian clothes but Khatun said they appeared to be police officials.

“They demanded to see his documents and so he showed them his Aadhaar and voter cards,” Khatun said. “Then, they asked him, ‘Aapni ki Indian, na Bangaldeshi?’” Are you Indian or Bangladeshi?

Sheikh asserted that he was Indian, not Bangladeshi, Khatun said. But the men said they had information that Sheikh was not an Indian citizen.

They went on to grab Sheikh from behind, Khatun said. As they roughed him up, pinning his hands at the back, he became “very afraid” and “agreed with whatever the police were saying”.

Khatun said the men forcefully took her father-in-law away, alleging that he is a Bangladeshi national. “They did not show us any written document or police complaint against him,” she said.

Khatun said she appealed to the men to consider Sheikh’s age and ill health. “I told them he is sick and weak,” she said. “But they were laughing at him.”

The next day, the family went to the Suti police station with Sheikh’s identity documents – pension papers that showed he was once an employee of the Murshidabad-based company Pataka Bidi, a land title in his name issued in 2017, his voter card, among others.

However, they were not allowed to meet Sheikh.

A day later, the police said he had been sent to a detention centre. “Since then, we have visited Suti police station, the office of the Jangipur superintendent of police and various detention centres,” Khatun said. “But we don’t know where he is. The police have just disappeared him.”

‘Disappeared’

Ibrahim Sheikh is not alone. Scroll’s investigations reveal that since June, at least nine Muslim men and two children have been picked up by the Bengal police from their homes on suspicion of being Bangladeshi nationals and sent to detention centres. All of them except one are from Murshidabad. None was given a chance to prove their citizenship and contest the allegations.

At least four of those detained had cleared the scrutiny of the Election Commission’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls carried out in Bengal recently. Ibrahim Sheikh’s appeal against his exclusion during the SIR is pending at the tribunals set up by the Election Commission.

The detentions have followed a similar pattern. Most detainees were picked from their home in a midnight crackdown – one person while he was sleeping in the verandah outside. Their family members said the police did not produce any warrant or remand order or copy of a first information report to show why they were being taken away. In some cases, the police filed suo motu FIRs weeks after the detentions.

In at least one case, the police’s attempt to expel one of the men was refused by the Border Security Force, police records show.

Since May last year, several Muslim migrant workers from West Bengal have been picked up by police in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Accused of being Bangladeshis, they have been forcibly pushed out of the country’s borders by the BSF. In at least a couple of cases, they had been brought back on the orders of the Supreme Court.

But this is the first time that Bengali Muslims are facing similar scrutiny and harassment in their own state.

“The scariest thing is that police are randomly picking up people and sending them to detention centres without producing them before the court, which is both illegal and anti-constitutional,” Jakir Hussain, a Murshidabad-based human rights activist associated with the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, said.

A CM’s statement

Ibrahim Sheikh’s family has gone to court, seeking redressal.

On August 25, Ibrahim’s 81-year-old mother Hanifa Bewa filed a habeas corpus petition in the Calcutta High Court asking the state to trace Sheikh’s location and produce him in court.

The state government, however, asserted that Hanifa is not the Sheikh’s biological mother.

Sheikh’s lawyer, Md Nur Hossain Zamadar, told Scroll that Hanifa was his maternal aunt, who had adopted him. “This is still an unlawful detention,” he said. “For months now, the family has no idea of his whereabouts. One can’t be detained like this without an arrest memo or an FIR. This is the violation of fundamental rights.”

Zamadar said the family has a land deed document from 1946, which proves they have been living in the country before Independence.

Abhijit Basu Mallick, a senior police official at Suti Police station, rejected allegations by Sheikh’s family members.

“They don’t know the country’s law," Mallick said. “The detention has been done as per the government's executive order. There is no need for an FIR.”

This claim was echoed by Jangipur superintendent of police Surinder Singh. “Everything has been done as per the guidelines,” he said. “The family themselves know that they are Bangladeshis.”

Advocates and activists said the police action remains completely opaque and without legal basis.

“This is not a police state. Detaining any person, treating them as a Bangladeshi, and pushing them back without any investigation is illegal,” said Kirity Roy, activist from Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha.

Activists also link the police action to statements made in May by Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari. “Bangladeshi infiltrators detained in the state would be handed over directly to the Border Security Force for deportation instead of being produced before courts,” he said.

Adhikari had clarified that Hindu migrants eligible under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 would not be targeted.

Khatun said the police officials who visited her home expressed communal sentiments.

When Khatun tried to dissuade them from taking away Sheikh, the men allegedly told her, “Hindu ra amader buke, Musalman ra amader payer toler.” We will keep Hindus close to our heart, but Muslims have to stay under our feet.

Khatun said they suggested that Hindus had a greater right to stay in India. “They told me: ‘Even if Hindus come from Bangladesh tomorrow, we will make them Indians.’”

‘The government has changed’

Sixty-seven-year-old Jalil Akhtar was sleeping in the verandah of his home in Bahrai village of Uttar Dinajpur district on the midnight of June 19, when the police took him away.

“The police came like thieves in the night and detained him,” his wife Taupha Bibi told Scroll when we visited her one-room hut. “When I woke up and did not see him, I thought he had gone for the morning namaaz. But when he did not return, we went looking for him in the early morning.”

Akhtar’s cousin Matiur Rahman, a retired teacher, found out that he had been taken by personnel from the Dalkhola police station on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi.

The allegation was without basis, Rahman and Taupha said.

Rahman said Akhter’s name had appeared in the electoral roll prepared after the Special Intensive Revision carried out in 2002 as well as 2026. His wife said that they have land documents in the name of Akhter’s great-grandfather.

“When we went to the police station and asked them why he had been picked up, and that his name was cleared in the SIR, they said, ‘You cannot argue with us now. The government has changed, there will be no arguing’," Rahman said.

“What does it mean that the government has changed? It means now we have to face oppression.”

Rahman, who met Akhtar later in Islampur jail, said the police had “kidnapped him”. “He told me that he was threatened into keeping quiet. Everyone would have known if he had screamed and shouted.”

A month after he was taken into custody, an FIR was filed against Akhtar and he was produced before the court.

In these four weeks, the police made at least one attempt to deport him, according to a report filed by the Dalkhola police in the Uttar Dinajpur court on August 1.

Akhtar was kept at a temporary holding centre in Nizampur “and all biometric and deportation formalities were completed”, the report said. He was handed over to the Border Security Force on July 4 and asked to be deported.

But Akhtar insisted he was an Indian citizen. “Consequently, the BSF returned him to police custody,” the Dalkhola police report, seen by Scroll, read.

Having failed to push him out, the police then filed a suo moto case against him under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, accusing him of being a foreigner who had entered the country without a valid passport, travel document, or visa.

Akhtar’s family members say they have submitted land records from 1967, in his father Roshan Ali’s name. But in its report, the police said that Akhtar could not produce any documentary evidence to prove that he was Ali’s son.

The police pointed out that Akhtar could not speak in Bengali, despite claiming to have resided in Uttar Dinajpur for several decades. “Though language by itself cannot determine nationality, the said circumstance has been noted as one of the surrounding facts during enquiry," the police inquiry said

Akhtar’s family speak Surjapuri language, a blend of Hindi, Maithili, and Bengali, spoken mainly in the Bihar-Bengal border region as well as the Islampur subdivision of Uttar Dinajpur district where Akhtar lives. Over three lakh people in Islampur registered Surjapuri as their mother tongue.

Rahman alleged that the police have been picking up Muslims without any basis. “They told me: ‘We have just started. We have 500 names on our list.”

‘They have broken up a family’

Eleven days after Ibrahim Sheikh was picked up, the Suti police turned up at midnight at a home 3 km away – in Nurpurdiyar village, along the Padma river.

A group of seven or eight police personnel knocked on the door of Jamirul Sheikh at 12.30 am, and asked for his adopted son Abdul Jabbar.

“The police claimed he is Bangladeshi and took him away,” Sheikh said. “But I adopted Jabbar from his maternal grandparents 26 years ago.”

Jabbar’s two sons – eight-year-old Ahad and six-year-old Jiad – were also taken away. His third child, 11-month-old Abdul Halim, is with his wife.

“They have broken up a family,” Jamirul Sheikh said.

The police officials asked Sheikh to visit the police station with Jabbar’s documents. “They said we will release him. But the next day, they did not even allow us to meet him.”

Instead, the police officials showed Sheikh a Bangladeshi birth certificate issued in 2022, saying Jabbar was a Bangladeshi. “This is a fake document,” Sheikh said.

He cited the several documents that Jabbar has – an Indian passport, a birth certificate issued by the sub-registrar of Nupur gram panchayat and a voter card. Scroll has seen the documents.

Jabbar voted in the last Assembly elections after having been included in the electoral rolls after the special intensive revision or SIR in Bengal.

“He is Indian and his mother is also Indian,” Jamirul told Scroll. “We adopted him after her mother left the country with his father, who is from Bangladesh.”

In the 1990s, marriages between families on either side of the border were common as there was no fencing, said Jakir Hossain, the Murshidabad-based activist.

Jabbar was born in 1990. Under the Citizenship Amendment Act, a person born in India after 1950 and before 2003 is an Indian citizen if one of his or her parents is Indian – and if the other is not an illegal migrant.

Jamirul said Jabbar grew up at his nana nani’s home in Lakhipur gram panchayat till the age of eight. “He has been with us for the last 26 years,” he said. “We were not even given a chance to prove he is Indian.”

A few days after his detention, Jabbar's 26-year-old wife Jumman Bibi was admitted to a hospital in Jangipur.

"She was admitted after she had seizures and lost consciousness,” her brother Nobinul Hoque said. “She keeps fainting. Her two sons are missing."

Jumman told Scroll that the police had told her that Jabbar and her children had been pushed into Bangladesh. “We last spoke with him on August 28 when he was in the Ahiran detention centre.”

20 days after detention, an FIR

On June 14, Sahin Sheikh, a 28-year-old resident of Budher Kismat village, was picked up in a midnight raid by the Murshidabad police.

“When we opened the door, the police started to question Sahin, asking him about his father’s and grandfather’s names. They claimed he was a Bangladeshi national,” his wife Amina Khatun said.

“My husband said he was born here and has lived here all his life,” she said. When she submitted documents to the police station, including a land deed from 2003, and a ration card issued by the state government, the police refused to accept them.

Sahin Sheikh was not included in the voter roll after the SIR this year, but he has appealed the exclusion in the appellate tribunals set up by the EC.

Sheikh was moved to the Lalgola detention centre. Since then, Amina said, the police made attempts to push him into Bangladesh.

As in Akhtar’s case, the police waited several weeks to file a case against Sahin Sheikh.

His advocate Mohammed Abu Raihain told Scroll that the police filed a suo moto FIR 20 days later, on July 6, after having failed to push him into Bangladesh.

“This is completely illegal,” he said. “The police FIR says they got information from a source that he is a Bangladeshi.”

According to the suo moto FIR seen by Scroll, the police alleged that during the search of his bag, a photocopy of a birth certificate from Bangladesh was recovered, indicating his Bangladeshi origin. “But this document has not been proved as authentic,” Raihan said.

Raihan claimed the whole case is based on “lies and fabrication” as police have not verified the birth certificate and other documents. “I asked the courts to verify Sahin’s voter card, panchayat certificate, school certificate and land documents. Let the Election Commission and Murshidabad district administration verify and say whether these are fake documents or not.”

‘The police are picking up whoever they want’

Murshidabad-based advocate Sahin Mandal said the police action in several such cases violated all constitutional provisions. “At the direction of the current government, the police are picking up whoever they want.”

Jibon Sheikh, one of Sahin’s clients, was taken away on the night of June 26 by the Murshidabad police. “He has all the documents, from a voter card to school certificate but the police refused to accept them,” Sahin said. “He has voted in the recent assembly elections after having been included in the SIR.”

Since then, his 27-year-old wife Farida Bibi has been trying to release him from Lalgola holding centre, a detention centre. “He even has an identity card issued by the Bengal government stating he is a fish trader. They still took him,” Farida said.

In the last three months, Farida said, she has exhausted her savings trying to keep the home running. The couple has three children, the oldest is 13.

Advocate Selim Sheikh, who is among the lawyers representing Sheikh, told Scroll that even after more than two months no FIR copy or any other order was given to the family which is violating the constitutional provision. “We are moving Calcutta High Court next week challenging his detention,” Selim said.

China “significantly reduced” its Army deployment along India’s northern borders in 2025, the Ministry of Defence has said in its annual report.

However, 10 combined arms brigade-size forces remain deployed in areas along the Line of Actual Control and in traditional training areas, the ministry said in its report for the financial year 2025-’26. Each brigade of this size typically comprises about 5,000 personnel, according to independent analysts.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Following the face-off, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region.

Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

Initial rounds of disengagement occurred at several sites of tension, including Galwan Valley, Hot Springs and Pangong Tso, but Demchok and Depsang had remained points of contention.

Diplomatic engagements following the patrolling arrangement have led to a thaw in India-China relations in the past two years.

In its annual report, the Indian defence ministry said that the Indian Army’s deployment in all sectors along the Line of Actual Control was “robust, well poised and prepared to deal with any emerging contingency”.

The talks between India and China at political, diplomatic and military levels led to “positive developments along the northern borders, leading to stability”, New Delhi said.

Talks between special representatives were also held on the boundary question, it added.

On Saturday, during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that peace and tranquillity along the border areas were essential to the continued development of bilateral relations. The meeting took place on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Delhi.

The two leaders agreed that both countries should take a strategic and long-term perspective of their ties and that “differences should not become disputes”, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

Security overview

The defence ministry also claimed in its report that the security situation in Jammu and Kashmir “remains firmly under control”. There had been a reduction in violence, protests had scaled down and there was no incident of stone pelting during the year, the ministry said.

The situation within the Union Territory and along the Line of Control was “significantly altered” during Operation Sindoor, the ministry said. However, it had “stabilised to a large extent” after the four-day conflict with Pakistan ended, “though the unpredictability continues”, it added.

The situation in Manipur has also shown “marked improvement” after President’s Rule was imposed in the state in February 2025, New Delhi said. President’s Rule was revoked in February this year, when a new Cabinet was sworn in.

Ethnic clashes had broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. Tensions between Kuki and Naga groups also escalated in February this year. More than 300 persons have been killed and over 59,000 displaced since the conflict began.

The defence ministry also said that the security situation along the India-Myanmar border “remained sensitive” during the year because of clashes between Myanmar’s Army and the rebel forces.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• Modi in China: New détente or a progressive trajectory?
• Peace along India-China border essential to development of ties, Modi tells Xi

The West Bengal government is closing 252 madrasas and has sent show-cause notices to about 100 others after alleged violation of regulations were found during a survey, The Times of India reported.

The 252 unaided madrasas were served closure notices for allegedly not complying with rules pertaining to classroom space, adequate students or teachers and deviating from standard state school syllabus, the newspaper reported.

Action will be taken against the 100 other madrasas if their responses to the show-cause notices are unsatisfactory.

The notices were sent after a survey of unaided madrasas was conducted in July to check if they were authorised and complying with regulations.

Among the madrasas being closed, 45 are in Malda district, 37 in Uttar Dinajpur, and 25 each in South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad and Nadia, The Indian Express reported.

Kshudiram Tudu, the minister for minority affairs and madrasa education, said that the state government wants madrasa students “to pursue modern, mainstream education and shine in life just like students from other schools”, The Times of India reported.

Samik Bhattacharya, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s Bengal chief, said that madrasas should have been surveyed a long ago.

“That is why our state government did it,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “[Former Left Chief Minister] Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had once questioned what work was going on in the guise of Khaliji madrasas, but under pressure he had to revoke it. If the then Left government had listened to him, then the condition that is there today on the borders would not have happened.”

State Panchayati Raj Minister Dilip Ghosh claimed that “terrorists have been caught staying in madrasas and carrying out anti-national activities”. He added that madrasas that comply with the regulations will continue to operate, “but madrasas just cannot mushroom anywhere”, The Indian Express reported.

Trinamool Congress MLA Kunal Ghosh, from the Mamata Banerjee faction, said that all madrasas should not be painted with the same brush, the newspaper reported. “Attacking the education system and creating such a narrative is not right”, he was quoted as saying.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Bengal’s new BJP government makes singing Vande Mataram mandatory in madrasas

When 37-year-old Pune resident Vidyanand Bapat last month publicly criticised the noise and traffic obstructions during the Ganesh festival, he struck a raw nerve.

Ever since freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak transformed the Ganeshotsav into a public celebration in 1893 to circumvent a colonial ban on assembly, it has become Pune’s signature event.

During the ten-day festival honouring the birth of the elephant-headed deity, Pune fills up with elaborate pandals housing Ganesh idols. Dhol tasha drum groups parade through the streets. There are plays about the 17th-century warrior king Shivaji. Religious songs and prayers echo from stacks of loudspeakers.

At a preparatory meet for Ganeshotsav called by the Pune Municipal Corporation on August 24, Bapat spoke angrily about how the music played by loudspeakers is a burden for residents. “The loudspeakers on stands play all through the 10 days,” he said. “On the last two days, they are played 24 hours.”

He caused a furore. Other participants tried to shout him down. In videos, some can be heard telling him to get out of Pune if he has a problem. The police had to escort Bapat out of the meeting.

Bapat – a Brahmin who speaks in chaste Marathi, given to quoting Sanskrit texts – has become the unlikely spokesperson for longstanding grievances about noise pollution during the festival.

After all, the Ganesh celebrations in Pune have been definitively shaped by the cultural sensibilities of Brahmins and other upper-caste groups, scholars note.

However, over the decades, its contours have widened to make it more inclusive of other caste groups and of women. For instance, dhol tasha pathaks, or groups, prominently feature women. This has given the festival a mass appeal.

The popularity of the festival, coupled with a growing assertion of the Hindu identity in recent years, could explain why some are outraged by Bapat’s suggested restrictions on Ganeshotsav, scholars say

Bapat has demanded that DJs and loudspeakers be banned, that dhol tasha performances be moved to indoor auditoriums and that pandals be constructed only on designated grounds.

The notion that Bapat’s assertions were not aimed a solving a civic problem but an attack on religion was evident on September 3, as he was being interviewed on the street by a television journalist. Suddenly, a man stepped up and slapped him, shouting abuses at Bapat for “speaking against Ganpati”.

Others share this view. Chinmay Abhyankar, the president of Khalkar Jog Mitra Mandal was also sceptical of Bapat’s campaign.

Mitra mandals or “organisations of friends”, such as the one that Abhyankar heads, consists of volunteers from a neighbourhood and are central to organising the festival. There are an estimated 2,000 or more such groups in Pune.

Abhyankar conceded that Bapat’s concerns about loud DJs and traffic congestion are valid but expressed doubts about the activist’s motives. “By opposing everything means that his agenda is questionable,” Abhyankar declared. “By Bappa’s grace, he will not succeed.” In Marathi, “Bappa” is a term of endearment for the deity Ganesh.

Also dismissive of the criticism about noise was 33-year-old Jugal Chandan of the Shree Krishna Mandal Trust in the Deccan Gymkhana area. He said the mandal with which he is associated is nearly nine decades old and that one person should not try to disrupt this long tradition.

“Entertainment and festivals go hand in hand,” Chandan said. “You can’t say ‘celebrate quietly’. Be it any religion.”

Chandan said these concerns should have been raised earlier instead of this close to the festival, when people’s time and money is at stake. The first day of Ganesh Chaturthi is September 14.

A longstanding grievance

As the debate gathered steam, Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar Police on September 4 said that plasma speakers and pressure-mids, which amplify sound, and laser lights had been banned.

At a meeting, mandals agreed to a limit of four top speakers and four base speakers.

Even so, on September 6, about 1,000 citizens marched though the city under the banner of the “Punekars Against Loudspeakers Forum” seeking a ban on “DJ” sound systems.

Krunnal Gharre, an advocate who was affiliated with the city’s Aam Aadmi Party unit, said that despite several Supreme Court, High Court and National Green Tribunal judgements on noise, “there is no compliance from the mandals”.

The claim by members of mandals that the issue had been raised too close to the festival is irrelevant, said Gharre. He noted that India has had noise pollution rules since 2000 and that the National Green Tribunal had issued orders on controlling noise during Ganeshotsav in Pune in 2024.

The state pollution control board had told the tribunal that sound levels in Pune on peak days of the festival were consistently above 90 decibels – a dangerous level that could damage hearing over time.

Despite the disruptions, Gharre conceded that since festivals involve acute social sensitivities, it is essential to find the middle ground. “You enjoy your sound but that sound should not enter someone else’s home and cause them discomfort,” Gharre said. “I mean, window glasses breaking [from the vibrations caused by loud sound] and all that is too much.”

‘Can’t change everything for one person’

Members of Ganesh mandals, on their part, say they are well aware of the sound limits and insist that they follow the rules.

But Bapat’s demand that the festival be moved out of city limits is not practical, said Abhayankar. “Our people and society are here,” he said. “We can’t change everything just because one person is unhappy and venting his frustrations on the Ganeshotsav.”

Amar Harish Supekar, who has been associated with the Samarth Pratisthan dhol tasha pathak for 20 years, said that the festival serves an essential function: it unites society at a time when people are disconnected and isolated.

Supekar, who works as a researcher, said that most Pune residents enjoy dhol tasha performances. “It is a distributed, dispersed sound and hence causes less noise,” he claimed.

Behind Supekar, youngsters sat watching a dhol tasha pathak practice at a spot by the Mutha river. After complaints about noise, many pathaks shifted their practice sessions away from residential areas to open grounds or roads by the river.

He dismissed suggestions that dhol tasha performances should be restricted to closed auditoriums. “This is the city’s and the whole state’s festival,” Supekar said. “How can it be celebrated in an auditorium?”

Who gets to be loud in public

An academic who has researched religion and culture in Pune’s middle-class said Bapat’s views have trapped members of the city’s upper castes in a bind.

“They actually want to support him on noise pollution,” said the academic, but they feel defensive because Ganeshotsav is seen as a marker of identity – a symbol of “our” festival and “our” religion.

Hindu majoritarianism has reshaped Indian society, said the academic. As the texture of society changes, many upper-caste Pune residents feel a false sense of anxiety about Hindu culture being under threat, said the academic. They feel that “even if Bapat is rational and correct, it is a question of life and death, of existence and identity”.

The mandals and dhol tasha pathaks, the academics noted, are institutions that help consolidate this fragmenting sense of community.

But opposition to Bapat’s campaign is more widespread. As the festival grew to include expressions by groups beyond the dominant castes, it gave more groups “the sense of being able to claim and be part of a culture which was not available to them earlier”, said the academic.

As a consequence, subscribing to Bapat’s views could be perceived as a decision “not to assert your identity in public as Hindu”.

The academic concluded: “To view festivals with the objectivity and rationality of Bapat is a novelty right now – even though there is nothing novel about what Bapat is saying.”

Also read:

The voice in the din: Why Vidyanand Bapat is making noise about noise

The Indian women’s cricket team on Sunday refused to accept the Asia Cup trophy from Asian Cricket Council chief Mohsin Naqvi, who is also Pakistan’s interior minister and chief of the country’s cricket board, Cricinfo reported.

India defeated Sri Lanka by 72 runs in Dubai to win the women’s Asia Cup for the eighth time.

The ceremony was delayed for nearly 50 minutes, Cricinfo reported. The Sri Lankan squad received their runners-up cheque from Naqvi, before getting their medals from the Sri Lankan board’s interim chief Eran Wikramaratne

Indian coach Amol Muzumdar said at the press conference that the Board of Control for Cricket in India had taken the decision not to accept the trophy from Naqvi, and that the squad stands by it.

“For us, this tournament is over, we are the champions...that’s good for us,” he told reporters. “It was on the big board that India are the champions of Asia Cup 2026. This tournament is officially over for us. We’re happy that we’re the champions and we look forward to the Asian Games.”

The BCCI had informed the Asian Cricket Council in advance that the Indian team will not accept the trophy from Naqvi, The Indian Express quoted an unidentified official as saying.

A similar incident occurred in September 2025 when the Indian men’s team refused to accept the Asia Cup trophy from Naqvi.

The men’s team had refused to accept the trophy from the Pakistani politician amid tensions between the two countries since the April 2025 terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor in May 2025.

A row had erupted during the men’s Asia Cup in September 2025 after Pakistani and Indian players made a series of gestures and comments in reference to the four-day conflict that took place in May 2025.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Four persons from the Kuki community were killed in two incidents in Manipur on Sunday.

The first attack occurred at about 4 am at L Tollen village in Tamenglong district, Kuki organisations said. A woman died on the spot and her husband succumbed to his injuries after being taken to hospital, said Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum spokesperson Ginza Vualzong.

Their six-year-old son was being treated for bullet injuries.

The second attack took place at about 3 pm at Longpi village in Noney district. Two persons died on the spot.

The L Tollen Village Authority alleged that the attack there had been carried out by Naga insurgent group National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) and armed Naga group Zeliangrong United Front (Kamson). The village authorities in Longpi also blamed the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah).

The Tollen Village Authority said that it considers the attack an “act of terrorism” against civilians, and urged the Union government and the National Human Rights Commission to intervene.

Two MLAs from the Kuki community, Letzamang Haokip and Kimneo Hangshing, expressed their condemnation of the killings, and urged the authorities to apprehend those responsible. “The deliberate targeting of women, children and defenceless civilians is an act of cowardice that deserves the strongest condemnation from all sections of society,” Hangshing said.

Tensions between the Kukis and the Nagas escalated in Manipur in February after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities in the Ukhrul district.

This followed the ethnic clashes that broke out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. More than 300 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced since then in the conflict.

The latest killings take the toll in the Kuki-Naga conflict to at least 38 since the conflict began in February this year.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• How ambush of church leaders on a forested road escalated Naga-Kuki conflict across Manipur hills
• Naga-Kuki strife began with a drunken brawl. But five months later, Manipur fault lines run deeper
• ‘We thought peace was coming’: Manipur’s buffer zones are back in grip of violence

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that governments led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance partners in all 21 states would introduce the Uniform Civil Code before 2029.

The next Lok Sabha elections are scheduled for 2029.

“We have introduced the Uniform Civil Code in several states and I am confident that in the 21 BJP-NDA ruled states, we will introduce the UCC before 2029,” Shah said, while speaking about the Union government’s achievements over the past 12 years.

The Uniform Civil Code aims to introduce a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

Introducing a common personal law has for long been on the BJP’s agenda and several states ruled by the party have been making advances towards implementing it.

In January 2025, Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after Independence when it brought the code into force. Gujarat, Assam and Madhya Pradesh have passed similar legislations but are awaiting presidential assent and notification, Hindustan Times reported.

The Maharashtra, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh governments have formed committees to draft Uniform Civil Codes. The Rajasthan Cabinet also approved a bill to introduce such a legislation in August.

A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: ‘Women’s rights’ are a convenient cover for UCC’s intrusive provisions

The News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority on Friday fined Zee News Rs 2 lakh for its coverage of pro-Palestine slogans that were shouted during a student protest at Aligarh Muslim University in August, Live Law reported.

The authority noted that the broadcast had violated its code of conduct.

The order was passed on a complaint by Talha Mannan, an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University.

On August 12, Mannan had delivered an approximately 18-minute long speech during a student protest against a fee hike and seeking the restoration of the Students’ Union.

Mannan alleged that Zee News had subsequently broadcast selective 10 second to 15 second clips of slogans shouted during the protest that portrayed the demonstrators’ expressions of solidarity with Palestine as “criminal or anti-national conduct”, Live Law reported.

The petition concerned two Zee News programmes aired on August 16: “Deshhit” and “DNA”.

The “Deshhit” episode was titled “AMU mein ‘Filisteen premi gang’... ‘Yogi style’ mein hoga ilaaj!” or “Palestine-loving gang’ at AMU... will be dealt with in ‘Yogi style’!”

The “DNA” episode was titled “Fees maafi waale aandolan mein ‘Filisteen zindabad’ kahaan se aa gaya? Aligarh Muslim University” or “How did ‘Long live Palestine’ come into a protest for fee waiver? Aligarh Muslim University”.

The news regulator found that the protest involved several demands, including opposition to a fee hike, but found that the broadcaster had omitted its principal purpose and instead focused solely on the Palestine solidarity slogans.

This, it observed, created the impression that the protest itself was centred on the Palestinian matter, Live Law reported.

The authority also took issue with on-screen tickers including “AMU mein Filisteen premi gang” or AMU’s ‘Palestine-loving gang’” and “Yogi style mein hoga ilaaj or “will be dealt with in ‘Yogi style’”, finding that the coverage gave the event an “inflammatory twist” and appeared to advocate criminal action rather than constitute neutral reporting, the legal news outlet reported.

The authority directed Zee News to remove the impugned footage, where available, from its website, YouTube and other platforms, including hyperlinks providing access to the broadcasts, Live Law reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Congress on Sunday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach to normalising relations with China was “calibrated capitulation”.

The statement by party leader Jairam Ramesh came a day after Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Delhi.

The Opposition party posed four questions to the prime minister. It asked whether Modi’s “infamous clean chit” to China about the June 2020 military stand-off in Ladakh had weakened India’s position.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Amid the tensions, Modi had claimed on June 19, 2020, that Chinese soldiers had not entered Indian territory and no Indian posts had been taken over during the face-off.

The Congress on Sunday said that Modi’s statement had never been retracted. “Has this not greatly weakened our subsequent negotiating position?” it asked.

The Opposition party questioned why Modi had “allowed China’s territorial advances” in Ladakh “and now Arunachal Pradesh”, referring to reports of Chinese encroachments in the regions. It said that India’s “traditional patrolling and grazing rights across large stretches of eastern Ladakh have been quietly but definitely surrendered”.

China has long sought to rename places in Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing also lays territorial claims over a large portion of Arunachal Pradesh, claiming that it is “South Tibet”. China refers to Arunachal Pradesh as Zangnan. India has rejected these claims.

The Congress also asked whether the prime minister had allowed the “softening” of India’s position on Beijing’s support for Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.

In July 2025, the Indian Army said Pakistan had received real-time intelligence from China about India’s important military deployments during the four-day conflict in May 2025.

Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the deputy Army chief (capability development and sustenance), had said that India was effectively up against three adversaries during the conflict with Pakistan leading the front, China offering extensive support and Türkiye playing an important role by providing drones “along with trained individuals who were there”.

On Sunday, the Congress also asked why the Union government had allowed the trade deficit with China to reach a record $112.6 billion in the financial year 2025-’26.

“The dependence on China for critical raw materials, manufacturing components and intermediates has reached dangerous levels,” Ramesh said. “‘Make in India’ and ‘Import from China’ have become two sides of the same coin.”

Following the military face-off in eastern Ladakh in June 2020, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region.

Since the Galwan clashes, China and India have held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

Diplomatic engagements following the patrolling arrangement have led to a thaw in India-China relations in the past two years.

On Saturday, Modi said during the meeting with Xi that peace and tranquillity along the border areas were essential to the continued development of bilateral relations, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

The two leaders agreed that both countries should take a strategic and long-term perspective of their ties and that “differences should not become disputes”.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read:

• Peace along India-China border essential to development of ties, Modi tells Xi
• Modi in China: New détente or a progressive trajectory?

A group of former bureaucrats on Saturday said that they were appalled by the manner in which ex-civil servant Ashish Joshi was detained by the Delhi Police, describing it as a violation of the Constitution.

In an open letter, the Constitutional Conduct Group said it was shocked by the “blatant display of unconstitutional power” by the police. Joshi is a member of the group.

The letter was sent to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan, Delhi’s police commissioner and the national capital’s Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu. The Delhi Police reports to the Union home ministry.

On September 2, Joshi was picked up in Delhi during his morning walk by plainclothes police personnel and interrogated for several hours. Two days later, he said 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.

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

Joshi, however, said that on September 2 he had been questioned about another post from last month, in which he had alleged that there had been a “massive showdown” between Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Mohan after the police action against students protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in July.

Hours after returning home on September 2, Joshi said that he had been taken for interrogation “under the assurance that it would take very little time”. He said that he was allowed to call his family at 6.38 pm, “leaving my family and friends in total panic the entire day”.

Joshi was provided a copy of the FIR on September 7 only after he approached a court, he said.

Police’s conduct raises ‘constitutional concerns’, says group

On Saturday, the group of former bureaucrats said that the detention and interrogation of Joshi raised fundamental constitutional concerns.

They said that the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution includes the right to be informed of the grounds of detention and to be provided a copy of the FIR at the earliest stage. This principle has been upheld by the courts in several judgements, they said.

“The failure to inform the family of the detention violates basic norms of fairness, transparency and human dignity that flow from Article 21,” the group said.

Deploying the police’s special cell, an agency mainly used to counter organised crime and deal with matters of national security, to pick up a retired senior civil servant for questioning allegedly for a social media post without supplying the FIR and without informing his family, “appears disproportionate”, they said.

The police’s action “is capable of creating a chilling effect on free speech and democratic discourse”, they added.

The group called on the police to ensure that the family of a person being detained is promptly informed about his or her whereabouts and conduct investigations strictly in accordance with the Constitution, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and binding directions of the Supreme Court.

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.

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 Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Weaponising critical minerals and technology can hinder the shared progress of BRICS nations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned at the grouping’s summit on Sunday. Modi sought inclusivity in the adoption of technology.

While he did not name any country, the remark came amid concerns about China increasing export controls on some critical minerals and rare earth elements since 2023.

In April 2025, China imposed export controls on more specific heavy rare earth elements and expanded the list in October.

The minerals are essential for manufacturing advanced technology products and defence equipment.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

On Sunday, Modi said that the increase in conflicts and geopolitical tensions was having a “negative and far-reaching impact on the lives of ordinary people”.

Pandemics, climate disasters and supply-chain disruptions have shown that in an interconnected world, “no crisis remains confined to a single region”, he said.

Therefore, the BRICS nations had “placed special emphasis on strengthening resilience” and it was “equally important to identify challenges in time, be prepared for them and take prompt action”, he added.

The remarks were made during a session on “shaping the future for inclusive global growth”, focusing on resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability.

Modi said that the BRICS members have agreed to create an integrated early warning system to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and respond to outbreaks. “Early warning data integration guidelines have been prepared for disaster management,” he added.

The prime minister also said that a logistics supply chain cooperation framework will help make supply chains more reliable and resilient.

In their declaration on Saturday, the BRICS members had affirmed the need to promote reliable, diversified, fair and just supply chains of critical minerals to “guarantee benefit sharing, value addition and economic diversification in resource-rich countries” while preserving “sovereign rights” over their resources.

The countries had also concurred on the right to adopt, maintain and enforce measures “necessary to pursue legitimate public policy objectives”.

In May, India and the United States announced a framework to ensure steady supply of critical minerals amid Chinese export controls. This followed India in February becoming a signatory to the US-led Pax Silica initiative to coordinate supply chains for semiconductors, artificial intelligence and critical minerals.

The Quad, a grouping comprising India, the US, Japan and Australia, had also announced in May initiatives to improve collaboration on critical minerals and emerging technology.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• BRICS leaders condemn Pahalgam terror attack
• Why has India’s G20 fanfare not been replicated for BRICS summit?

The flood situation in Bihar worsened on Saturday, with the number of affected persons rising to nearly 48 lakh across 15 districts, reported PTI.

With several rivers flowing above the danger mark, the Water Resources Department has cautioned against sudden and rapid riverbank erosion. Officials have been directed to monitor the situation and ensure any incident of erosion is reported promptly.

The districts that are affected by the floods are Patna, Bhojpur, Saran, Vaishali, Bhagalpur, Begusarai, Buxar, Samastipur, Munger, Katihar, Lakhisarai, Khagaria, Purnia, Madhepura and Araria.

Approximately 47.9 lakh persons have been affected in 575 gram panchayats across 87 blocks of the districts. The count of affected persons was 47.3 lakh on Friday evening.

The state has received 104.1 mm of rainfall in September, about 27% above normal, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying.

This, coupled with rainfall in the catchment areas of Nepal, has caused several streams and rivers to swell.

At 6 am on Saturday, the Ganga river at Sultanganj in Bhagalpur was flowing at 36.4 metres, 1.9 metres above the danger level, said the disaster management department.

The water resources department said that rivers Gandak at Dumariaghat, Kosi at Baltara and Kursela, Burhi Gandak at Khagaria, Ganga at Digha, Gandhi Ghat, Hathidah, Bhagalpur, Kahalgaon and Munger, Punpun at Sripalpur, Bagmati at Benibad, and Ghaghra at Darauli and Gangpur Siswan were flowing above the danger marks.

Most parts of Bihar are likely to remain partly cloudy on Sunday and Monday, with the possibility of strong winds, the Bihar Meteorological Centre has said.

Edited by Sneha.

Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil announced on Saturday that he and his supporters will begin a march to Mumbai to hold an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan from September 19, reported The Hindu.

Patil said that he will begin the march on Sunday from his village, Antarwali Sarati, to press for the issuance of Kunbi caste certificates to eligible members of the Maratha community, reported The New Indian Express.

The Kunbis form a sub-caste within the Maratha community. They are included in the Other Backward Classes.

Jarange-Patil has been on an indefinite hunger strike in Jalna district since August 29 to demand the certificates.

He announced his march to Mumbai on the same day that the Bombay High Court refused to issue an order against it.

“How can we stop someone from agitating or protesting?” asked the court. “Why should we pass orders based on your speculations and apprehensions and make observations?”

The petitioner, a Mumbai resident named Nilesh Dhanukar, had sought directions against the proposed march, stating that it coincides with the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi. He said that the proposed protest could lead to chaos similar to the demonstrations in South Mumbai in 2025.

On August 29, 2025, Jarange-Patil and his supporters launched an indefinite hunger strike in Mumbai to reiterate his demand for reservations in government jobs and education for the Marathas under the Other Backward Classes category.

Four days later, the High Court observed that “the city of Mumbai had been practically brought to a standstill” because of the protests.

Jarange-Patil had broken his fast a day later, on September 2, after the Maharashtra administration issued a government resolution to give Kunbi status to Marathas of Marathwada.

The activist began the fresh hunger strike, alleging that the Maharashtra government had failed to honour assurances given in September last year and again during his protest in May, reported Hindustan Times.

However, he said that the state government “can still come to Antarwali for talks before we begin our march, or meet us on the way to Mumbai”.

“The government can also hold talks with us at Azad Maidan and fulfil demands that have been pending for three years,” Jarange-Patil was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.

Quota demand

The Maratha community’s long-standing demand for reservations in education and government jobs resurfaced in 2023 with protests led by Jarange-Patil. The movement witnessed violence, suicides and the resignations of legislators.

In February 2024, the Maharashtra legislature passed a bill allowing for the creation of a 10% quota in education and government jobs for the Marathas. This would be in addition to the state’s 52% reservation quota, which includes a 10% quota for the Economically Weaker Section.

The introduction of the 10% quota is similar to the 16% reservation for Marathas under the Other Backward Classes category that was introduced in 2018 by the state government at the time comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party and the undivided Shiv Sena.

That decision was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2021, citing the 50% cap on a state’s total reservations that the court had ordered in 1992. The court said that there were no “exceptional circumstances” or “extraordinary situation” in Maharashtra for the state government to breach the limit on reservations.

Jarange-Patil has insisted that reservations for Marathas be given under the Other Backward Classes category, on the grounds that the separate quota exceeds the constitutional ceiling of 50% and would likely be struck down by the judiciary.

Edited by Sneha.

On September 3, as Pune resident Vidyanand Bapat was being interviewed by a TV journalist on the busy Tilak Road, a man stepped up and slapped him.

Bapat had been talking about the problem of noise pollution during the Ganesh festival – the city’s most enthusiastic public celebration. Even as the cameraperson and others tried to pull the attacker away, he broke free and tried to hit 37-year-old Bapat again, abusing him for “speaking against Hindu festivals”.

Days earlier, on August 24, Bapat – a resident of Narayan Peth in the old city area – had expressed the same concerns at a public meeting called by the municipal corporation on preparations for the Ganesh festival. Members of some of Pune’s hundreds of Ganesh mandals were also present.

Bapat told Scroll about his concerns. “Festival enthusiasts should ensure their celebrations should not become a punishment for citizens who just happen to reside in the vicinity,” he said.

His remarks about high-volume sound systems and the dhol tasha – a traditional part of the celebrations, involving large groups playing huge drums – sparked such an outcry that the police had to escort him out of the premises.

Bapat told Scroll that the furore was not unexpected. “Festival enthusiasts don’t have any logical arguments,” he said.

Even as his crusade against noise pollution has only gathered steam since then, it has angered others. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Some say Indian cities are noisy and heavily populated and that is just the way of life with festivals being one part of it.

Noise should be bifurcated into two types. One is avoidable and the second one is unavoidable. The first type of noise is, for example, from power generators or pneumatic drills or railway engines. It’s because of their high-scale of operation but they are not meant for sound amplification.

The second type of noise is being generated deliberately with the only intention of generating noise – such as using loudspeakers, which is a piece of equipment whose sole purpose is to amplify sound, or performing on musical instruments such as drums and tom toms.

Regarding the first one, there are noise mitigation measures – like today’s power generators have a silent feature. But regarding the second one, their very purpose is sound amplification.

To get rid of this second type of noise pollution, the only recourse is to keep it limited to those who enjoy it. This could be achieved by playing it inside an enclosed or sound-proofed environment. They also need not have to worry about the decibel level because they can play those loud speakers or musical instruments at whatever decibel level they are comfortable with. So this is a win-win solution.

Dhol tasha [drum] groups say many people enjoy watching the performance and that only few others are inconvenienced. And that it’s not possible to celebrate a public festival inside an auditorium.

Some people might be enjoying dhol tasha, but that cannot become a punishment for others. Sawai Gandharva is a classical music festival. But for several years, it has been held in an open ground under a tent.

So what’s the problem with dhol tasha drums and tom toms? They can also easily be played inside an enclosed and soundproof auditorium. And if it is not possible to build an auditorium of sufficient capacity, then you can build a new one with your own contribution and broadcast that performance – like a cricket match.

Your enjoyment should not be a punishment for a few others.

Ganesh mandals and dhol tasha groups feel that the noise only affects a few people.

The majority-minority logic is again ridiculous. It’s logically fallacious. It’s called the bandwagon fallacy or ad populism fallacy, which basically means that something is right just because a majority of people are saying, at this moment, that it is right.

In the time of Galileo and [Giordano] Bruno, almost 99% of the people were saying that Earth is flat, and the sun revolves around the Earth because that’s what was visible to the naked eye. When Galileo put forth his discovery that Earth was round and revolves around the sun, it was opposed by the Catholic Church and everyone.

So just because something is popular in a period doesn’t mean that it is objectively correct. Many people are getting disturbed by this noise pollution under the pretext of festival celebration. So, the festival enthusiasts should address that concern and they should not resort to this ad populism fallacy that those who are in the minority should tolerate whatever we do.

You have set off an important debate. Have you got a lot of support and how do you see it going forward?

Since the last two weeks, I have been contacted by many citizens throughout Maharashtra and even the rest of India. Many citizens have contacted me and said they are supporting the cause that I am fighting for.

Citizen activism has increased a lot around noise pollution and traffic obstruction under the pretext of public festival celebrations. That is the part and parcel of any functioning democracy.

Otherwise, although the elections are being held, so-called democracy gets converted into electoral despotism. Elected representatives start acting like autocrats. To prevent a constitutional democracy from operating as an autocracy, or electoral despotism, citizen activism is a necessity.

It looks like the cause that I was fighting for, at my personal level, in the near future it will take the shape of an organised movement.

I don’t know if you are allowed to talk about a lawyer sending you a legal notice demanding an apology for insulting Hindu gods. Some also say as you have openly identified as an atheist and have no right to speak about religion.

That so-called notice is a joke. That is not a legal notice. We can shred it and throw it in the dustbin. I haven’t received it through official means – through a registered post.

Regarding being an atheist, believing in any religion or not believing in any religion is entirely a personal matter. That doesn’t deprive you of your right to speak about issues that are faced at a societal level.

Despite categorically saying that I am opposing only noise pollution and traffic obstructions, not the festival in its entirety, still they are trying to pretend as if I am opposing the celebrations. This means they are misrepresenting what you are saying. They are doing it deliberately. It is called an “ad hominem fallacy”: in simple words, shooting the messenger.

You have taken a strong stance on religion in our current times. Do you feel apprehensive?

If you take the specific example of [Pune-based rationalist] Narendra Dabholkar or even Galileo and Bruno, the cause for which they were fighting was expedited. Galileo and Bruno become martyrs for scientific temper.

And Dabholkar was fighting for an anti-superstition law to be passed for 18 years. But after his murder [in 2013], that law was passed immediately. The cause which he was fighting for got expedited. That’s why I am not fearful because I do not see the cause getting lost under any circumstances.

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

Costs for violating deportation rules. The Gauhati High Court directed the Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh in compensation to the son of a Bengali-origin Muslim woman who was forced into Bangladesh. Jahanara Begum was declared a foreigner by a foreigners tribunal in 2019 and deported to Bangladesh in June.

The High Court passed a similar order in the case of Mumtaz Begum, who had also been forced out into Bangladesh, directing the state to pay her Rs 2 lakh in compensation.

These are the first instances in which the court has imposed costs on the state for forcing a person to Bangladesh in violation of deportation rules.

In a first, Gauhati HC asks Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh to woman pushed into Bangladesh, reports Rokibuz Zaman.

Racism in the US. The United States’ Department of Homeland Security drew criticism for a social media post telling “Mr Singh” to “get off our roads” and accusing him of not knowing how to drive. Politicians and members of the Indian diaspora criticised the post as racist.

The artificial intelligence-generated image accompanying the post showed a brown-skinned man facing Transformers character Optimus Prime and carried the text: “Self-deport or find out.” Critics said that the post stereotyped people based on their surname and appearance.

The Hindu American Foundation and Coalition of Hindus of North America called for an investigation, while a Sikh-American politician in Michigan described it as “xenophobia dressed up as public policy”.

Concerns about AI. A researcher at artificial intelligence company Anthropic has quit, claiming that he is concerned the firm and the industry are racing to build AI systems that he believes they will not be able to control. In a series of social media posts on Wednesday, Jacob Coxon said that people should not underestimate the power of AI.

“These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionise any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” he said. “We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”

Anthropic has not yet commented on Coxon’s resignation, or on the concerns he raised.

Also on Scroll last week

• Why an old demand to release Sikh prisoners is gathering political force in Punjab
• Why social media thinks government intentionally slowed internet after Delhi building collapse
• Behind deaths of Adivasi children in Balaghat: appalling vaccination levels, widespread hunger
• Why an indigenous community in Arunachal blacklisted four researchers
• Why has India’s G20 fanfare not been replicated for BRICS summit?
• How India and China managed the Kailash-Manasarovar pilgrimage in the 1950s
• Instead of chasing GDP growth, India must redesign its broken ladder of upward mobility
• How Ahmedabad became an unwelcoming city
• ‘Haiwaan’ review: The blind hero isn’t bluffing but the film certainly is
• ‘Last Man in Tower’ review: A crisp and efficient critique of rampaging redevelopment in Mumbai

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

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that peace and tranquillity along the India-China border were essential to the continued development of bilateral ties during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi is in India – for the first time in seven years – to attend the BRICS summit. This came amid a thaw since 2024 in India-China relations, following years of tensions over a military standoff in Ladakh.

After their bilateral meeting, Modi and Xi welcomed the “steady progress in India-China bilateral relations” since their last meeting in Tiajin in August 2025, a statement released by the Ministry of External Affairs said.

They also agreed that both countries should take a strategic and long-term perspective of their ties and that “differences should not become disputes”.

Modi said the relationship should be guided by three “mutuals”: mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest.

The two leaders “expressed commitment to a fair, reasonable, and mutually acceptable resolution of the boundary question proceeding from the political perspective of their overall bilateral relations and the long-term interests of the two peoples”.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Following the military face-off, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region. China and India held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

The bilateral relations have seen a thaw since 2024.

In July 2025, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that relations between India and China were “steadily improving” and called for the continued normalisation of bilateral ties.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The BRICS countries on Saturday condemned the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack and called for combating terrorism in all its forms, including the cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorism financing and safe havens.

It is the second consecutive year that a BRICS leaders’ declaration has condemned the attack. The grouping had also condemned the terror attack that killed 26 persons in its July 2025 declaration issued in Rio de Janeiro.

BRICS comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Saturday’s declaration did not name Pakistan, which New Delhi has accused of supporting cross-border terrorism. In the past, China has blocked India’s attempts at the United Nations to sanction terror groups based in Pakistan.

In its joint declaration on Saturday, the grouping expressed “strong condemnation of any acts of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, whenever, wherever and by whomsoever committed”.

The group reiterated that “terrorism should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group and that all those involved in terrorist activities and their support must be held accountable and brought to justice” under national and international laws.

The BRICS grouping has condemned terrorism in its past declarations too.

The terror attack at Baisaran near Pahalgam town in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 16 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.

In response to the terror attack, India launched military strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what New Delhi claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and eight defence personnel were killed.

On May 10, India and Pakistan reached an “understanding” to halt firing following a four-day conflict.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Deep in northern Telangana, Kawal Tiger Reserve covers a thick forest of teak and bamboo near the Godavari river. Geographically, it sits in an ideal location, connecting major tiger landscapes. It links Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra to the west and Indravati in Chhattisgarh to the east. Kawal supports large populations of spotted deer, sambar, nilgai, and wild pigs, alongside leopards and wild dogs. On paper, the tiger reserve checks the boxes of sufficient prey and habitat. But the reserve has no resident tigers.

A 12-year study conducted between 2010 and 2022 confirmed that no tigers live permanently in Kawal. Using systematically placed line transects to monitor prey numbers, researchers found that spotted deer populations grew over the decade, while sambar, nilgai, and chousingha populations remained stable.

Despite this rich prey base, researchers recorded only 15 transient tigers entering Kawal from Maharashtra since 2015. Crucially, only two of these visiting tigers were female. While neighbouring corridors outside the reserve have breeding tigers with cubs, Kawal itself remains empty.

According to lead researcher Imran Siddiqui, this absence comes down to a fundamental difference in how male and female tigers disperse, “Tigers disperse very differently based on sex. Male tigers are bolder risk-takers – they grow faster, leave their mothers earlier, and travel long distances through unfamiliar, human-dominated landscapes to claim territory. Female tigers are conservative – they stay close to their birthplace and require quiet, undisturbed habitat to raise cubs. Crossing busy highways, railways, and mines poses a massive perceived threat to females. That is why males occasionally dodge traffic to reach Kawal, but females turn back. Without females, you simply cannot build a breeding population.”

Stranded on the edge

Tigers moving south from Maharashtra try to reach Kawal in Telangana through three main routes: from Tadoba-Andhari through the Kagaznagar-Mancherial Forest Divisions in the northeast of Telangana, through the Asifabad Forest Division in the north, and from Tipeshwar through the Adilabad-Ichoda-Nirmal Forest Divisions in the northwest of the state.

Data from Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) software shows that tigers most frequently attempt the route through Kagaznagar and Mancherial. However, heavy infrastructure development blocks their path.

“The corridor is fragmented by open-cast coal mines, the Ada irrigation project, electrified farm fences, and the main Hyderabad-Nagpur railway line,” says Siddiqui. “National Highway 44 acts as the most formidable barrier of all with its heavy traffic and high fencing. It isn’t just one obstacle – it is a cumulative mosaic of risks that forces dispersing tigers to turn back.”

As dispersing tigers get stuck along these fragmented edges, human-tiger conflict has increased, reported the study. Displaced animals frequently attack livestock, leading to retaliatory poisonings, human casualties, and rising local hostility toward tiger conservation.

Adding to these edge-of-forest pressures, free-ranging dogs near villages present another growing threat to recovering wildlife.

“Free-ranging dogs pose a double threat near forest edges,” explains Siddiqui. “They act as disease reservoirs for dangerous pathogens like Canine Distemper Virus, which can infect tigers and other large cats. At the same time, dogs chase young deer, compete with native carnivores, and disturb wildlife near villages. Managing stray dog populations and expanding vaccination coverage around protected areas are critical preventive measures for tiger recovery.”

Internal protection versus structural realities

While long-term habitat protection inside the reserve has successfully allowed ungulate populations to rebuild over time, independent experts warn that internal management alone cannot resolve the deeper, structural challenges facing the reserve.

Anish Andheria, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, points out that internal habitat protection encounters a fundamental bottleneck inside the core itself, “Internal habitat protection is ultimately insufficient because Kawal Tiger Reserve faces a more foundational challenge – the lack of inviolate space within the reserve itself. There were 37 villages and 67 small settlements inside the core itself, along with a whopping 267 villages in the buffer zone (as of 2023). Unless the core area becomes completely inviolate, similar to other successful tiger reserves like Tadoba, Kanha, Pench-MP, or Ranthambhore, no amount of external protection or linear infrastructure mitigation will effectively sustain a resident tiger population.”

Andheria also highlights the compounding impact of regional infrastructure development, “While dispersing tigers are reaching Kawal and its neighbouring forests from Maharashtra, the high human dependence on these areas for NTFP collection and cattle grazing prevents them from establishing stable territories. Telangana’s very poor track record of enforcing the government guidelines for mitigation of linear infrastructure in case of most projects (NH44, NH63, three broad-gauge railway lines, and irrigation projects across the Painganga river) further creates a major impediment to the free movement of tigers and their prey.”

Survival and broken promises

Behind the ecological metrics of “inviolate space” and human disturbance lies a human tragedy that defines Kawal’s management crisis. For centuries, indigenous communities, including the Raj Gonds, Nayakpods, Kolams, Pardhans, Thotis, and Lambadas, have lived in harmony with the forest, relying on sustainable agriculture, grazing, and seasonal forest produce.

When Kawal was declared a Tiger Reserve in 2012, authorities presented conservation not as an eviction force, but as a protective cover for both wildlife and Adivasi land rights. Local leader Siddam Bhujang Rao recalls those early promises with bitterness, saying, “The tiger zone was declared on the condition that it would not harm the Adivasis – neither our legal rights nor our survival,” says Siddam Bhujang Rao, a local Adivasi leader. “Initially, officials said forest protection would happen with us. But once the reserve was established, their stance completely shifted.”

To clear the core area for big cats, forest authorities made plans to relocate villages. The official rehabilitation package promised Rs 15 lakh per adult or three acres of irrigated farmland, along with houses, schools, and water supply. In reality, the transition collapsed into neglect. Families relocated to resettlement sites like Madhya Padaga received unfinished houses and no farmland to cultivate.

“They promised us land, water, and model villages,” says Rao. “Instead, families were moved to houses with crumbling plaster, and the agricultural lands were never handed over. When we try to farm our traditional lands to feed our families, cases are filed against us, people are thrown into jail, and trenches are dug across our footpaths to block us.”

These restrictions have severely disrupted traditional Adivasi life. Local residents can no longer freely gather Mahua flowers, collect herbs for medicine, or graze their cattle.

“Our culture, our gods, and our survival are all rooted in this forest,” says Rao. “Yet today, an Adivasi who has lived here for a hundred years is punished like a foreigner for cutting a branch. The government gives priority to wild animals over human beings, turning us into strange creatures on our own ancestral land.”

The translocation debate

With natural migration blocked by highways and mines, wildlife managers are increasingly floating a controversial alternative: “assisted dispersal,” or capturing wild female tigers from dense populations in Maharashtra and airlifting them directly into Kawal.

While artificial translocation appears to solve the female bottleneck on paper, conservationists are deeply divided over whether dropping tigers into an unready, conflict-ridden landscape is viable.

Aditya Panda, Member of the Standing Committee of the State Board for Wildlife, Odisha, argues that translocation is a necessary jumpstart given natural female dispersal limits, “Male tigers from the Tadoba landscape do end up in Kawal regularly, but female tigers are far less likely to arrive on their own due to population dynamics. Young males become long-distance dispersers, whereas females establish home ranges closer to their mothers. A female dispersing more than 50 km from her natal range is rare. Therefore, for recovered tiger habitats that are 100 km or further from the nearest source population, artificial translocation remains a tried, tested, and preferred method to kickstart a new population – provided landscape consolidation and corridor restoration are given their due in the long run.”

However, Siddiqui cautions that manual translocation is extremely dangerous without prior corridor and habitat security:

“Assisted dispersal is not a shortcut for fixing broken corridors,” warns Siddiqui. “The moment you release a translocated tiger, its instinct is to explore. If the surrounding habitat isn’t secure, that tiger will roam, drifting onto railway tracks, crossing busy highways, and wandering into villages. India has proven translocations can work, but only if you have four non-negotiables: a strong prey base, minimal human disturbance, soft releases, and relentless post-release tracking.”

Independent conservationist Prerna Singh Bindra, former member of the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife, adds that relying on translocations dilutes the accountability of corridor preservation, “Prey base and protection in themselves are not sufficient if the reserve is an island,” Bindra emphasises. “The vital corridors connecting Kawal with Tadoba and Tipeshwar have been severely fragmented by highways, railways, and mining. Not every linear project can be ‘mitigated’ with underpasses — important habitats and key corridors must remain sacrosanct. Airlifting tigers is a temporary band-aid, not a substitute for protecting their natural habitats. Without intact, safe natural passages for continuous gene flow, isolated sink, we are knowingly writing off reserves like Kawal.”

Coexistence at scale

The translocation debate brings Kawal back to its fundamental contradiction: can a reserve succeed by alienating the humans who share its borders?

Kathan Bandyopadhyay, co-author of the 12-year Kawal study, warns that translocating animals without securing movement paths creates a highly precarious sink, “Protecting habitat and prey within Kawal alone may not be enough if tigers cannot move between Kawal and surrounding forests. Translocating tigers into an isolated reserve without restoring these corridors could leave a small, disconnected population vulnerable to inbreeding, conflict, and local extinction.”

This ecological reality converges directly with Siddam Bhujang Rao’s warnings from the ground. For the Adivasis, forcibly introducing apex predators into a forest where local people are already struggling for basic survival guarantees disaster for both humans and tigers.

“Bringing tigers from outside will not work,” says Rao. “A tiger moved to a new forest doesn’t know where to find prey or water, so it turns to livestock and humans out of hunger. Then people get killed, and eventually, the tiger dies too. Adivasis consider the tiger a deity – we do not hunt it. But if a tiger attacks our families, fear changes everything. Dropping wild animals here to solve a problem on paper will only cost human and tiger lives. It is a flawed idea, and it should be abandoned.”

Kawal has successfully restored its forest cover and prey populations, but the reserve remains isolated. Until physical corridors are reconnected and local Adivasi communities are included as real partners, Kawal will remain a reserve without a resident tiger population.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Former Indian Administrative Services officer Devashish Sharma, who took voluntary retirement last week, was on Friday named the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for the Nagaon Lok Sabha bye-poll in Assam on October 6, The Indian Express reported. .

Sharma resigned as Nagaon’s deputy commissioner on September 3 and joined the BJP on Thursday.

A 2011-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, Sharma was appointed deputy commissioner of Nagaon in June 2025, The Indian Express reported. Before taking charge in Nagaon, Sharma served as deputy commissioner of neighbouring Morigaon district, which is also part of the Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency.

The Congress has asked the Election Commission to “review and scrutinise” all the poll-related actions taken by Sharma during his tenure as the deputy commissioner-cum-district election officer, the newspaper reported.

Congress MP Rakibul Hussain wrote to the poll body, raising concerns that Sharma was responsible for electronic voting machines, polling arrangements, staff deployment and implementing Election Commission directives, among other key aspects of the polls in the constituency.

Nagaon, a Muslim-majority constituency in central Assam, has been held by the Congress for the past 10 years. However, its three-term MP Pradyut Bordoloi left the party earlier this year and joined the BJP. He later contested the Assam Assembly elections and won from the Dispur constituency, leading to the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat falling vacant and necessitating a bypoll.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday said that the Uttar Pradesh government had continued to use the Goonda Act, meant to control habitual criminals, as a “tool of oppression”, despite the courts’ warnings against its misuse.

Justice Subhash Vidyarthi was hearing a petition by Zahid Ali challenging an order by the Gonda district magistrate declaring him a “goonda” under the 1970 Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act and ordering him to leave the district for six months. The court set aside the order.

“The Goonda Act is a powerful tool for the control and suppression of the ‘Goondas’,” the court said. “It should be used very sparingly in very clear cases of public disorder or for the maintenance of public order.”

It added that the courts have repeatedly held that the act should not be used as a tool to oppress innocent persons and is intended to prevent habitual criminal activity, rather than punish a person without a conviction for a substantial offence.

“The present case is a glaring example of the abuse of the aforesaid statute,” the court said.

The court noted that Ali had already been acquitted in one of the two cases cited by the police to declare him a “goonda”. It said a person cannot be declared a “goonda” on the basis of a case in which he has been acquitted.

The bench also noted that there was no allegation that Ali posed any threat to law and order.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Bombay High Court on Friday refused to issue orders restraining Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil from holding a march to Mumbai.

The court said that it could not issue directions against the march based only on the apprehensions raised by the petitioner.

“We find at present the entire case of the petitioners is set up on the basis of past experience,” the court said. “There is no such situation as yet which has emerged for us to take cognisance and issue appropriate directions in the matter.”

“State machinery is capable of handling all these situations,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as verbally observing.

Jarange-Patil has been on an indefinite hunger strike in Jalna district since August 29, demanding reservation for the Maratha community under the Other Backward Classes category, The Hindu reported. His demands include the issuance of Kunbi caste certificates to eligible members of the community.

A division bench of Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait M Sethna was hearing a petition filed by a Mumbai resident named Nilesh Dhanukar seeking directions against the proposed march.

The counsel for the petitioner argued that the court should intervene immediately ahead of the Ganesh festival starting on September 14. He said that the proposed protest could lead to chaos similar to the demonstrations in South Mumbai in 2025.

He also referred to Jarange-Patil’s statements urging his supporters to come to Mumbai even without permission and asking those unable to travel to block roads in their local areas, Bar and Bench reported.

However, the court said that it cannot stop someone from protesting in a democracy.

“How can we stop someone from agitating or protesting?” The Hindu quoted Tripathi as saying. “Why should we pass orders based on your speculations and apprehensions and make observations?”

Appearing for the state, Advocate General Milind Sathe, told the bench that Jarange-Patil had not sought permission under the 2025 Public Meeting, Agitation and Procession Rules to hold the march to Mumbai.

Sathe assured the bench that the state was prepared to maintain law and order in case of any “unwarranted situation”.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande

Former Uttarakhand Chief Minister and Congress leader Harish Rawat on Saturday resigned from two party posts after the Enforcement Directorate said that it recovered cash, jewellery and other valuables from the possession of his personal assistant, Chandan Singh Jeena.

The ED on Thursday conducted searches in Dehradun in connection with alleged irregularities in the 2016 Uttarakhand Subordinate Service Selection Commission Gram Panchayat Vikas Adhikari examination. The agency said that it recovered Rs 32 lakh in unaccounted cash, 13 gold coins, seven gold chains weighing around 200.5 gm, and 12 luxury watches from the premises of Jeena.

During Rawat’s tenure as the chief minister from 2014 to 2017, Jeena had served as his officer on special duty.

सामने टीवी पर खबर आ रही है कि देहरादून में हरीश रावत के पीए के पास भारी मात्रा में कैश और ज्वैलरी आदि पकड़ी गई या पकड़ाई गई, इस तथ्य का खुलासा तो आने वाले समय में होगा और यह सत्य है कि श्री जीना मेरे ओएसडी रहे हैं और मैं जितने भी पदों पर रहा, चाहे पार्टी में रहा या सरकार में रहा,… pic.twitter.com/Z6rZYcVev0

— Harish Rawat (@harishrawatcmuk) September 11, 2026

Apart from the raids at Jeena’s home, the Enforcement Directorate also searched the homes of the former chairperson and secretary of the Uttarakhand Subordinate Service Selection Commission, the then exam controller, and the owner of a private computer agency engaged in processing Optical Mark Recognition sheets.

Optical Mark Recognition, or OMR, is a system that reads answers marked by candidates by detecting filled bubbles or marks on an answer sheet.

The ED has alleged that optical mark recognition answer sheets were taken from the selection commission’s custody to the residence of its then secretary, where roll numbers of incomplete sheets were recorded and given to private computer agency employees. The employees allegedly filled in and changed the answer bubbles before the sheets were re-sealed, in exchange for illegal payments made through middlemen.

In a post on social media, Rawat said that if the allegations against Jeena were true, he would be ashamed of his actions. However, he added that he had “absolutely no faith” in the allegations.

Rawat said that he was resigning from the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee and a permanent invitee member of the Congress Working Committee at the national level because he did not want his presence to weaken the “party’s struggle”.

The former Chief Minister also alleged that an attempt was being made to create a narrative against him ahead of the 2027 Uttarakhand Assembly elections.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Allahabad High Court on Friday stayed the recovery of Rs 6.41 crore in damages from the committee that managed a mosque that was demolished at the Saharanpur Collectorate last week, The Hindu reported.

Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal sought responses from the Uttar Pradesh government and the local administration to a petition by Mohammad Tanveer Ahmad, challenging the eviction proceedings issued to him under the Public Premises Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants Act, 1971.

The mosque was demolished on September 5 following a court’s decision to uphold an earlier order declaring the structure illegal.

Ahmad, however, told the High Court that he had submitted a written statement before a magistrate disputing the claim of illegal construction, and asserted that the mosque had existed on the disputed property for over 100 years, Live Law reported.

Lawyer Ashish Kumar Singh, representing the petitioner, contended that the government had acted hastily in demolishing the mosque, and that the structure was bulldozed within three days of the eviction order.

Singh contended that the original owners of the land, Yaqub Khan and Wahid Khan, had dedicated it as waqf property. A waqf is an endowment under Islamic law dedicated to a religious, educational or charitable cause.

Additional Advocate General Manish Goyal, representing the state government, argued that official records showed the property as belonging to the Collectorate, The Hindu reported. He further argued that the petitioners did not specify when the land was purportedly declared as waqf property, nor was any waqf deed cited as evidence.

The Uttar Pradesh government also contended that the individuals said to be the original landlords themselves had never approached court to stake claim over the property.

The High Court said that the matter required consideration, and directed the state government to file its affidavit within three weeks.

“Till the next date of listing, the realisation of damages imposed by the City Magistrate, Saharanpur vide order dated 16.7.2026 shall remain stayed,” the court was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

In 2010, the population enumeration for preparing a National Population Register along with the house listing operations of the Census of 2011, evoked frequent criticism of the NPR. The use of the National Population Register in Assam to prepare the National Register of Citizens wherein everyone had to prove their citizenship contributed to this criticism. In the process, the benefits of an NPR were ignored.

A population register has been defined by the United Nations as, “an individualized data system, that is, a mechanism of continuous recording, and/or of coordinated linkage, of selected information pertaining to each member of the resident population of a country in such a way to provide the possibility of determining up-to-date information concerning the size and characteristics of that population at selected time intervals”.

The United Nations Member States have the responsibility to recognise all individuals present in their territory as a person before the law, without prejudice to nationality (or lack thereof), legal status, gender or duration of stay. The population register must contain all people who are residing in an area.

The population register needs to be continuously updated for every birth and death. Similarly, it needs to have a system of updating it to take into account international migration so as to give an almost real-time picture of the population.

The United Nations Legal Identity Agenda envisages providing a legal identity to every person by 2030. Establishment of a population register is an important step in this direction. There are several other uses of a population register as a standalone database:

1. Since all usual residents are in the population register, it provides the population of the country, excluding short-term visitors, at the reference date of its preparation.

2. Once some sort of identity number, similar to or same as the Aadhaar, is provided to everyone, and it is used in records of school, employment, social security administration etc., it can help generate many useful statistics and facilitate targeted delivery of subsidies etc. better than what Aadhaar is doing now by making use of family linkages within households.

3. Once every person on a particular day is included in a register with identification particulars, any undocumented migrant after that date will not be in the register. They are prone to be identified easily and this could also become a deterrent to potential immigrants without documents.

4. By accounting for the changes in the population due to births, deaths and immigration/emigration, the register can give the population of the country on any subsequent date. In other words, the country could shift to a register-based census to obtain the total population. However, getting information like the number of graduates, the number of workers etc. would require the identity numbers being available in other databases so that they can be linked. Such a census would be on a de jure basis, which means people are counted at their residences as against being counted at the place where they are during the census (de facto basis)

5. The population register itself or in combination with other registers linked through the identity number can be used as sampling frames for preparing more efficient samples than is possible without such a register.

Indian situation

The Citizenship Act was amended in 2003 by inserting Section 14A for preparation of a national register of citizens. Its subsection (1) provides that the Central Government may compulsorily register every citizen and issue national identity cards to him or her.

The procedure for registration is prescribed in the Citizenship Act (Registration of Citizens and Issue of Identity Card) Rules, 2003. These rules define a Population Register as the register “containing. details of persons usually residing in a village or rural area or town or ward demarcated area within a ward in a town or urban area”. The continuous updating of the register visualised in the UN definition is absent in this definition.

By combining such registers all across the country, the National Population Register is formed, though the term “National Population Register” is not mentioned in the Act or the rules. Preparing a national register is indirectly envisaged so that duplicate entries formed by some persons being enumerated at more than one place can be identified and removed.

Rule 4(3) envisages preparation of Local Registers of Indian Citizens based on the local population registers by verifying the particulars of each individual collected during the house-to-house enumeration. Thus, the population register and the citizen register are organically linked as the latter is prepared from the former and any statement to the contrary is wrong.

It is also worth noting that the law provides for identity cards only to citizens. On the other hand, Aadhaar numbers are allotted to all residents. Though the Aadhaar card is not an identity card as it just provides the number and the details needs to be verified, it is being used as an identity document as envisaged under the UN Legal Identity Agenda.

Indian society is not used to records. It is very difficult to prove that one’s parents, especially the mother or grandmother is/was an Indian citizen. For instance, my mother did not have any property in her name and if I am asked to produce proof that she was born in her home town in Kerala, I cannot do so. There was no registration of births at the time and the school where she studied has been demolished and I have no idea where the records are. This may not be much of an issue in Kerala as very few older Malayalees would be citizens from other countries living in the state.

However, for those living in border areas, experiencing large-scale international migrations, there will be large numbers of people whose citizenship status cannot be verified from any records. The problem of uniquely identifying citizens for preparing the National Register of Citizens in Assam gave much bad publicity to the National Population Register.

Census and NPR: How are they different?

Though the majority of the population would be covered by the census and the National Population Register, there are significant differences between the two.

The census enumerates usual residents present at the residence at least for a part of the census period and also visitors present throughout the period, irrespective of citizenship. Non-resident Indians are not included unless they are in India during the census enumeration period. On the other hand, the National Population Register would include only usual residents, irrespective of nationality, who have been residing at least six months or are likely to stay for six months. It excludes citizens living abroad, but includes non-citizens living in the place for more than six months.

In summary the basic difference is that the National Population Register is based on de jure population while the census is based on de facto population. It is actually possible to bring them closer by making the census a de jure population enumeration. Except for a small percentage of the population who are nomadic tribes or are homeless, everyone has a residence can be associated with the National Population Register.

The details collected during the enumeration may be different as the census is required to collect a lot of information required for a variety of purposes and the name of the individual is not important except for identification. On the other hand, the name is the most important data item in the National Population Register as it is an integral part of one’s identity. It has to be collected with utmost care without any spelling errors.

It is also important to note that the purpose of the census is to generate statistics on population by various socio-economic categories for the smallest geographic region in the country on a specific date. On the other hand, the National Population Register database once created needs updating on a real-time basis and can be considered a live database of the people living in a country.

The census data are treated as confidential both by the law and by the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It cannot be provided as evidence in a court of law. The information provided by the respondent in a census is generally not verified with reference to any document. On the other hand, every item of information provided to the National Population Register is to be verified.

Though there is no provision for publication of the National Population Register, the names of persons in the citizens register that are derived from the National Population Register will be published and thus there is no guarantee of confidentiality of the information in the National Population Register.

Problems in combining data collection

The government has notified 40 questions for the 2027 census that has already started in the snowbound areas. It appears that many of the questions, like particulars of parents and spouse, permanent address etc., do not have any statistical uses and are meant specifically for the National Population Register. The information sought in the questionnaire also include the mobile number, Aadhaar number, Voter ID number and Passport number (if holding Indian passports). These are to be provided, if available.

A large proportion of the enumerators would have worked in the previous censuses and in many other surveys. They will have to unlearn a significant portion of what they were previously trained for and start writing (keying in) names and addresses accurately. Writing the address for every individual itself is going to be a tedious exercise for many enumerators who are not tech savvy.

Since, the confidentiality provisions apply differently for census and National Population Register data, combining both into one questionnaire may make the process legally questionable.

The respondent may not have the Aadhaar number, passport number and electoral ID number for every member of the household, including the household staff who may be living with them. In the case of institutional households, like student hostels, working women’s hostels, paying guest accommodations, etc., the situation will be even more challenging. The warden or person in charge of the facility is the respondent for the census. He or she has to collect the information from all individuals living in the institution. While the mobile number and to some extent the Aadhaar number may be easily available, the same cannot be said about voter ID and passport numbers. They may not be available with many individuals as the documents may have been kept at their homes. The same is the case of inter-state labour migrants.

This means that the required information may not be available to the enumerator for a significant percentage of the population who actually possess an Aadhaar number/voter ID and/or a passport.

Way forward on the NPR

The National Population Register is a useful tool for streamlining several facets of public administration as people within households get linked. This is a feature absent in Aadhaar mainly because of the nature of the Aadhaar enrolment process. The government needs to make the entire National Population Register preparation process transparent and inclusive. It does not help when public functionaries make statements about the lack of a relationship between the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens; such views conflict with the legal provisions.

It would be better to treat the National Population Register as separate from the National Register of Citizens. Since the 2003 Citizenship Act does not talk about an National Population Register or population registers, such a separation will not violate the 2003 Act. However the provisions in the 2003 rules of the Citizenship Act which refer to a population register would need to be amended.

In my opinion, it is better to amend the Aadhaar Act to provide for creating a database of residents. The Aadhar Act says that every resident is entitled to get an Aadhaar number. So there is no reason why the Unique Identification Authority of India’s responsibility cannot include maintaining a database of all residents. The treatment of the Aadhaar Act as one relating to subsidies should also be changed. The Act needs to recognise the fact that Aadhaar is now being used in several places where there are no subsidies involved. The provisions in the 2003 Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of Identity Card Rules) can talk about taking off from this database instead of creating new population registers.

The birth and death registration process should be linked to the National Population Register for automatic updating of the database. For proper updating, it is necessary to ensure that all births and deaths are registered in time. The immigration/emigration services should also be connected to the National Population Register so that those who are not in the country are not in the register. Methods can be devised to treat short-term emigrants who may return.

The enumeration of population for the National Population Register was done in 2010 during the first phase of the Census of 2011. The National Population Register was later updated and Aadhaar numbers were added to the database. However, this was never taken to its logical conclusion: continuous updating. Today, that database is outdated and would contain millions of people who are dead and would not include millions of children born later.

Due to the insistence on Aadhaar numbers of children at time of school admission, etc. a large percentage of the children may be in the Aadhaar database. This will help to bring National Population Register up to date to some extent. Once the systems for integration of birth, death and migration with the population register is ready, then the existing register can be updated through field visits. If the issues are tackled in a proper manner, it should be possible to have the National Population Register ready in one or two decades.

K Narayanan Unni was a member of the Indian Statistical Service. He retired as Deputy Director General of National Sample Survey Organization. He had worked for more than two decades with the Office of the Registrar General of India and was a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the 2011 and 2021 censuses.

This article was first published on The India Forum.

Major political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, failed to explain why they selected 191 candidates with criminal cases for the 2026 Assembly elections as mandated by the Supreme Court, non-governmental organisation Association for Democratic Reforms said in a study on Thursday.

The candidates contested in elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry.

Under the Supreme Court’s rules, parties have to publish Form C7, explaining why they chose candidates with pending criminal cases over candidates without criminal backgrounds.

The organisation analysed Form C7 disclosures of 3,539 candidates fielded by 51 major political parties across the five states and one Union territory.

Of the 1,405 candidates who had declared criminal cases in their election affidavits, parties published Form C7 disclosures for 1,214, or 86%.

Tamil Nadu had the highest number of missing disclosures. Of the 473 candidates with criminal cases, parties published disclosures for 401.

West Bengal had 55 missing disclosures among 559 candidates, while Kerala had 27 missing out of 268.

Assam had 10 missing disclosures among 66 candidates.

Puducherry had the highest share of missing disclosures, with 27 of 39 candidates not having a Form C7 disclosure.

The BJP did not publish disclosures for eight of its 302 candidates with criminal cases. The Congress did not publish them for 13 of its 202 candidates.

The Trinamool Congress, published disclosures for all 116 of its candidates with criminal cases.

In the disclosures that were published, parties often gave similar reasons for choosing candidates with criminal cases. They described them as popular social workers, grassroots leaders or experienced politicians, and said they had strong support among voters in their constituencies.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Four members of Students for a Free Tibet were detained near Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam after they put up banners demanding independence for Tibet and protesting Beijing’s rule, the organisation said in press statement. The protest was held ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit the capital to attend the BRICS Summit.

The Delhi Police is yet to comment on the matter.

The pro-Tibet group called on BRICS leaders to condemn China’s occupation of Tibet and alleged human rights violations. They also expressed concerns about Beijing’s infrastructure projects on Tibetan rivers and called for action against what they described as “Chinese encroachment” along the Indo-Tibet border. Read on.

A Mumbai court has granted bail to former Tata Institute of Social Sciences student Abhirup Paul, who was arrested for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam. Paul was arrested on August 7, hours after he and a batchmate were denied anticipatory bail.

They were also booked for allegedly possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution claimed reflected Maoist ideology.

While granting bail, the court said Paul had spent sufficient time in custody for interrogation and noted that there was no evidence linking him to any Maoist or banned organisation. It also observed that downloading Maoist literature and shouting slogans in support of jailed activists were not anti-national activities. Read on.

The West Bengal Assembly passed a bill allowing the state government to transfer teaching and non-teaching staff from one state-run university to another. Several teachers’ associations and academics opposed the legislation, saying that it could be used to target professors critical of the government.

Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that the legislation would be used to give a “strong dose” to Jadavpur University teachers who were “brainwashing” students. Adhikari added that his government “does not care” if those opposing the bill called it “misuse of power”.

“We have come to power for five years with a two-thirds majority,” he said. “We will do whatever is necessary.” Read on.

The Indonesian government has asked India to hand over five infant orangutans rescued from a forest in Odisha’s Balasore district three days ago, the country’s forestry ministry said. The critically endangered animals were allegedly trafficked to India.

The state forest department has launched a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, the Odisha government is awaiting permission from the Central Zoo Authority to keep the five orangutans in Nandankanan, where they have been housed since being rescued. The animals have been quarantined in a temperature-controlled room and are being gradually acclimatised. Read on.

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Four members of Students for a Free Tibet were detained near Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam on Friday after they put up banners demanding an independent Tibet and protesting Beijing’s rule, according to a press release by the organisation. The protest took place ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit.

The Delhi Police is yet to comment on the matter.

Tibet has been under Chinese control since 1951, when Tibetan leaders signed an agreement allowing Beijing to station troops in the region.

China established the Tibetan Autonomous Region in 1965. In name, this means Tibet is an autonomous region within China, but in practice it remains tightly controlled. The Tibetan government-in-exile, based in India’s Dharamshala, continues to seek independence for Tibet.

This is a continuing source of tension between India and China. New Delhi also claims part of Tibet as its own territory.

The pro-Tibet group called on BRICS leaders to “condemn China’s illegal occupation of Tibet” and its alleged human rights violations.

They also raised concerns over Beijing’s large infrastructure projects on Tibetan rivers and called on India to take action against what they described as “China’s encroachment” along the Indo-Tibet border.

Xi will be in Delhi to attend the BRICS Summit scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.

Delhi has been under heavy security ahead of the summit.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Pune administration on Friday said it was withdrawing its order imposing a 12-day restriction on the sale and consumption of alcohol during the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi after the Bombay High Court said the blanket restriction was passed “without any rational”, Live Law reported.

The collector told the court that a fresh order will be ordered restricting the dry days to September 14, the first day of Ganesh Chaturthi, and September 25, the main immersion day, Live Law reported.

The administration had earlier imposed dry-day restrictions in parts of Pune between September 14 and September 26, citing law and order concerns during the festival, Pune Mirror reported. Some areas were to have a complete ban, while others were to observe dry days on specific festival days and along immersion procession routes.

During the hearing on Friday, a bench headed by Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi said that such a long alcohol ban could lead to serious health problems for habitual drinkers.

“Hospitals will be flooding,” Tripathi was quoted as saying. Blanket orders without any rational cannot be allowed... You cannot say everyone who drinks will create a law and order situation.”

He added that anyone who consumed alcohol and disrupted law and order would “face the music”.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

The Indonesian government has asked India to hand over five infant orangutans rescued from a forest in Odisha’s Balasore district three days ago, the country’s forestry ministry told AFP on Friday.

The orangutans were allegedly trafficked to India. The state forest department has launched a criminal investigation.

The critically endangered animals were rescued from Bichitrapur forest on Tuesday and taken to Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar.

VIDEO | Odisha: In a rare and heartening development, five baby orangutans rescued from a forest in Balasore district have been spotted playing and posing inside Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar.

At the zoo, the young orangutans are reportedly adjusting well. Kept in… pic.twitter.com/OOr6OOPhLu

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 10, 2026

The five infant orangutans appear to be of Sumatran origin, AFP quoted the Indonesian forestry ministry as saying. DNA tests will be conducted to confirm their origin.

International commercial trade in orangutans is prohibited under Cites, the global agreement governing trade in endangered wildlife. The animals are also protected under Indian wildlife laws.

Orangutans are trafficked for sale as exotic pets and to private collectors.

Meanwhile, the Odisha government is awaiting permission from the Central Zoo Authority to keep the five orangutans at Nandankanan, The Indian Express reported.

The animals have been quarantined in a temperature-controlled room and are being gradually acclimatised to the environment, a zoo official was quoted as saying.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: A border district in Mizoram has become a hub of wildlife smuggling in India

A sub-inspector, not the Greater Noida executive magistrate, was suspended for violating the Supreme Court’s order by serving show-cause notice to a student for his alleged campaign seeking participation in a protest by the Cockroach Janta Party, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The clarification from the Uttar Pradesh Police came hours after reports widely quoted Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the state, as having informed the Supreme Court that the executive magistrate had been suspended.

The notice had asked the 20-year-old law student, Akshat Tripathi, to furnish a personal bond of Rs 5 lakh.

The student at the Gautam Buddh University had challenged the magistrate’s notice, which was issued after a police report alleged that he was instigating other students to participate in a proposed protest.

The notice stated that Tripathi was “spreading anti-government, misleading statements among other university students and provoking them”, which could “disrupt public peace”.

Tripathi had said that he had not been going to the university for the past three months.

“I was working at the Allahabad High Court in July,” he said. “How could I go to the university and provoke people?”

The notice was withdrawn the following day after the allegations were investigated.

On Wednesday, a lawyer verbally mentioned the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant.

The chief justice directed the lawyer to formally place the notice before the court through a petition and said that an explanation would then be sought from the authorities.

The court also asked how the executive magistrate could “dare” to issue the notice to Tripathi.

“We made it clear that no coercive action should be taken against any student,” Kant said. “No magistrate could violate that order.”

On September 1, the Supreme Court ordered that all first information reports registered across the country in connection with student protests held between July 20 and July 25 should not be pursued or investigated and must be treated as closed, except those involving persons with criminal antecedents. The government had told the court that no fresh FIRs would be registered in connection with the protests.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to reflect the Uttar Pradesh Police’s clarification that a sub-inspector was suspended, not the Greater Noida executive magistrate, as had been told to the Supreme Court by the solicitor general.

A Mumbai court has granted bail to Abhirup Paul, a former student at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences arrested for allegedly shouting slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, Bar and Bench reported on Friday.

Paul had been arrested on August 7, hours after he and a batchmate were denied anticipatory bail by a sessions court. They have also been booked for possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution alleged reflected Maoist ideology.

At the time, the court had granted anticipatory bail to seven other students of the institute, who had been booked after taking part in an event in October 2025 commemorating the death anniversary of former Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba.

Saibaba, who had more than 90% disability and used a wheelchair, spent over seven years in jail on accusations of having links with Maoists. In March 2024, he was acquitted by the Bombay High Court and released. Seven months later, in October 2024, he died of post-operative complications in Hyderabad.

The police had filed the case against the students who attended the event based on a complaint by the institute’s administration. The first information report invoked charges of causing prejudice to the nation, causing enmity between groups and participating in unlawful assembly, among others.

On August 7, the sessions court said that while paying homage to Saibaba was not unlawful, the allegations that the students had shouted slogans in support of Khalid and Imam, along with the material recovered from their electronic devices, weighed against granting them anticipatory bail.

Khalid and Imam have been in jail for more than five years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in a conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial in the case has not yet begun, and their petitions for regular bail have been repeatedly rejected.

On Thursday, the additional chief judicial magistrate observed that Paul had spent sufficient time in custody for interrogation, even as there was no evidence linking him to any Maoist or banned organisations, Bar and Bench reported.

The court observed that downloading Maoist books and shouting slogans on campus in support of jailed activists did not amount to activities against the country. An inference of the student being a Maoist cannot be drawn from the same, the bench added.

Paul has denied having shouted the slogans.

Keeping the student in custody on mere suspicion is unjust and would be detrimental to his career, the magistrate was quoted as saying.

The court directed that Paul be released on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh, The Indian Express reported. He was also ordered to mark his presence before the police once a week till the chargesheet is filed in the matter.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Why is the BJP scared of displays of support for Umar Khalid?

The West Bengal Assembly on Thursday passed a bill allowing the state government to transfer teaching and non-teaching staff from one state-run university to another, The Indian Express reported.

The bill was opposed by several teachers’ associations and academics who said that the legislation could be used to target university professors critical of the government, The Telegraph reported.

Addressing the Assembly after the bill was introduced, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that it would be used to give a “strong dose” to Jadavpur University teachers who were “brainwashing” students.

“You will take students from the hostel [to rallies],” The Telegraph quoted him as saying. “I have all the records of Jadavpur University Teachers Association. I have all the records of what you have done.”

The 2026 West Bengal Universities and Colleges Administration and Regulation Amendment Bill was introduced by Higher Education Minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay during a one-day special session of the Assembly.

The amendment adds Section 14A in the existing Act, allowing the chancellor, in consultation with the state government, to transfer an employee from one state university to another, under “any law made by the state legislature for administrative reasons”, The Indian Express reported.

Adhikari said that his government “does not care” if those opposing the bill called it “misuse of power”, The Telegraph reported.

“We have come to power for five years with a two-thirds majority,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “We shall keep advancing and shall grow from strength to strength. You will keep watching. We will do whatever is necessary.”

He added that those who opposed the transfer provision could “quit” and resort to shouting, “workers of the world, unite”.

He added: “This is the time to eradicate the seeds of Naxalism. If this means war, let there be a war. I hope you all are ready?”

Adhikari also said that the legislation would enable “so-called pundits” to be sent to newly established institutions that would benefit from their services, PTI reported.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Neither statehood nor a legislature was being considered for Ladakh, The Hindu quoted the Union territory’s Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra as saying on Thursday. Instead the region will be offered a unique body with legislative, executive and financial powers, Kundra said.

The bureaucrat said that the nomenclature of the proposed body had not been finalised and that discussions were underway.

“An agreement has been reached with the [Ladakhi] leadership here, a sui generis model, which does not exist anywhere in the country, will be crafted for Ladakh, where a legislative body will be created,” he told The Hindu.

However, the civil society groups leading the agitation seeking statehood for Ladakh said on Thursday that they were disappointed because the negotiations had not moved forward.

Until 2019, Ladakh was part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. In August 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into two Union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Unlike Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh was made a Union territory without a legislature, fuelling concerns among the Ladakhi people about their land, natural resources and livelihoods. They also fear that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem are in danger.

By 2022, the residents had four demands: statehood for Ladakh, constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil districts and the rollout of a recruitment process and a separate Public Service Commission for Ladakh.

All of Ladakh currently has one Lok Sabha seat.

The Sixth Schedule guarantees protection to land and a degree of autonomy for the country’s tribal areas.

On Thursday, the chief secretary said that the proposal for an administrative body under Article 371 of the Constitution had been discussed with the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance, The Hindu reported. The two civil society groups have led the protests demanding statehood for Ladakh.

Article 371 deals with “temporary, transitional and special provisions” and allows decentralised governance, with a degree of administrative autonomy. It is applicable in 12 states including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.

The members of the civil society groups had agreed to a system of “direct election through constituencies” for the proposed body, the official said.

They have been given a list of questions to clarify doubts and to examine the details, including the distribution of powers between the proposed body and the existing hill councils, The Hindu quoted him as saying.

The next round of talks will be held in October.

Ladakh groups not satisfied

However, the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance said that there had been no progress on their core demands, The Indian Express reported. They said that there was no clarity about the powers the elected body would have, particularly in the area of law and order.

Activist Sonam Wangchuk said that the negotiations were cordial but had produced no substantive outcome, the newspaper reported.

Following the “in-principle understanding” the two sides had reached on May 22, the groups had expected a draft proposal on the constitutional safeguards under Article 371 to be provided to them during the meeting on Wednesday, Wangchuk was quoted as having said.

However, the meeting on Wednesday seemed to be “just a red herring” to distract Ladakh from the Leh to Kargil march that was to begin on Thursday, Wangchuk said on social media. “Trust is diminishing, distrust is growing unfortunately,” he added.

The groups said that they were planning to hold a march from September 19 to September 24 if the Union government did not provide a concrete proposal within a week.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• How Ladakh’s proposed elected governance body can safeguard the region
• Why five new districts in Ladakh have led to fears of exclusion, gerrymandering

Following pushback from parties across the political spectrum, a school in Maharashtra’s Mira Road managed by the family of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Narendra Mehta withdrew a circular asking students to avoid eating onions, garlic and potatoes during a Jain festival, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The Seven Square Academy had issued the circular on September 8, asking parents to ensure that the students’ tiffins did not include root and tuber vegetables during the Jain holy month of Paryushana. The observance began on September 8 and will conclude on September 15.

The school had also said that the canteen would only serve food without onion, garlic and potato during the period.

‘Attack on Maharashtra’s dharma’

Political parties objected to the circular, with some describing it as an “attack on Maharashtra’s dharma”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut asked whether the “so-called champions of Hindu dharma” in the Devendra Fadnavis Cabinet agreed with the circular. “This incident is more horrific than love jihad!” Raut said on social media.

Love jihad is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men trick Hindu women into romantic relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam. The Union home ministry has told Parliament that Indian law has no provision defining such a term.

Raut asked: “Will these very people decide whether the Marathi people of Mumbai can stay or not? Will these very people decide what to eat and what not to eat? Will they take over the Ganpati festival in Mumbai too?”

Has Maharashtra, “earned through the sacrifice of 106 Marathi people, been put up for auction?” Raut asked, referring to the deaths during an agitation in the late 1950s for a separate Marathi-speaking state.

मिरा रोड (Thane) येथील 'सेव्हन स्क्वेअर अकॅडमी' (Seven Square Academy) या शाळेने आपल्या पोर्टल व व्हॉट्सॲप ग्रुपद्वारे पालकांना एक परिपत्रक पाठवले ,त्यानुसार पर्युषण काळात (८ सप्टेंबर ते १६ सप्टेंबर) विद्यार्थ्यांनी डब्यात कांदा, लसूण, बटाटा किंवा बीट यांसारखे जमिनीखाली उगवणारे…

— Sanjay Raut (@rautsanjay61) September 10, 2026

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena alleged that the circular was imposing a religious practice on students from other communities.

Robert D’Souza, the chief of the party’s students wing in the city, said that they had filed a complaint with the state education department seeking the cancellation of the school’s licence.

“A school is supposed to be a secular space for children to learn from each other’s culture and religion, rather than the school imposing one religion on every student...” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

नरेंद्र मेहताची वसई विरार भागातील
नायगाव येथील सेव्हन स्क्वेर शाळा@lokmat @LoksattaLive @abpmajhatv @ANI @timesofindia @mid_day @Dev_Fadnavis pic.twitter.com/JaYz2rhVij

— मराठी एकीकरण समिती - Marathi Ekikaran Samiti (@ekikaranmarathi) September 9, 2026

State Minister Pratap Sarnaik, who is from Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction, also criticised the circular, asking BJP leaders to “also pay attention” to such matters.

“In a democracy, politics should not enter schools,” The Indian Express quoted Sarnaik as saying. “Religion, caste and creed should not come into educational institutions…such a fatwa being issued in Maharashtra is unfortunate.”

In Islamic law, a fatwa is a legal opinion or advisory on a matter.

The school’s circular was also widely criticised on social media.

Political commentator Raju Parulekar asked whether the demand was not “minority appeasement by the BJP, at the cost of Marathis, Bengalis and majority Indians”, citing West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari defending religious leader Dhirendra Shastri for his call for a meat ban during the Durga Puja festival.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The West Bengal Congress on Friday said that its leader Atanu Das has been arrested for holding a peaceful protest and burning the effigy of religious leader Dhirendra Shastri.

In a statement, state Congress chief Subhankar Sarkar condemned the arrest of Das on Thursday night and demanded his unconditional release.

This came hours after Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said that he had ordered the arrest of those burning photographs of Shastri to protest against his call for a meat ban during the Durga Puja festival.

Sarkar said that the Opposition party’s fears had come true and that a “policy of repression by fascist forces has been unleashed” in West Bengal.

He asked why Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, had not been arrested for making “derogatory remarks” about Bengalis and “insulting” the state’s culture.

“Instead, those who are protesting peacefully and democratically to save Bengali culture and pride are having their democratic rights snatched away,” he said.

Das is the general secretary of Congress’ South Kolkata committee.

On Sunday, Shastri said that he does not like it when “dirty” non-vegetarian food is eaten during the Hindu festival and at gatherings linked to the celebration. Meat must not be sold near the goddess’ idol during the festival, he added. The festival will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

Among Bengali Hindus, eating meat during Durga Puja is common and animal sacrifice is also an important ritual for some in the community.

Shastri had called for these restrictions at a religious event at Liluah in Howrah. Adhikari, along with his Cabinet colleagues from the Bharatiya Janata Party, had met him and hosted a dinner for him on September 4.

The comments by Shastri had triggered a row in the state. Protests were held by Congress workers, with some persons reportedly burning photographs of Shastri outside the Bhawanipore police station in Kolkata.

On Tuesday, the Congress’ state unit filed police complaints against Shastri. In one of the complaints in Kolkata, the Congress accused Shastri of “hurting the sentiments” of Bengalis and insulting the state’s culture and traditions.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: The illogic of meat bans

A Delhi court on Thursday framed money laundering charges against Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, his son Tejashwi Yadav and wife Rabri Devi in connection with alleged irregularities in the leasing of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation hotels, Live Law reported.

The court observed that during Lalu Yadav’s tenure as the railways minister between 2004 and 2009, officials allegedly manipulated a tender to award leases for hotels in Ranchi and Puri, the legal news outlet reported.

The directors of the companies that received the leases allegedly transferred a plot of land in Patna to Sarla Gupta, an associate of Lalu Yadav. Sarla Gupta later allegedly transferred her shares in the companies to Rabri Devi for a nominal amount.

Sarla Gupta and her husband Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister, have also been named as suspects in the case.

Special Judge Vishal Gogne of the Rouse Avenue Courts passed the order framing charges under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Formal charges will be framed on October 3.

“There exists a strong suspicion of abuse of office and proceeds of crime in the hands of Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav”, Live Law quoted the court as saying.

It added that the RJD leaders continued to enjoy a “tainted land” in Patna, which was transferred to them at the behest of Lalu Yadav.

The court also discharged seven suspects in the case.

In October 2025, the court had framed charges against Lalu Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Rabri Devi and 11 others in a corruption case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the same allegations.

They were charged with cheating and criminal conspiracy. Provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act were also invoked against them.

The CBI case

The CBI’s IRCTC case pertains to alleged irregularities in a tender awarded to a private company called Sujata Hotels to develop and operate two railway hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2005, when Lalu Yadav was the railways minister.

In return, Lalu Yadav allegedly received a three-acre plot worth Rs 45 crore through a benami company owned by his wife Rabri Devi.

The term benami refers to a transaction or contract held or carried out in the name of someone other than the person who has financed it.

The CBI alleged that the plot was shown in official records as agricultural land, which caused losses to the state exchequer, as such property is exempt from certain taxes.

After Lalu Yadav demitted office in 2009, the shares of the benami company were transferred to Tejashwi Yadav and Rabri Devi between 2010 and 2014, the central agency alleged.

The CBI launched an investigation into the case in July 2017 and filed a chargesheet against Lalu Yadav, his wife and son, and 11 others in April 2018.

Tejashwi Yadav and his mother Rabri Devi were granted bail in the case in October 2018. Lalu Yadav was granted bail in January 2019.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday sought a response from the state government on a public interest litigation about the deaths of more than 30 children in Balaghat district seemingly due to infectious diseases, PTI reported.

The petition was filed by Anshul Tiwari, a resident of Narsinghpur district, based on newspaper reports. The plea alleged that children were not receiving adequate medical care, with around 400 children being treated in a hospital that has only 50 beds.

Scroll reported on September 4 that at least 25 children from the Baiga and Gond tribes have died since May in Balaghat. For two months, the suspected measles-malaria outbreak went undetected because of the complete absence of a healthcare system in the remote Adivasi habitation.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vivek Rusia and Justice Pradeep Mittal has issued notices to the State Health Department, Women and Child Development Department, the Balaghat collector and others.

During the hearing last week, the court had observed that filing a PIL solely based on newspaper reports was not appropriate, PTI reported. It had asked the petitioner to visit the affected areas, verify the facts and submit a report.

On Wednesday, the petitioner submitted a report following his visit to the affected areas in Balaghat.

In the report, the petitioner alleged that handpumps in the affected areas were supplying yellow-coloured water, the news agency reported. It added that children and women in the area had not received nutritious food on time for months.

The petitioner also alleged that the area was plagued by poor sanitation and claimed that these conditions were causing infections and contributing to the continued deaths of children.

The report said that the administration took action only after more than 30 deaths, following which the number of hospital beds was increased and health, sanitation and cleanliness in the area were improved, PTI reported.

The case will next be heard on September 18.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• For months, Adivasi children in Madhya Pradesh kept dying. The government woke up too late
• Behind deaths of Adivasi children in Balaghat: appalling vaccination levels, widespread hunger

When world leaders gathered in New Delhi for the G20 Summit in September 2023, the spectacle surrounding the event was impossible to miss. Under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the summit was celebrated as India’s grand arrival on the global stage. Streets were lined with banners, cultural motifs saturated the summit’s visual landscape, and official messaging projected India as the “voice of the Global South”.

Three years later, India is preparing to host the 2026 summit of BRICS, but there is a palpable contrast. Unlike the build-up to the G20, there is little of the expansive public mobilisation, symbolic messaging, or political fanfare that characterised 2023. Meanwhile, uncertainty continues to surround the summit-level meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, commonly known as the “Quad,” which was expected to take place in India this year.

At the same time, New Delhi has stepped back from hosting the 33rd Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2028, despite having earlier expressed willingness to do so. These developments suggest a more selective approach to international summitry that is shaped by altered geopolitical circumstances and the limits of reproducing diplomatic spectacle indefinitely.

Political theatre

In a recent study, I show how multinational summits function as stages of political theatre. Unlike routine foreign policy, which is conducted through bureaucratic and technocratic channels away from public view, summit meetings place national leaders at the center of highly mediatised global events. Carefully curated public performances through images, speeches, handshakes, and hugs allow leaders to simultaneously project political authority and status before domestic and global audiences.

This performative dimension is especially attractive to populist leaders, whose politics rely heavily on spectacle, personalisation, and direct appeals to “the people.” Populism is understood not simply as an ideology, but as a political style enacted through symbolic performances and finely tuned public imagery. International summits amplify these tendencies. They allow populist leaders to embody the nation on the global stage, personalise foreign policy through leader-centric diplomacy, and project themselves as strong representatives of popular will confronting global elites and power hierarchies.

Using this framework, my research examined how Modi’s conduct during India’s G20 presidency combined three overlapping registers of populist performance: textual, visual, and participatory. Textually, speeches, slogans, and official messaging framed the world as facing a crisis of multilateralism while presenting India as a civilisational power capable of providing moral direction and stability. Modi also frequently used his personalised Mann ki Baat broadcasts to familiarise citizens with the summit and highlight its supposed benefits for Indian citizens.

Visually, the presidency was adorned with the widespread use of G20 branding, the lotus symbol, and Modi’s own image, alongside symbolic gestures such as the Akhand Bharat mural and the use of “Bharat” instead of “India” during the summit. At the participatory level, the summit was promoted as a “People’s Presidency” through the Jan Bhagidari campaign and nationwide outreach initiatives designed to turn diplomacy into a mass public experience. Through these modalities of populist articulation, Modi was able to project India’s growing international prominence and strengthen his domestic political image as the embodiment of popular will.

Diminishing returns

If the G20 demonstrated the political value of global summitry as spectacle, why has that model not been replicated for the upcoming BRICS meeting? And what explains India’s decision to withdraw from hosting COP33 despite showing interest earlier? The answer lies partly in the altered geopolitical environment between 2023 and 2026, but also in the selective logic of populist diplomacy itself.

The 2023 G20 Summit represented a fortuitous convergence of factors: a favorable international moment for India, heightened global attention toward New Delhi, and a form of political leadership attuned to spectacle and narrative projection. But such moments are difficult to reproduce indefinitely. Not all international forums lend themselves equally to political performance, and the symbolic returns of summit spectacle tend to diminish with repetition.

India occupied a particularly advantageous diplomatic position in 2023. Amid intensifying rivalry between the West and both China and Russia, India was being viewed by major powers as an indispensable partner. Its balancing position on the war in Ukraine, growing strategic relevance in the Indo-Pacific, and claim to represent the concerns of the developing world all elevated its international visibility. That position is harder to maintain today as the international environment has become more fragmented and uncertain.

The continuation of the war in Ukraine, a new one in West Asia, and the corresponding rivalries have narrowed the space for the optimistic bridge-building rhetoric that India successfully deployed during its G20 presidency. The language of the Global South, which carried considerable diplomatic resonance in 2023, has also become more diffuse.

At the same time, BRICS itself has become more internally heterogeneous following its expansion, with several of its constituent states finding themselves on opposite sides of the fence in the ongoing war in West Asia. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, meanwhile, remains strategically important but is a narrower and more security-oriented grouping, one less suited to expansive public mobilisation or broad civilisational messaging.

We also need to take into account that all international forums do not offer the same opportunities for political performance. The G20 was uniquely adaptable to spectacle because of its broad agenda, high visibility, and diverse audience. It enabled the projection of multiple narratives at once: India as a rising power, a civilisational state, and a spokesperson for the developing world. Forums such as BRICS or the Quad operate within narrower strategic confines, while climate negotiations under the UNFCCC impose a different kind of constraint altogether. Climate summits are heavily technical, negotiation-intensive, and tied to measurable commitments. They generate scrutiny as much as symbolism. Hosting such forums carries reputational risks if expectations are not met, making them less conducive to the political projection of the leaders involved.

Although New Delhi did not provide a detailed public explanation for abandoning its plans – beyond citing a review of commitments for 2028 – there seems to be a realisation that hosting a COP entails a rise in expectations regarding mitigation commitments, energy transition targets, and climate financing. Such pressures sit uneasily with its long-standing emphasis on equity, climate justice, and domestically determined developmental pathways rather than externally driven benchmarks of climate ambition. By stepping back from summit stewardship, India may be seeking to avoid intense international scrutiny of its continued reliance on coal and its broader developmental priorities.

Having said that, India’s withdrawal should not be interpreted as a retreat from climate diplomacy or global environmental governance. In recent years, New Delhi has actively sought to position itself as an agenda-setter and representative voice of the Global South in climate politics through initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, and its emphasis during the G20 New Delhi Summit 2023 on themes such as sustainable lifestyles and climate justice. The decision to withdraw from hosting COP33, therefore, appears less as a repudiation of climate leadership than a recalibration in order to avoid heightened scrutiny.

There is also the logic of diminishing returns at play. Spectacle derives much of its power from novelty and exceptionalism. Attempting to replicate the same intensity around every summit risks diluting its political effect. Overperformance can gradually turn spectacle into routine, blunting its emotional and symbolic resonance.

Spectacle or substance

India’s recent experiences with summitry offer a useful lens through which to think about the relationship between diplomacy and political performance. International summits have always involved elements of symbolism, image-building, and political theatre.

However, the contrast between the spectacle of the 2023 G20 Summit and the quieter politics surrounding subsequent forums highlights that there are limits to turning multilateralism into permanent political theatre. Even though increased public visibility through summitry can help generate attention, legitimacy, and momentum for international initiatives, challenges arise when symbolic projection becomes an end in itself rather than a vehicle for advancing cooperation.

As summitry becomes more performative in the age of media-driven populism, the importance of behind-the-scenes diplomacy is likely to grow because technical negotiations, institutional backchannels, and sustained bureaucratic engagement remain the real backbone of international cooperation. Grand spectacles may capture public imagination, but durable diplomacy is still shaped away from the cameras.

Abhinandan Kumar is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

The Congress government in Karnataka has ordered that only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram be sung at official programmes and functions, except those attended by the president, vice president, prime minister or governor, PTI reported.

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

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

The Bharatiya Janata Party has long alleged that the Congress had agreed to drop the four stanzas to “appease Muslims”.

On August 19, The Congress said that the party would sing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram at its functions, citing a Congress Working Committee resolution from 1937.

In December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the Congress in Parliament, alleging that Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, had supported Muhammad Ali Jinnah in opposing Vande Mataram when the resolution was adopted because it could “irritate Muslims”.

In August, the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Amendment Act, which criminalises insults to the national song, came into effect.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the first time in nearly seven years to attend the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and September 13, China’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The visit comes as India-China relations have seen a thaw since 2024, following years of tensions over a military standoff in Ladakh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh said that it will not send a government representative to the summit.

Xi last visited India in October 2019, when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Tamil Nadu’s Mamallapuram. The two leaders are now expected to meet on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Border tensions between India and China escalated in June 2020 when a violent face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers took place in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley along the Line of Actual Control. It led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. Beijing said that the clash left four of its soldiers dead.

Following the military face-off, both countries deployed thousands of soldiers along with heavy artillery in the region. China and India held several rounds of military and diplomatic talks to resolve their border standoff.

In October 2024, the two countries announced that they had reached a patrolling arrangement along the Line of Actual Control, “leading to the disengagement” of the two militaries in eastern Ladakh.

In July 2025, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that relations between India and China were “steadily improving” and called for the continued normalisation of bilateral ties.

‘Bangladesh won’t attend the summit’: Foreign minister

Dhaka will not send a government representative to the BRICS Summit as Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was “not invited” to the meeting, The Daily Star quoted Foreign Minister Humaiun Kobir as saying on Thursday.

However, Bangladesh has received two invitations from India. One is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a bilateral visit, while the other is for Rahman, in his capacity as chairperson of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation to attend the BRICS summit.

Bangladesh assumed the chairmanship of BIMSTEC in April 2025 for a two-year term. The regional grouping comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

On Thursday Kobir said: “How shall we go? Has anyone from the Bangladesh government been invited?...Our prime minister was not invited. The BIMSTEC chair was invited.”

The developments came as Bangladesh and India continued discussions over a possible visit by Rahman amid Dhaka’s repeated demands for the extradition of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

On August 16, Dhaka said that a “propitious” environment needs to be created before any top-level visit and urged India to expedite Hasina’s extradition.

The neighbouring countries have had strained relations since massive student-led protests erupted in Bangladesh in July 2024 against a controversial quota scheme for government jobs and later snowballed into a broader agitation against Hasina’s government. Her government was eventually brought down, forcing her to flee to India.

In November, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity in connection with the deadly crackdown on protesters in 2024. In February, a court sentenced her to 10 years’ imprisonment in two corruption cases relating to alleged irregularities in the allocation of land in a government housing project in Dhaka.

Besides demanding that Hasina be extradited, Dhaka has also expressed concerns about the ousted leader being allowed by the Indian authorities to address her supporters from Delhi.

New Delhi has previously said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wants to return to Bangladesh.

Rahman took office in February and has since visited Malaysia and China, departing from the tradition of Bangladeshi leaders heading to India for their first overseas trip.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit India for the first time in nearly seven years to attend the 18th BRICS Summit, China’s foreign ministry confirmed. The summit will be held in New Delhi on September 12 and September 13.

Xi is expected to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the summit. The visit comes as India-China ties have improved since 2024, following years of tension over the military standoff in eastern Ladakh.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh foreign minister said that Dhaka will not send a government representative to the summit, as Prime Minister Tarique Rahman was “not invited”. India has reportedly invited Rahman to attend the summit as chairperson of BIMSTEC and for a bilateral visit. Read on.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari directed the police to arrest those who burned photographs of religious leader Dhirendra Shastri during protests against his remarks on meat consumption during Durga Puja. Adhikari said that the “saint” had only expressed his views and not imposed them on anyone.

Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, had on Sunday had asked Hindus not to consume “dirty” non-vegetarian food during Durga Puja. He had also said that meat should not be sold near Durga idols during the festival.

His remarks had triggered a row in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state, where eating meat during the festival is common among Hindus. Read on.

The United States’ Department of Homeland Security has drawn criticism for a social media post telling “Mr Singh” to “get off our roads” and accusing him of not knowing how to drive. Politicians and members of the Indian diaspora criticised the post as racist.

The artificial intelligence-generated image accompanying the post showed a brown-skinned man facing Transformers character Optimus Prime and carried the text: “Self-deport or find out.” Critics said that the post stereotyped people based on their surname and appearance.

The Hindu American Foundation and Coalition of Hindus of North America called for an investigation, while a Sikh-American politician in Michigan described it as “xenophobia dressed up as public policy”. Read on.

The National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, has reversed its decision to cancel the convocation for its 2026 graduating batch. Chief Justice Surya Kant will attend the ceremony, which will be held on October 17.

The event, originally scheduled for September 12 was cancelled amid opposition from more than 700 students and alumni to Kant and Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra being invited.

Students had objected to Kant’s attendance over his remarks during a hearing on alleged police excesses against protesters in Delhi. They had also criticised the Bar Council’s now-withdrawn action against NALSAR students who opposed Kant’s participation in their convocation. Read on.

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