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

Every evening, Keshev Dutt spends a couple of hours in his home in northern India, teaching small business owners in Bangladesh and Nepal how to use artificial intelligence. Not for coding or building chatbots, but for something more basic: AI in Excel.

For $30 per head for a three-month program, Dutt, 28, runs classes in WhatsApp and Facebook groups, as well as on Zoom. He teaches how to automate inventory logs, generate invoices, analyse sales patterns, and build customer databases using AI-powered spreadsheet tools such as Copilot. The group sessions last 60 to 90 minutes, and are held twice a week.

“Most of my students run small shops, garment stores, tire repair units, beauty salons,” Dutt, who has a master’s degree in computer application, told Rest of World. “They tell me, ‘We don’t want to learn AI for big tech jobs; we want to use it to run our business better.’”

Since introducing his classes in March, Dutt said he has trained about 50 people. Many have signed up for additional modules.

Indian tutors have long offered classes on YouTube in math, science and technology, and have developed a reputation for affordable and accessible lessons. The demand for AI tutorials, delivered in a similar fashion on social media platforms, reflects the growing interest in AI and its adoption.

This has led to a booming informal economy of tutors like Dutt in Jalandhar city, far from the tech hubs of Bengaluru and Hyderabad. They offer cheap, personalised AI lessons for students, business owners, and freelance workers in South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Bisma Wani, in the Kashmiri city of Srinagar, offers classes for those seeking remote work on global platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork. For Rs 500-800 ($6-$10) for a group session, she teaches AI for freelance beginners, Wani told Rest of World. Most of her students are from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

A typical session for more than a dozen students lasts an hour, and focuses on AI tools such as ChatGPT, Canva, Adobe Express AI, Midjourney, and others. Wani said she helps students build portfolios; engineer prompts for design and copywriting; create AI-generated business labels, posters, and content for social media; and set up automation workflows to speed up project delivery.

“They’re not trying to become data scientists. They just want to become better digital workers,” said Wani, 27, who has a bachelor’s degree in computer application. She gets 10-15 new inquiries every week, she said.

India’s edtech market is worth about $7.5 billion and is forecast to reach about $29 billion by 2030, driven by the adoption of digital devices and a cultural shift toward online learning. While academies, colleges, and edtech platforms offer formal AI courses, these can cost several hundred dollars, well beyond the budgets of many, Wani said.

Unlike registered edtech platforms, tutors like Dutt and Wani mostly operate through closed Facebook groups and WhatsApp channels. Word of mouth is the main driver of enrollments, and lends a more personalised touch to the sessions.

The Indian government is also pushing AI literacy, with several programs in schools and for the larger population. The Yuva AI for All program is a free foundation course that enables learners to “confidently adopt AI in study, work and everyday life.” A new initiative, backed by Microsoft, aims to equip 20 million workers with essential AI skills by 2030.

While formal AI courses and government programs are important, the informal tutorials help fill a critical gap, Anirudh Govind, an AI researcher and consultant in Bengaluru, told Rest of World.

“People assume AI education must look like a computer science degree, but most small business owners and freelancers need only 5% of that – the part that saves time or brings revenue,” he said. “These low-cost tutors are making AI less intimidating and more practical. It suggests that AI adoption in developing economies is happening bottom-up, not top-down.”

The sector is unregulated, and can pose risks for those signing up, Govind said. “There is no quality control. Some tutors are excellent, some aren’t.”

For the learners who have few other options, the lessons are translating into income gains.

For Nepal-based Aditi Thapa, a freelance content creator and designer, Wani’s modules helped her secure more clients, she told Rest of World. “I went from earning $70 a month to $250,” the 24-year-old said. “I didn’t need a big AI course. I just needed someone to teach me what would get me jobs.”

Farid Ahmed, who runs a stationery shop in Dhaka, took one of Dutt’s tutorials recently. Before enrolling, he had never used a computer for anything more than basic billing, the 38-year-old told Rest of World. After three weeks of lessons, he was able to automate his inventory using AI-powered spreadsheet tools, which has helped him track fast-moving items and plan stock ahead of festivals, said Ahmed.

“My profits have increased,” he said.

For Dutt, the tutorials are a small but growing side business. He is confident there will always be room for them, even as formal programs proliferate, because of the needs of people like Ahmed.

“They teach advanced AI. I teach someone how to take a ledger-based shop and run it with spreadsheets with AI,” he said.

“The biggest misconception is that small business owners in developing countries will be the last to adopt AI. I’m seeing the opposite,” said Dutt. “They are adopting it first because for them, even a small improvement in efficiency makes a big difference.”

Tauseef Ahmad is a freelance journalist based in Delhi.

Sajid Raina is a freelance journalist based in Delhi.

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

Adani Group Chairperson Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani have agreed to accept a legal notice from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in an alleged $265 million bribery and fraud case, reported PTI on Sunday.

This would remove the need for a US judge to rule on how the industrialist should be served the legal notice, according to Reuters.

In November 2024, the US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York indicted Gautam Adani in a $265 million bribery and fraud case.

The US Department of Justice had alleged that executives of the conglomerate participated in a scheme to bribe officials in India for solar energy contracts, then misrepresented the company’s anti-bribery practices to investors in the United States. The details of the alleged bribes were concealed to secure financing, the US Department of Justice claimed.

The Adani Group has denied the allegations and vowed legal action. In December, Gautam Adani blamed the press for what he described as “incorrect and reckless reporting” on the matter.

In a filing in the federal court in New York on Friday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said its notice has been submitted for approval from the court concerned as part of a standard procedural step, according to PTI.

If the court agrees to the notice, Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani would have 90 days to respond to it. Following this, the US market regulator can file their opposition within 60 days. The defendants will have 45 days to respond to the opposition thereafter.

In August, the US Securities and Exchange Commission told a district court in New York that India is yet to deliver summons to Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani in the case. It added that it had asked India’s Ministry of Law for help in serving the complaint six months ago.

It said that it had sent notices and other documents on the summons directly to the defendants and their counsel, along with a communication about it to the ministry.

The US market regulator added that it would continue communicating with New Delhi and “pursue service of the defendants via the Hague Service Convention”.

Rule 5 (a) of the convention says that a central authority of the state can serve a document or shall arrange to have it served by an appropriate agency

While the indictment document outlines conspiracy to obstruct justice and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Adani and his executives were not charged with these counts.

However, the indictment document names Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani and Cyril Cabanes of Azure Power Global in what it describes as a “massive bribery scheme”.

On November 27, 2024, the Adani Group said in a stock exchange filing that Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani had been charged in the US for securities fraud, not bribery.

The charges had hurt the group’s market value, with shares falling by $54 billion at the time.

Also read:

• What does US law say about Adani’s indictment – and can he be charged in India?

• Adani US indictment: The Indian solar deals for which Rs 2,029 crore was allegedly paid in bribes

Several Opposition leaders have criticised the Jammu and Kashmir administration for detaining a freelance journalist who had reported on the closure of the Sadna Pass in Kupwara and its impact on those needing medical care in Karnah valley, The Wire reported on Saturday.

Khushal Khawaja, a journalist based in North Kashmir, was detained by the police on Thursday for several hours and “released with the condition that he report again at the police station” the next day, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti claimed in a social media post on Friday.

Mufti said the detention followed Khawaja’s reporting on the closure of the Sadna Pass, which she said stranded critical patients and led to the death of a young girl.

“Instead of fixing roads, healthcare, and the long-vacant sub-divisional magistrate post, [the] authorities are targeting the messenger,” Mufti added. “This is a misuse of authority.”

Deeply disturbing that journalist Khushal Khawaja was detained for reporting the closure of Sadhna Pass which stranded critical patients and led to the tragic death of a young girl. He was held for several hours and released with the condition that he report again at the police…

— Mehbooba Mufti (@MehboobaMufti) January 30, 2026

Khawaja told The Wire that he was detained after he questioned the alleged negligence of the staff at a government-run hospital following the death of a seven-year-old girl from Luntha village in the Karnah valley.

The child died near a helipad before she could be airlifted to Srinagar for treatment.

“Her oxygen saturation was about 80 and I questioned the absence of a doctor and the lack of protocols in handling such patients because she had no oxygen support,” he told the news outlet. “Police then came near the helipad, seized my phone and held me till around 8 pm.”

He said that he pleaded with the authorities to explain why he was being held, but claimed “they had no answer”.

A day earlier, Khawaja had published a video report on social media documenting the aftermath of heavy snowfall that led to the closure of the Sadna Pass, the only road link between the Karnah valley and mainland Kashmir.

He had interviewed residents and reported that several patients were stranded at the sub-district hospital in Karnah, including two who had reportedly suffered heart attacks, according to The Wire.

The residents featured in the report alleged that National Conference legislator from the constituency, Javaid Ahmad Mirchal, was absent during the crisis.

A district administration official rejected allegations of inaction, saying some patients had been transported by ambulance across the Sadna Pass in difficult snowbound conditions.

The unidentified official described the girl’s death as “an unfortunate tragedy” and said air transport had been affected by adverse weather.

“She passed away in Karnah just when she was being put into a helicopter,” he told The Wire. “However, four other patients who were also with her were airlifted. The Border Roads Organisation has also been working day and night to open the Sadna Pass.”

On Friday, Awami Ittehad Party leader Abrar Rashid alleged that Khawaja was detained at the behest of Mirchal.

Rashid said in a social media post that the detention and harassment of a “qualified journalist” was “condemnable and unfortunate”

He called on the authorities to intervene and prevent unnecessary harassment of an innocent person.

A young journalist, @KhushalKhawaja from far flung Tangdar, has always been a voice for hundreds and thousands in the area.

It is deeply disturbing to hear that he was detained and harassed on the directions of JKNC MLA. This is not the first time. These incidents began after…

— Abrar Rashid (@abrarrashid29) January 30, 2026

However, Mirchal has denied any role in the detention, saying he learned about it through social media and that those responsible should explain why Khawaja was taken into custody, The Wire reported.

“I will never stoop to such a level,” he said.

Also read: ‘Attempt to silence national press’: Four Kashmiri journalists get police summons

The Karnataka High Court on Friday refused to quash a criminal case against a man accused of publishing allegedly obscene and offensive depictions of Hindu deities in a WhatsApp group, holding that such acts are not protected under the right to free speech, The Indian Express reported.

A single-judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna dismissed a petition filed by Sirajuddin, a resident of Dakshina Kannada district, who is accused in a 2021 case on charges of outraging religious feelings.

The case was registered on the basis of a complaint filed by a resident of Belthangady taluk.

The complainant claimed that he joined a WhatsApp group through an invite link and found that allegedly obscene and offensive images depicting Hindu deities and certain political figures were being repeatedly circulated, the Deccan Herald reported.

He said the group had six administrators and nearly 250 participants, and alleged that the content had been shared deliberately to insult religious beliefs and outrage religious feelings, The Indian Express reported.

After examining the investigation records and the images shared in the group, the court observed that the material was such that reproducing it in a judicial order would “itself be inappropriate”.

“The material on its face has the tendency to outrage religious feelings and disturb communal harmony,” the court said.

The bench stated that even if an insult does not immediately result in disorder, any act with the propensity to disrupt public order falls within the scope of reasonable restrictions on free speech.

“In the garb of free speech anything and everything cannot be countenanced,” Nagaprasanna observed.

The court rejected the petitioner’s argument that prior sanction of the state government was required before registering an offence under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code.

“The sanction would be required only at the stage of cognizance and not for registration of a crime or conduct of investigation,” The Indian Express quoted the court as saying. “Investigation precedes prosecution.”

The High Court declined to interfere in the investigation into the matter, stating that premature intervention would amount to stifling a lawful inquiry into allegations of serious nature.

“If the investigation leads to any member being actively involved in permitting circulation of such pictures, they must be brought to book,” Nagaprasanna added.

In the Union Budget for the financial year 2026-’27 presented on Sunday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday proposed to increase capital expenditure to Rs 12.2 lakh crore.

The capital expenditure that had been proposed for the current fiscal year was Rs 11.2 lakh crore.

The amount proposed on Sunday would be an 8.9% increase.

The revised estimate for 2025-’26 was Rs 10.9 lakh crore, the Union Finance Ministry said on Sunday.

Capital expenditure is the money that the government spends on building infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals.

Sitharaman proposed allocating Rs 5,000 crore to each City Economic Region over a five-year period.

She also proposed to set up a new dedicated freight corridors connecting Dankuni, West Bengal and Gujarat’s Surat, 20 new national waterways and seven high-speed rail corridors between major cities.

This marks Sitharaman’s ninth consecutive Budget and sets a record for continuous tenure in the finance ministry. This is the first time that the Union Budget is being presented on a Sunday.

The Budget is expected to outline measures aimed at sustaining economic growth, maintaining fiscal discipline and advancing reforms intended to shield the economy from global trade frictions, including the impact of United States-imposed tariffs.

The government’s annual Economic Survey that was tabled in Parliament on Thursday predicted that India’s real gross domestic product is expected to grow between 6.8% and 7.2% in the financial year 2026-’27.

The document said that the cumulative impact of policy reforms in recent years appeared to have lifted the economy’s medium-term growth potential closer to 7%.

The Economic Survey, tabled by Sitharaman in Parliament three days ahead of the Union Budget, details the state of the country’s economy and suggests measures to boost growth.

On Saturday, while silver prices fell sharply by nearly 19% to Rs 3.1 lakh per kg, gold prices declined by more than 2% to Rs 1.6 lakh per 10 grams, as investors booked profits amid a global market rout linked to a stronger US dollar.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said he would file “at least 100 cases” against Delhi-based activist Harsh Mander after the activist filed a police complaint accusing the chief minister of hate speech against Bengali Muslims in the state, The Indian Express reported.

Earlier this week, Mander filed a complaint at Delhi’s Hauz Khas police station seeking that a first information report be filed under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to promoting enmity, assertions prejudicial to national integration, statements conducive to public mischief, and acts intended to outrage religious feelings, The Wire reported.

The Delhi Police have said they are examining the complaint.

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Over the past week, Sarma has made several remarks targeting the community, and said that it was his job to “make them suffer”.

He claimed on Tuesday that four lakh to five lakh “Miya” voters will be deleted when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls takes place in Assam. “Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes,” he said. “Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh.”

Responding to Mander’s complaint, Sarma said on Saturday that while the activist had filed only one case against him, he would file “at least 100 cases” claiming he had the “necessary material” to do so, The Indian Express reported.

Sarma also accused Mander of having “destroyed” the National Register of Citizens process in Assam.

He alleged that Mander and others had visited the state during the exercise and worked to “create false kin” to include names of “ineligible applicants” in the National Register of Citizens.

Sarma has made similar allegations earlier, claiming that individuals like Mander were responsible for “spoiling” the National Register of Citizens process.

The National Register of Citizens was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified over six years on.

Also read:

Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ make a mockery of the Constitution

United States President Donald Trump said on Saturday that India will buy oil from Venezuela instead of Iran, Reuters reported.

“We’ve already made that deal, the concept of the deal,” he told reporters.

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

Trump said that China was also “welcome” to make a deal with the US on purchasing oil.

Trump says India will be buying Venezuela's oil as 'opposed' to Iran oil. "We've already made that deal" pic.twitter.com/sL88E6s6Dc

— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) February 1, 2026

A day earlier, the US had told India that it could soon resume purchasing Venezuelan oil to help replace oil imports from Russia, Reuters quoted three persons familiar with the matter as saying.

In March, the Trump administration had imposed 25% tariffs on countries importing Venezuelan oil, including India. It had claimed that the actions and policies of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president at the time, posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

On January 3, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were abducted by the US military in an overnight operation. The US has accused Maduro of narco terrorism and drug trafficking, among other crimes – allegations that Maduro has pleaded not guilty to.

Four days after Maduro was abducted and taken to the US, Trump said that his country will get up to 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela.

The US is seeking to supply Venezuelan oil to India as part of its efforts to reduce the oil revenues that it says are funding Russia’s war on Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly alleged that the import of discounted Russian oil by countries, including India, was fuelling the war.

However, India has said that the US tariffs are unjustified and has maintained that its oil purchases are guided by the country’s energy security needs.

Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August for buying Russian oil.

The US has claimed that India stopped buying Russian oil after the punitive tariffs were imposed. New Delhi has not yet commented on the claim.

On January 12, Trump also said that a tariff ​rate of 25% will be imposed on goods from countries doing business with Iran.

While China is Iran’s largest trading partner, India has been among the top five countries with which Tehran has had trade ties in recent years.

A spectacle is playing out in Assam. Let’s call it Himanta Biswa Sarma vs the Constitution of India. In the last seven days, the Assam chief minister has repeatedly – one should say brazenly – declared his hostility to a third of his state’s population.

“My job is to make the Miya people suffer,” he said on January 27.

The “Miya people” Sarma speaks of so contemptuously are the state’s Muslims of Bengali origin, many of whom arrived in Assam in the early 1900s and who are often vilified as “illegal immigrants” or Bangladeshis.

A few days later, Sarma urged the people of the state to do “whatever they can to trouble Miyas”, including paying them less for their honest labour.

This was in response to a question about allegations that workers of the Sarma’s Bharatiya Janata Party were actively trying to subvert the Election Commission’s special revision of Assam’s electoral rolls.

As Scroll reported, thousands of bulk applications were filed across Assam, seeking to strike voter names off the draft roll – largely Muslim voters who had just been confirmed by the Election Commission’s door-to-door verification. In many cases, the complaints were forged, signed by people who claimed to have no knowledge of them. BJP workers were named in several complaints filed by angry voters.

The chief minister said “there was nothing to hide”.

“Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes,” he told reporters, who gamely chuckled along. “Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh.”

Indeed, Sarma doubled down, saying that BJP workers had filed five lakh bulk applications against “Miyas” on his instructions, just so they were “troubled” and “kept under pressure”.

Perhaps, no one expects statesmanlike speech from Sarma anymore. He has, after all, accused Bengal-origin Muslims in his state of conducting a “flood jihad” and a “fertiliser jihad” for simply going about their lives. But even by those abysmally low standards, a chief minister of a state directing the extraordinary harassment of Muslim voters – and owning it with pride – is a red line crossed.

Sarma’s statements make a mockery of the Constitution, which bars discrimination based on religion, race, gender or caste, which guarantees everyone equality before law, no matter what his or her identity. By directing his party workers to file false complaints against legitimate voters, he is in dangerous breach of the law.

Many have argued that Sarma’s performative communalism is aimed at pleasing the apparatchiks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – and climbing the grease-pole of India’s post-2014 politics. But it is important to remember that he is drawing on a deep well of suspicion against Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam.

For decades now, the community has repeatedly stood trial in Assam’s politics. Brought to the region because the British needed hard-working peasants, Bengal-origin Muslims tried to disprove allegations of being a threat to Assamese society by adopting Assamese as their language, opening Assamese-medium schools in their villages and providing the hard labour on which much of Assam runs. That strategy did not work.

Bengal-origin Muslims were routinely reported to the state’s foreigners tribunals, notorious for stripping residents of citizenship because of minor errors in documents and even spelling mistakes. In 2019, the community surrendered to the inquisition of the National Register of Citizens – and the majority survived, producing the documents that prove their Indianness. Most of the 19 lakh Assam residents who did not make it to the NRC were Hindus.

Sarma’s calls to make “Miyas” suffer and disenfranchise them is an attempt to erase that history and to cast all Bengal-origin Muslims as illegal foreigners. By exhorting the people of Assam to harass fellow citizens as a way of “resistance”, he casts Assam’s politics into a perpetual conflict between communities – the ultimate othering experiment.

The provocative speech is not only meant to harvest votes. As Scroll has documented, Sarma has made “troubling Miyas” a doctrine of governance, using law and procedure against the community to create a regime of exclusion and punishment, calling for their economic and social marginalisation, backed up by majoritarian support.

With the judiciary and the Election Commission refusing to stand up to Sarma, or offer even a mild reprieve for what is evidently hate speech, Assam will continue to be goaded down a path of divisiveness. The Constitution of India is still awaiting its defenders.

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

A shocking death. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar was among the five persons killed in a plane crash in Baramati. The small aircraft crashed near an airstrip in the town during its second attempt to land. Two pilots, an attendant and a security officer were the others who died.

The cause of the crash was unclear. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is probing the incident.

The Nationalist Congress Party leader, in his sixth term as the deputy chief minister, was flying in from Mumbai for a political rally ahead of civic elections.

Opposition leaders demanded an independent investigation into the crash. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that a few days ago she had come across a claim by an unidentified leader of another party on social media that Ajit Pawar was “willing to leave” the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. “And now what happened today…” she said, demanding a probe supervised by the Supreme Court.

Ajit Pawar’s uncle and NCP founder Sharad Pawar said that his nephew’s death was an accident and requested that the matter not be politicised.

University equity rules stayed after backlash. The Supreme Court stayed the University Grants Commission’s 2026 Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations. The provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”, the court observed, asking the Union government to redraft the regulations. Until then, the operation of the rules will be in abeyance.

The bench verbally raised questions about why “caste-based discrimination” had been separately defined when the definition of “discrimination” already covered all forms of discriminatory treatment.

The regulations, notified on January 13, led to protests by upper-caste students, who have argued that the framework could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters have contended that the rules are biased against students from the general category as they do not provide for measures against “false complaints”.

UGC did not defend its equity guidelines in court. But activists explained Johanna Deeksha why the regulations must be defended.

The state of the economy. India’s real gross domestic product is expected to grow between 6.8% and 7.2% in the financial year 2026-’27, the government’s annual Economic Survey projected. The cumulative impact of policy reforms in recent years appeared to have lifted the economy’s medium-term growth potential closer to 7%, the Department of Economic Affairs said.

“With domestic drivers playing a dominant role and macroeconomic stability well anchored, the balance of risks around growth remains broadly even,” it said. “The outlook, therefore, is one of steady growth amid global uncertainty, requiring caution, but not pessimism.”

The document, tabled in Parliament ahead of the Union Budget on Sunday, details the state of the country’s economy and suggests measures to boost growth.

Also on Scroll last week

• Son declared Indian, but father, uncle and aunt pushed into Bangladesh
• Why experts say AI tool to detect Bangladeshis will be open to misuse
• As Maoists retreat, why many fear security forces in Chhattisgarh villages
• Five reasons why activists say Kerala woman’s arrest in bus incident needs a rethink
• ‘Pakistani’ taunts in office, rebuffed deliveries on apps: India’s Muslims face prejudice at work
• Refusal to see caste discrimination, not ‘false complaints’, is the real crisis on campus
• Why a 19th-century king’s music still provokes doubt and dispute in the Carnatic world
• In the devastating legacy of Dogra domination are the roots of Ladakh’s anxiety for autonomy
• Arundhati Roy talks movies: ‘Every person who reads my book has their own film in their head’
• ‘Mayasabha’ review: Atmospheric visuals trump a convoluted tale

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After two Nipah virus cases were confirmed in West Bengal, the World Health Organization on Friday said that the likelihood of the outbreak spreading to other Indian states or internationally was low.

The World Health Organization said that the risk posed by the Nipah virus was “moderate at the sub-national level, and low at the national, the regional and global levels”.

The global health authority said it is not recommending travel or trade restrictions based on the information about the cases currently available.

The Nipah virus is a “zoonotic illness” transferred from animals such as pigs and fruit bats to humans. The virus can also be caught through human-to-human transmission.

It causes fever and cold-like symptoms in patients. The infection can also cause encephalitis, which is the inflammation of the brain, and myocarditis, or the inflammation of the heart, in some cases.

The World Health Organization said it assessed the risk from Nipah to be “moderate” at the sub-national level as no specific drugs or vaccines against it are available, and because early diagnosis is difficult.

However, it said that India has implemented strong public health measures to detect and control outbreaks, including surveillance mechanisms and the ability to rapidly test samples. It added that there have been no reports of cross‑border transmission, and that the current outbreak remains geographically limited.

“India has demonstrated strong capacity and experience in managing past NiV outbreaks,” the global health body said.

The statement came after Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam tightening airport screenings of passengers following the cases in West Bengal, Reuters reported.

The two confirmed cases in West Bengal are a 25-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man, both healthcare workers at a hospital in North 24 Parganas district’s Barasat.

They had developed symptoms in the last week of December, which later progressed to neurological complications. They were placed under isolation in early January.

As of January 21, while one patient was reported to be recovering, the other remained in a critical condition.

After the cases were confirmed, the health authorities had launched an extensive public health response. More than 190 contacts had been identified, traced and tested, with all testing negative for the virus, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

This is the seventh documented Nipah outbreak in India and the third in West Bengal, following outbreaks in Siliguri in 2001 and Nadia in 2007. The last reported outbreak of the disease in the country was in Kerala in August.

The portfolios of finance and planning, which were earlier held by Ajit Pawar, have been assigned to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Sunetra Pawar, Deputy CM of Maharashtra and wife of late Ajit Pawar, gets state excise duty, Sports and Youth Welfare, Minorities Development & Aukaf departments

The portfolios of Planning and Finance, which were assigned to Late Ajit Pawar, are now being held by Chief Minister… pic.twitter.com/udMdmQxKFe

— ANI (@ANI) January 31, 2026

Ajit Pawar died on January 28 when a small aircraft crashed near an airstrip in Baramati town during its second attempt to land after having initiated a go-around. Two pilots, a flight attendant and Ajit Pawar’s security officer were the others who died in the incident.

The cause of the crash was unclear. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, a unit of the civil aviation ministry, is investigating the incident.

Sunetra Pawar, who became the first woman deputy chief minister of Maharashtra on Saturday, was earlier that day elected as the leader of the legislative party of the Nationalist Congress Party faction that Ajit Pawar led.

Sunetra Pawar had contested the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Baramati as the Ajit Pawar-led NCP group’s candidate but was defeated by her sister-in-law, Supriya Sule, from the rival faction. She became a Rajya Sabha member in June 2024.

India’s cities are widely recognised as engines of economic growth. They generate over half of the GDP. Yet, there is a persistent paradox: India has rich cities, but city governments are chronically underfunded.

The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax in 2017, while a landmark reform for the national economy, has further strained municipal finances. It raises the issue of how India shares its tax revenues – particularly GST – with the third tier of government.

The mismatch between the economic importance of cities and their ability to raise funds is a structural problem that threatens India’s development ambitions. Cities cannot deliver quality infrastructure, reliable services, or build climate resilience if they lack predictable, adequate resources.

Shrinking fiscal space

An analysis of union budgets over the past three years shows that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has spent, on average, about Rs 0.5 lakh crore annually, which is less than one-fifth of the estimated minimum investment required by cities for urban infrastructure.

This inadequate funding has led to inadequate transportation systems, unreliable water supplies, poor sanitation, increased traffic congestion and heightened vulnerability to floods and climate-related shocks.

Municipal revenues have also weakened. Traditionally, cities worldwide levy taxes on business activity to finance local services. Indian cities were no exception.

Various taxes on goods entering the city and services were important sources of municipal income: like octroi and entry tax, which were levied on goods entering civic limits, local body tax, which replaced octroi in Maharashtra, and taxes on advertisements and entertainment. The rollout of GST subsumed many of these local taxes, significantly eroding municipal revenue autonomy.

Mumbai illustrates this loss of local revenue. Before GST, octroi alone contributed to nearly 35% of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s total revenue.The abolition of octroi had created a major fiscal hole.

Although Maharashtra promised a compensatory share of GST revenues to urban local bodies, transfers have been irregular and insufficient – cities like Nagpur, Pune, and Nashik have not received their due share of compensation. For example, Pune had a shortfall of Rs 500 crores, and Nashik and Nagpur’s compensations are caught up in dispute.

Inter-governmental transfers

Globally, inter-governmental transfers are a key pillar of urban finance. These are grants from the central and state governments to local governments.

Compared to other countries, India performs poorly on this front. Inter-governmental transfers to local governments in India amount to only about 0.45%-0.5% of gross domestic product. This is far below countries such as Mexico (1.6%), South Africa and the Philippines (2.5%), and Brazil (over 5%).

The Philippines offers a particularly instructive example. The Local Government Code mandates that 40% of national internal revenue collections be transferred to local governments. These transfers are formula-based, predictable and accompanied by borrowing powers for local governments. As a result, cities in the Philippines enjoy significantly greater fiscal capacity and autonomy.

In India, urban local bodies received an estimated Rs 1.3 lakh crore as inter-governmental transfers in 2024-’25. These estimates are based on the authors’ projections from the report tabled during the interim budget in February 2024 and a March 2019 report of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

Nearly a quarter of this came through centrally-sponsored schemes such as AMRUT, Swachh Bharat Mission, and Smart Cities. However, much of this funding is routed through state parastatals – agencies like Maharashtra’s Jal Pradhikaran, which develops water and sewage infrastructure – or special purpose vehicles, such as the Metro Rail Authorities in cities. Of the 1.3 lakh crore, about one lakh crore was transferred to cities through the central and state finance commissions.

Despite these transfers, the overall level of support to urban local bodies has remained stagnant relative to GDP since the introduction of GST.

Fixed share of GST for cities

To correct this imbalance, there is a growing consensus among policymakers and scholars that urban local governments must receive a direct, fixed share of GST revenues.

The High Powered Expert Committee on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services, chaired by Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia and established in May 2008 by the Ministry of Urban Development, had argued that GST should have been shared across all three tiers of government from the outset. Similarly, former urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu advocated for an assured share for municipalities in the GST.

In its 2019 report, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations described municipal finances as the “worst hit” by the GST reform. Similarly, in a research paper published that year, economist Vijay Kelkar highlighted the vertical fiscal imbalance in India and proposed allocating one-sixth of GST revenues to the third tier of government. This share could then be divided equally between rural and urban local bodies.

In 2024-’25, India’s net GST collection stood at about Rs 19.5 lakh crore. One-sixth of this will be roughly Rs 3.25 lakh crore. Even if only half of this – around Rs 1.6 lakh crore – is allocated to urban local bodies, it would nearly double current transfers. It would still raise IGTs to cities only modestly in GDP terms, underscoring how underfunded Indian cities currently are.

A predictable GST share would not only strengthen municipal finances but also incentivise cities to support economic growth, improve compliance and invest in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.

Constitutional status of local finances

Beyond increased transfers, there is a deeper constitutional issue at play. The 74th Constitutional Amendment assigned functions to urban local bodies through the 12th Schedule but it did not provide a corresponding list of revenue sources. Municipalities remain dependent on state governments for financial devolution.

State Finance Commissions, tasked with addressing this gap, have largely underperformed. The Fifteenth Finance Commission noted that State Finance Commissions remain the weakest link in India’s fiscal federal structure, leading to inadequate and delayed transfers.

As early as 2009, the High Powered Expert Committee on Urban Infrastructure recommended creating a separate “Local Bodies Finance List” in the Constitution, similar to the Union and State Lists. This recommendation has gained renewed urgency in the post-GST era, where local revenue powers have been further curtailed.

If India’s cities are expected to drive growth, innovation, and climate resilience, their governments must be financially empowered. Providing cities with a fixed share of GST, alongside constitutional recognition of their revenue powers, is essential. Strengthening city finances is about securing India’s economic future.

Meera Mehta and Dinesh Mehta are Senior Advisers, Professor Emeritus Dhruv Bhavsar is Head, and Saubiya Sareshwala is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Water and Sanitation, CRDF, CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday said that “allusions” made about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an email message that is part of the Jeffery Epstein files “deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt”.

The “Epstein files” refer to millions of documents, emails, photos and videos released by the US department of justice detailing the activities of Epstein, an American financier and convicted child sex offender, and his social circle that included politicians, celebrities and several public figures.

India’s external affairs ministry was commenting on reports about a purported email that was part of a fresh set of Epstein files made public on Friday.

The email from Epstein to a person named Jabor Y had a reference to one of Modi’s visits to Israel.

“Beyond the fact of the prime minister’s official visit to Israel in July 2017, the rest of the allusions in the email are little more than trashy ruminations by a convicted criminal, which deserve to be dismissed with the utmost contempt,” ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement.

Modi had visited Israel between July 4 and July 6 that year.

The comment came after the Congress on Saturday criticised Modi in connection with the reference.

Party leader Pawan Khera said on social media: “It is a matter of national shame that Jeffery Epstein – a convicted human trafficker, child sex offender and serial rapist from the USA – wrote that Prime Minister Narendra Modi took his ‘advice and danced and sang in Israel for the benefit of the US president. They had met a few weeks ago. IT WORKED!’”

It is a matter of national shame that Jeffery Epstein - a convicted human trafficker, child sex offender and serial rapist from the USA - wrote that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi took his “advice and danced and sang in Israel for the benefit of the US president. They had met a… pic.twitter.com/3jRXjGLNsS

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) January 31, 2026

The possibility of the Indian prime minister having “proximity to such a disgraced figure raises serious questions of judgement, transparency and diplomatic propriety”, Khera said.

“It is now clear that the prime minister had a direct unexplained association with Jeffery Epstein whose infamous list of elite clients has wreaked havoc…” the Congress leader said.

The “inexcusable association” between Modi and Epstein is a “matter of national dignity and international reputation”, Khera said, demanding “immediate accountability” from the prime minister.

The Congress demanded that Modi must clarify what he was allegedly taking Epstein’s advice for, “to what benefit of the US president was he singing and dancing” in Israel and what the message “it worked” meant.

Donald Trump was in his first term as the US president at the time.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in his New York jail cell.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday reiterated to a delegation of Arab foreign ministers India’s support for the people of Palestine, adding that New Delhi welcomed the ongoing peace efforts, including the Gaza peace plan.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Modi conveyed to the delegation his “appreciation for the important role played by the Arab League in supporting efforts towards regional peace and stability”.

The comments were made as Modi hosted the delegation, which included the secretary general of the League of Arab States. The group is in the country for the second India-Arab foreign ministers’ meeting.

The League of Arab States, an intergovernmental body founded in 1945, focuses on regional stability, economic cooperation and security among its 22 member states.

India’s longstanding position has been to support a two-state solution for establishing a sovereign, viable and independent state of Palestine within recognised and mutually agreed borders, living alongside Israel in peace.

In October 2023, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began after Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on besieged Gaza since then, leaving more than 70,000 persons dead.

Modi has praised United States President Donald Trump’s peace efforts in Gaza and welcomed the US-brokered peace plan between Israel and Hamas in October.

The US has invited India, among about 60 countries, to join the Board of Peace proposed by Trump. Washington has described the board as a global initiative to resolve conflicts, initially focusing on Gaza.

It is not clear whether New Delhi has agreed to join the initiative.

The Board of Peace will be part of the second phase of a US-backed ceasefire proposal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. A United Nations Security Council resolution in November authorised the Board of Peace to oversee Gaza at least until the end of 2027.

The 60 countries invited by Trump include Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco, Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Trump’s peace plan was approved by the UN Security Council in November, with Russia and China abstaining over concerns about the lack of clarity on how the Board of Peace would function and whether it would pave the way for Palestinian statehood.

Also read: India’s discernible shift away from Palestine

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

Between 2021 and 2024, India saw a surge of popularity in online gambling, as increasingly cheap mobile data and expanded access to smartphones fueled use of the games. Driven by concerns around illegal operations, Indian authorities summoned Meta and Google last summer to discuss their role in promoting gambling sites. In August, the Indian government banned all forms of real-money online gambling and its promotion, joining many countries across South and Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East.

A new Rest of World analysis reveals that illegal online gambling ads continue to be widespread on Meta platforms in India, and around the world. In December alone, Rest of World found at least 140 banned ads running in India. The analysis also indicates Meta was running gambling ads in 12 additional countries, where they’re prohibited by law.

Data from Meta’s ad library, analysed by Rest of World in December, showed dozens of pages running nearly 1,000 such ads across Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other nations where local laws prohibit such promotion. Over 2,400 additional ads are now inactive, but many of the pages that ran them continue to operate on the platform.

Last summer, Meta outlined its policies for online gambling and gaming-related ads on its platforms, including the prohibition of such ads in 18 countries it called “unsupported markets” across Asia and the Middle East. Months later, these ads continued to run in at least 13 of the 18 countries where Meta restricts them.

Meta did not respond to Rest of World’s requests for an interview.

These ads directed users to websites or apps where they can link their bank accounts to gamble on card games or slot machines. They often promoted secure transactions and instant withdrawals to lure users into signing up, along with promises of referral bonuses and cashback offers for major losses.

In the Philippines, over 60% of online gambling operations are illegal, according to the chairperson of the country’s regulatory body, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.

“Most of the ads, specifically on Facebook, are coming from illegal online gambling operations,” Ronald Gustilo, national campaigner of digital rights advocacy group Digital Pinoys, told Rest of World.

Digital Pinoys works with the Philippines’ Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center to flag such illegal websites to Meta. According to Gustilo, Digital Pinoys has provided Meta details of over 300 websites running illegal gambling ads on Facebook in the region. He said the platform has only taken down six so far.

Many of these pages appear to follow a similar pattern of operation: They use fake addresses and run the ads for a short amount of time – typically six to eight hours – before disappearing, making it difficult to pin them down.

In Thailand, a draft law was approved earlier this year to legalize physical casinos, but online gambling remains illegal. Rest of World identified a network of three pages that collectively ran over 500 ads on a single day promoting Nex855, a Thai-language website advertising live casinos and slot machines, among other games.

Attempts to contact Nex855 or the page admins on Facebook running these ads were not successful.

Malaysia has banned gambling since 1953, and constantly cracks down on online gambling operations. But Rest of World identified over 250 ads by six pages for MYB77, a slot casino app. These ads, too, ran for a few hours before disappearing. The pages continue to exist.

A customer care representative on MYB77’s website refused to comment on the ads.

Many of the pages use fake addresses and claim to be based in the U.S., but the transparency section on their profile shows multiple managers operating the pages from countries in Southeast Asia.

It is often unclear which users these ads target, how much money was spent on the ads, or any other information about the advertisers themselves. That’s because in most countries, online gambling and gaming-related ads do not fall under the purview of “political ads,” which are held to a greater standard of transparency by Meta.

In its policy outlining the 18 countries where running these ads is prohibited, Meta asks that advertisers ensure they adhere to local laws, and that the platform is “not responsible for how authorized ad accounts comply with local gambling laws and regulations.”

A recent Reuters investigation revealed that Meta earned over $16 billion, or 10% of its revenue, from fraudulent ads promoting scams, prohibited goods, and illegal gambling.

Meta’s inaction on these ads has frustrated lawmakers and officials across Asia. Malaysia’s communications minister, Fahmi Fadzil, has repeatedly criticized Meta for its failure to restrict illegal gambling and scams on its platforms.

“If a gambling ad is paid for using a credit card, and Facebook knows this content is illegal in Malaysia, they should block the credit card account used. But Facebook has refused to do so,” he said in a September press conference.

That same month, Fadzil met Meta executives and revealed the government had sent the company more than 120,000 content removal requests related to illegal gambling on Facebook. Fadzil accused Meta of not cooperating in “combating cybercrime” after some of this content continued to remain on the platform

Hazel Gandhi is a data journalist and fellow at Rest of World based in New York.

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

A group of activists, lawyers and academics on Saturday condemned the recent remarks made by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma about Bengali Muslims in the state, describing the comments as “prejudicial and alarmingly hateful rhetoric”.

In an open letter, the group quoted Sarma as having remarked on Tuesday that his job, in context of the special revision of voter lists in the state, was to “make them [Miyas] suffer”.

This “communally-inflamed rhetoric” positions the Bengali Muslim community as “deserving of nothing but suffering at the hands of the Assamese people”, the group said.

The Election Commission is separately conducting a “special revision” of the voter list in the state, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll. Assam is not among the 12 states and Union Territories where the poll panel is conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

The group of activists and academics said on Saturday that the chief minister had not only “brazenly expressed his government’s intent to send objection notices to the ‘Miya’ people” to ensure that at least four lakh to five lakh of them are deleted from the state’s voter list, but also called on “the majority to mount a sectarian economic boycott by paying them lesser than they deserve in informal jobs”.

On Tuesday, Sarma said that he himself was encouraging people to “keep giving troubles” to Miyas. “In a rickshaw, if the fare is Rs 5, give them Rs 4,” he had said. “Only if they face troubles will they leave Assam.”

On the same day, Sarma had claimed that four lakh to five lakh Miya voters would be deleted when the special intensive revision of the voter rolls takes place in the state, and acknowledged that the BJP government had “made arrangements” to preliminarily prevent them from voting.

A day later, Sarma said that BJP workers had filed more than five lakh complaints against suspected foreigners during the special revision.

Also read:

• In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells
• BJP workers in Assam say their names used to seek mass voter deletion – without their knowledge

Sarma has “explicitly stated that his government has evicted only the ‘Miya’” as part of its eviction campaign, “sparing the ‘indigenous Assamese Muslims’”, the group added.

On January 25, Sarma said that the eviction drives in the state were only targeting Miya Muslims and not the Assamese people.

Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, several demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

The chief minister’s words are “alarmingly divisive and despicable”, the group said on Saturday, adding that remarks “reflect a worsening climate of hatred” towards the state’s Bengali Muslim community.

“While discrimination against the community is not new in Assam, this represents an unprecedented escalation on the part of an elected political leader holding a constitutional post and ushers in a new era of impunity for hate speech in this state,” the activists, lawyers and academic said in the letter.

Sarma’s framing of Bengali Muslims as “‘infiltrators’ or ‘outsiders’ is deeply ahistorical”, the letter said, adding that the persons the BJP leader was referring to “belong to India and Assam in every way”.

Through increased surveillance and policing, weaponising citizenship determination laws to declare Bengali Muslims as “foreigners” and targeting their homes, the state government was “putting together a policy programme that now bears the hallmark signatures of ethnic cleansing”, the letter added.

“The majoritarianism of the government has seismic consequences on the lives of this minority...,” the letter said.

The group said that it condemns the state government’s “discriminatory violence” against Bengali Muslims.

“We also express alarm at the impunity with which the CM continues to openly target a specific group of people belonging to an ethno-religious minority and in doing so, challenge the core constitutional principles of justice, equality and secularism,” it added.

The signatories of the letter include members of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, independent journalists, human rights activists, academics, lawyers, former Indian Administrative Service officer Harsh Mander and several citizens.

Also read: ‘Acknowledging reality not hatred’: Himanta Sarma cites SC judgement to defend Miya Muslim remarks

Opposition parties on Saturday sought an investigation into the death of Confident Group chairperson CJ Roy, saying that the facts behind the incident should be brought to light, PTI reported.

Roy, who was from Kerala, allegedly shot himself dead on Friday afternoon at the office of his real estate company in Bengaluru allegedly during an income tax raid, the news agency quoted unidentified police officers as saying.

His brother, Babu CJ, claimed that pressure because of the raids may have forced Roy to die by suicide, The Hindu reported.

“IT sleuths came to my house as well on January 22 and asked for a lot of documents, which I gave,” the newspaper quoted Babu as saying. “But the raids put my brother under stress. But when I spoke to him at 11 am, Friday morning, he sounded normal. I don’t know what they asked him and what pushed him over the brink.”

On Saturday, MV Govindan, the state secretary of Kerala’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), asked why central agencies had been unable to act in a more humane manner when carrying out raids and during their other activities, PTI reported.

The raid on Roy’s office continued even after his death, the news agency quoted Govindan as having claimed.

CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP AA Rahim also said that an investigation should be conducted into whether Roy was a victim of alleged pressure tactics allegedly used by central agencies.

Congress MLA VD Satheesan, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, said that there was a “mystery” behind the death of the businessman and sought an investigation into the matter.

“It is not clear what kind of harassment he faced at the hands of the IT officials,” PTI quoted him as saying.

I am from the Netherlands and this is a good article because when the teacher/guru lacks human values, society has a big problem (“How the traditional guru-shishya system undermined critical thinking in India”). The guru must also respect the life of the disciple, if not, they are not a guru. Rather than blind belief in a person, investigate and then chose. – Bert van der Heijden

***

The article has given voice to several lakhs of pupils suffering on account of a merciless suppression of their curiosity. The guru-shishya relationship exists only because of the supporters of “Sanatana Dharma” values, in which the concept of equality is absent. People who suffer from a superiority complex always oppose equality and fraternity. In India, many people are brainwashed and have accepted discrimination while believing that their karma is on account of past deeds. The article help understand why modern education system is good for all. – Muralidhara Lokikere

***

The article hits the bull’s eye in criticising this imbalanced, upper-class controlled system. Mankind would not have reached this pinnacle of achievements in science and exploration if it were to only obediently repeat what was learnt from teachers/gurus. Every guru has limitations and we respect them for our initial learnings. Individuals must explore and learn through free will. It is time to liberate us from false, pretentious and suppressive institutions to keep us in shackles even in this era. – Ramesh TN

Gurus can be questioned

The answer is not as simple as the article claims. Learning is always painful and teaching even more so. The example of Dronacharya should be read in its proper context. Arjuna’s guru was so affected by the pure devotion and loyalty of his favourite pupil that he was willing to go to any extent to protect him, even if it meant injustice for Eklavya.

In many fields like athletics and performing arts, both students and teachers have to put in efforts for achieve excellence and it is to the credit of the guru-shishya tradition. Few instances like the Gundecha brothers cannot negate all the good achieved by guru shishya traditions. – Apurva Choudhary

***

Critical thinking is required to assess the merits and demerits of a system. However, critical thinking does not mean that you have to question the guru. As long as you are the shishya, you have to take the words of the guru as the truth. In solving a maths problem, one of my teachers gave a valuable advice: “First you follow the path shown by me; after that you can start thinking of other paths”. – Jose P Koshy

***

This is a good observation. But in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says in 4.32

तद्विद्धि प्रणिपातेन परिप्रश्न‍ेन सेवया ।
उपदेक्ष्यन्ति ते ज्ञानं ज्ञानिनस्तत्त्वदर्शिनः ॥

It translates to learning the truth by approaching a spiritual master, inquiring submissively and render service as a token of gratitude. “Pariprashnen” means asking questions. Self-realised souls can impart knowledge because they have seen the truth. – Narsimhakripa Das

***

The article offers little value as it focuses on historic texts and past perspectives. The content would be much more impactful if it addressed the core purpose of this system: the necessity for the shishya to remain humble toward both the guru and the subject matter in order to facilitate deeper learning. – Dileep Mandapam

***

The article offers a different perspective. However, the tradition has been misunderstood. If the tradition was so rigid then how did any discipline ever become better than the guru and, if so, how was it allowed? The abuse part may be selectively true but it is incorrect to paint the entire tradition in a single colour. – Abhijeet G

***

The article is ignorant of India’s ancient education system. Nowhere was it mentioned that it is wrong to ask questions doubts: even Arjuna asked Krishna doubts, that too on the battlefield. These articles don’t make any sense and are not cool. – Kushal Bhure

***

Questioning the guru originated in Indian philosophy. In fact, real gurus encouraged doubts and cleared them with his finest knowledge procured due to his saadhna. That is why Indian darshan shastras are the finest, most liberal and wise teaching systems. Because of guru-shishya system we have Kannad, Aryabhatta and many enlightened beings who contributed towards science, mathematics and medicine in Bharatvarsh, now India. – Neha Nirmal

***

This article is biased, half-baked and completely contrary to evidence. Current colonial system doesn’t allow questions in school. Guru-shishya factored each person based on his capabilities, absorption and promoted knowledge. I condemn the author and request him to apologise and issue an addendum. – Aiyer VLV

***

This unnecessary and one-sided perspective not only reflects bias but also ignorance. In today’s world where Western influence is slowing killing our traditions, it is our responsibility to represent our culture in the right perspective. Please forgive me of you find my words to be harsh. – Rahul Gurav

***

The same system of education that the author derides produced eminent scholars of Sanskrit, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, jurisprudence and linguistics. All the famous universities of ancient India relied on the discourse between a guru and disciples.

Disciples were free to question and correct their teachers. Had the system of education, practised in ancient India, been devoid of critical thinking and criticism, it would not have attracted students from as far as China and Japan. – Rajesh Gopinath

An acting principal of a government school in Madhya Pradesh’s Maihar district was suspended on Friday for negligence after students were served their special Republic Day midday meals on scraps of paper, including torn notebook pages, PTI reported.

The incident had come to light after a video circulating on social media showed students of the Government High School in Bhatigwan village being served puri and halwa on ink-stained pages torn from old books on January 26.

The midday meal programme under the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman is a centrally-sponsored scheme that is aimed at providing nutritious meals to students enrolled in government and aided schools.

The district administration had taken cognisance of the incident in Bhatigwan village after the video triggered outrage. A proposal had also been forwarded to the Rewa divisional commissioner to suspend the principal.

In an order on Friday, Rewa Division Commissioner BS Jamod said that “in-charge principal Sushil Kumar Tripathi of Government High School Bhatigwan has been suspended with immediate effect for negligence in organising a special Republic Day lunch programme at the school”.

Tripathi has been attached to the district education officer’s office, the news agency reported.

Maihar Collector Rani Batad also took cognisance of the incident, ordering an investigation and strict action against those involved.

The incident on January 26 came nearly two months after another video from a school in Hullpur village in the state’s Sheopur district showed students eating their midday meals on a newspaper.

At the time, Sheopur District Collector Arpit Verma had ordered an inquiry by the sub-divisional magistrate into the matter. After the inquiry confirmed the incident, the self-help group responsible for serving the meals was terminated and a show-cause notice was issued to the principal of the school.

Sharing the video on social media, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav should feel ashamed for nurturing “India’s future” in such a “pitiable state”.

A court in Assam’s Guwahati on Friday rejected the petition for bail filed by a musician and two personal security officers accused in the death of singer Zubeen Garg, PTI reported.

While the musician, Amritprava Mahanta, had been charged with murder in the case, the two personal security officers, Nandeswar Borah and Paresh Baishya, were charged with criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust, The Indian Express reported.

Special Public Prosecutor Ziaul Kamar told PTI that the matter has been listed for further hearing on February 13.

Garg, a renowned Assamese singer, died on September 19 during a yacht trip in Singapore, a day before he was scheduled to perform at the North East India Festival there.

A death certificate issued by the authorities in Singapore on September 20 stated the cause of Garg’s death as drowning.The authorities reiterated the findings in October and December.

On January 14, the authorities in the southeast Asian country also said that Garg was “severely intoxicated” and had refused to wear a life jacket when he drowned while swimming in September.

However, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly claimed that the singer’s death was not accidental but was a murder.

The event where Garg was scheduled to perform had been organised by the Indian government and the Indian High Commission in Singapore, with support from the Assam Association and the North East India Association in the country.

Seven persons were arrested in connection with the singer’s death. A Special Investigation Team in India formed to look into the case filed a chargesheet in a Guwahati court on December 12, accusing four of the seven persons of murder.

The four persons charged for murder were Shyamkanu Mahanta, who was the organiser of the North East India Festival, Garg’s manager Siddharatha Sharma and two musicians who were with the singer on the yacht – Shekharjyoti Goswami and Amritprava Mahanta.

Besides, Zubeen Garg’s cousin, Deputy Superintendent of Police Sandipan Garg, who had travelled with him to Singapore, was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, while two of his personal security officers, Borah and Baishya, were accused of criminal breach of trust.

On Friday, while rejecting Amritprava Mahanta’s bail petition on Friday, the Kamrup Metropolitan District and Sessions Court said that the charges laid against her were punishable with death or imprisonment for life.

The judge added that the argument submitted by the prosecution reflected “a prima facie case against Mahanta for conspiracy with prime accused persons in connection with this case and actively participating in that conspiracy, which facilitated the death of Zubeen Garg”.

In the chargesheet filed in the matter, Amritprava Mahanta was accused of “causing excessive drinking of alcohol by the victim” and “not informing his additional consumption of alcohol and him being sleep and food deprived to the manager of the victim or to the organiser or to the wife of the victim”, The Indian Express reported.

The chargesheet also accused the musician of “encouraging” Zubeen Garg to swim without a life jacket in that condition.

Amritprava Mahanta, in her petition for bail, submitted that the “investigation has already been completed and the chargesheet has been submitted, and there is no whisper of allegation which constitutes any offence under any provision of law” against her, the newspaper reported.

Her petition also noted that an allegation against her was that she had not prevented Zubeen Garg from swimming without a life jacket.

“It is submitted that ‘omission’ is not a criminal offence,” The Indian Express quoted her as saying. “It is submitted that no overt act has been attributed to the accused person….prosecution has failed to explain the role of the accused person and in which manner, she has conspired with other co-accused in connection with the death of Zubeen Garg”.

The judge, while rejecting the applications of the Borah and Baishya, also stated that “it appears” that they “conspired with the prime accused to misappropriate the money which actually belongs to deceased”.

The court added that their offences were “serious in nature which have ramification in the society”.

Many upper-caste protestors opposing the University Grants Commission’s new guidelines against discrimination have demanded that the rules be made caste-neutral.

But lawyer Disha Wadekar said there is no point to the regulations if they are made caste-neutral. “Then they will have to be gender neutral, they will have to be disabilities neutral, so everyone can file complaints against everyone,” Wadekar told Scroll in an interview on Friday.

Wadekar is representing petitioners seeking institutional safeguards against caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions in India. The petition is being argued by Indira Jaisingh, and the advocate-on-record in the case is Prasanna S.

Wadekar pointed out that the UGC’s Redressal of Grievances of Students Regulations, 2023, which has also been mentioned in the 2026 guidelines, allow any student to file a complaint of victimisation. “So what is this uproar that ‘we don’t have a redressal’?”

Regarding claims that the new rules could be misused, Wadekar said that misuse is a symptom of systemic failures in our criminal justice system.

“This whole ‘misuse’ narrative about the atrocities act was also based on the fact that there are so many acquittals,” she said, pointing that similarly, in rape cases, only 25% cases reach conviction. “Does that mean that 75% of rape cases are false and are a misuse of the rape law?”

Excerpts from the interview:

How do you respond to what happened in the Supreme Court on January 29? The petition opposing the UGC regulations and the court’s order to stay the petition.

The staying of the UGC regulations is an interim order, so in the interim, the older regulations will be in force. And the final matter on the merits of the case will be heard on March 13. The petitioners are challenging the definition of caste-based discrimination, which says that caste-based discrimination is discrimination only against SCs, STs and OBCs. Their claim is that that is not a caste-neutral provision, and so that provision needs to be made caste-neutral.

We, of course, do not agree with that. We believe that SC, STs and OBCs are the only people who need to be protected against discrimination based on caste. However, we will make our detailed submissions on March 13, and I would not like to comment directly on what the court said.

But I would like to point out that the 2012 regulations that are now going to be in operation, at least until the next hearing date, also protect Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes exclusively against caste-based discrimination. That to me is interesting because the whole rationale for staying the regulations was that the definition of caste discrimination is not caste neutral, and both the older regulations and the newer regulations are not caste neutral when it comes to defining discrimination based on caste.

In the realm of the law and regulations, have you even seen anything like caste neutrality when it comes to the question of caste discrimination?

Not at all. Caste is a group identity, and it is based on this group identity that an individual is discriminated against.

Are they denying any form of group identity in this country, which is an ascribed status shaped by historical disadvantages, untouchability and patriarchy? There are these identities that are inflexible, therefore we call these associations as group associations or group identity.

So is this an attempt to say that in this country we will not recognise any of us? And is that non-recognition therefore only caste specific? Or is it also going to apply to gender, because gender is also an ascriptive identity. To some extent it could be fluid but it is still an ascriptive identity.

The stay on the new regulations has led the Supreme Court to revert back to the 2012 UGC regulations which were in operation when Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi died by suicide, allegedly after being subjected to caste discrimination on campus. They have also been operational in the last five years, during which UGC data says that caste-based discrimination has risen by 118%. Why do you think the 2012 regulations failed to address caste-based discrimination in higher education institutions?

There is enough evidence to show that the 2012 regulations were completely ineffective. I remember Payal’s mother Abeda Tadvi, who is a petitioner in the Supreme Court, kept saying that they did not have any recourse, that they kept approaching college authorities who would send them back with all the representations and letters that they would take to them. And finally, because they didn't have any recourse, Payal took this step.

That got us thinking whether there was an equal opportunity cell and whether these equity regulations were being implemented by Payal’s college or her university. And of course, they were not. And that was not specific to Payal’s college, 90% of the colleges and universities in the country did not have something like an operational equal opportunity cell or an equity committee.

When institutional heads and VCs were asked are you even aware of something like this, they were not aware.

Then we started looking for answers as to how we can make these regulations enforceable. We didn't have to look too far, we just had to look at other UGC regulations. There was a regulation on ragging and sexual harassment of UGC that operates within the university sphere. We realised that the enforcement mechanism of the UGC regulations on ragging were extremely stringent, which is why ragging and prevention of ragging in this country has been a success story, to a great extent. Today, you will not find a single college or university without an anti-ragging cell. But that same college or university, if you ask them do you have an equity cell? They will say: what is that?

So we looked at the enforcement mechanisms of other UGC regulations, whether it’s sexual harassment, disabilities or anti-ragging regulations. We saw that there was a non-compliance action clause, which meant that the UGC as a statutory body has powers under the UGC Act to take action against universities that do not comply with its regulations. UGC can withdraw grants if a university doesn't comply. They can withdraw affiliations, because they are responsible for giving affiliations to universities. They can derecognise courses. We noticed that this was completely absent in the equity regulations.

Then we also realised one more thing. Both these regulations had an independent monitoring committee, which is like an oversight mechanism, which means that you don't leave it to the college that they will set up this committee or this equal opportunity cell.

So, what is this oversight mechanism? It should be an independent committee that asks the college for reports. It should ask them how many complaints have you received, how have you dealt with those complaints, what have the consequences been? To effectively ensure the implementation of these equity committees, it has to be an external body.

When we filed RTIs, we realised that most colleges didn’t even care to have an equal opportunity cell or an equity committee. The colleges that did say that we have these equal opportunity cells or committees, for year after year the same college has been saying that we have zero complaints. There were a few colleges that said that we have just one complaint.

When we asked them what was the resolution of that complaint, they said that we sent the complainant to mental health counselling. So even if the non-compliance clause is there and they end up having a committee on paper, the question remains, are they really going to function?

Why is it that only in 2026 people are outraged about the regulations, when the regulations have been there since 2012?

This is because both these enforcement mechanisms, the monitoring committee and the non-compliance clause, have now been added to the equity regulations, which means that colleges and universities will have to implement it. That is the reason for the outrage.

All this while you knew that nobody is implementing those regulations. The state doesn’t care, and nothing was going to happen. They were mere on paper regulations.

When the mother of Rohith Vemula, Radhika Vemula, and Abeda Tadvi approached you all as lawyers, seeking reform in anti-discrimination policy in higher education institutions, what was their main vision and how was that translated into the petition?

It actually started with me being Abeda Tadvi’s lawyer in Payal Tadvi’s case. In the conversations that we had, the mother kept showing me all these representations that she was writing to the authorities, for almost an entire year. It’s not that Payal decided to take her life suddenly. It was because of harassment that had been happening for over a year.

The response of the authorities would be to send the Tadvis back and not take any action. She thought, what is my recourse? I will approach the authorities. But then they shut their door. And then they didn’t have an equal opportunity cell or an equity committee. So you have doors shut from everywhere. There is a reason why Payal committed suicide.

So we thought, what if there was an equal opportunity cell? Maybe there could have been some action taken, even if it was a whitewashed committee. There could have been something, at least those girls who were harassing her everyday would have been called and given a warning.

When we looked at all the available legal safeguards, we found these equity regulations. There was something that already existed on paper but not in practice. So, our work was about translating that from a formal paper law to something that can actually be implemented and can actually work in institutions. I am not going to say that they are going to be perfect. But at least we have something to work with.

That’s also the problem with Internal Complaint Committees (for sexual harassment complaints). But at least there is that fear that there is going to be an ICC for a man who is a sexual harasser and perpetrator. That mechanism doesn’t exist for SCs, STs, religious minority students and those with disabilities at the moment in Indian universities.

Critics are saying the regulations are vague and there is widespread room for misuse. How likely do you think that actually might happen?

The critics on both sides have certain issues with the definition. There is one section that is saying that the older regulations had a better definition of the forms of discrimination.

Firstly, the forms of discrimination in the older regulations were restricted to caste-based discrimination. They were not manifestations or illustrations of discrimination on the basis of gender, or disabilities or any other form of discrimination – or even religion for that matter. They were restricted to caste, but they were there. Those forms and illustrations have been deleted from the new legislation.

The other section is also criticising the regulation for being vague because it does not include upper-caste or general category. That non-inclusion, according to them, is the vagueness.

We were very clear that the definition of discrimination is different from manifestation of forms of discrimination. They are illustrative, not all inclusive. So some things will always be left out. For instance, in the atrocities Act, all the definitions of atrocities are basically illustrations.

The way we understand the drafting of a law, definition is the most important part. There are two aspects of it.

One, is a definition, which describes or which includes or gives meaning to what you are trying to curb. We were clear that definition, the larger definition, should be based on the UN conventions, whether it is race or UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The language used in these two conventions is very important because of how it defines gender-based discrimination and race-based discrimination. It says that any kind of distinction, any kind of exclusion, any kind of preferential treatment that degrades human dignity, that violates fundamental rights and freedoms. It is all-encompassing. And a definition should be like that.

But we also felt that there was a need for illustration. Are we saying that the illustrations are the only forms of discrimination? No. The illustrations might be able to cover some forms of discrimination, some others it might not.

But the larger definition should be enough to guide the committee to say that though it is not an illustration or a form of discrimination that is there in the regulation, it still amounts to a form of discrimination under the larger definition.

We were insistent on illustrations, especially with respect to caste-based discrimination. Because discrimination in institutional cases is never overt, it’s always covert.

All of us stop at “there was this slur and this was a casteist slur and therefore this is different”.

But that is really not how discrimination operates institutional spaces. It is systemic. It is endemic to a point where it is so normalised that it is difficult for someone facing the discrimination and harassment to even pinpoint and say that this is what I am facing and this is discrimination.

The purpose of illustration is that it will guide both the person who is at the receiving end of the discrimination to even be able to articulate that this is what is happening.

Secondly, it is also for the equity committees and cells who are going to decide on these cases and these complaints. Otherwise, in most cases, whatever complaints they would get they would just say “but this doesn't look like discrimination to us”. That's always subjective. There needs to be that guiding principle.

So this would be a civil regulation, not criminal, right? Social media posts are making claims that upper-caste faculty and students will land up in jail. There are some posts claiming that if a Dalit man proposes to an upper-caste woman and she says no, he can just lodge a false case against her and she will end up in jail.

Under the same regulation, she can file a complaint against the same Dalit man for gender-based discrimination – of stalking, of harassment. What are they even talking about?

An upper-caste, disabled person will not be able to file a complaint against a Dalit man for caste discrimination. And that is how it should be. But that upper-caste, disabled person can file a complaint against an able-bodied Dalit man for disabilities-based discrimination under the same regulation.

Why is there this whole narrative accusing only Dalits of misuse when even upper-castes are going to be able to misuse the regulation? If misuse is a narrative, why are Dalits being centered? This is just some narrative, discourse and propaganda-building. That’s not the reality.

Another much-cited example on social media was that if an upper-caste professor marks a Dalit, Adivasi or OBC student poorly in an exam, that student can file a revenge complaint of harassment.

If the student files a revenge complaint, is that going to put the professor behind bars or would that even land him in trouble? That’s not the case. You will have to prove that it is caste-based.

Look at the definition of caste discrimination. It says discrimination on the basis of caste and tribe. So the basis of discrimination will have to be proved. If the Dalit student was deserving of getting more marks and he still got low marks compared to, say, an upper-caste student who wrote the same thing and still got higher marks. Then that shows it is caste-based. The burden is much higher.

Even in this upper-caste women and Dalit man case, the Dalit man will have to prove the upper-caste woman has discriminated against him based on caste.

It’s not like everything will be decided based on one complaint. A complaint is filed. Notice is issued to the respondent. The respondent has to file their say, put their submissions on record. They can bring their own evidence and witnesses before the committee to support their claim that they did not do this.

The burden of proving a complaint is so much higher. And the burden is higher on the other side, on the complainant. The basis of caste will have to still be proved in both these examples. That is how the Atrocities Act is as well.

Hasn’t it been argued that there has been a systemic failure in the implementation of the Atrocities Act too?

Because the courts, over the years, have diluted its provisions in so many ways. Even if an atrocities complaint is filed, it doesn’t always lead to a good investigation by the police. It’s the state that represents victims in atrocities cases. And if the police investigation is horrible, it doesn't stand the test in court during trial. In so many atrocities cases, there are acquittals only because the investigation was lopsided, there weren’t enough witnesses. Or if the witnesses were brought, they turned hostile.

This whole “misuse” narrative about the atrocities act was also based on the fact that there are so many acquittals. The proportion is equivalent to rape cases: in rape cases only 25% of the cases actually reach conviction.

Does that mean that 75% of rape cases are false and are a misuse of the rape law? It can be due to so many reasons: lack of evidence, lack of good investigation by the police, not having good representation by the public prosecutor representing you, the court being biased. It is not always that there is some mala fide intention and therefore that is a misuse of the provision.

Acquittal is a symptom of all of these systemic failures in our criminal justice system. And this is going to happen with equity regulations also. There is a line of thinking that if you file a complaint, there will be 100% success. That's not how it is going to be.

Do you think these regulations could work if they were made caste-neutral?

Then there is no point to these regulations. They will have to be gender neutral, they will have to be disabilities neutral, so everyone can file complaints against everyone.

And there is already a UGC regulation for that: the student grievance redressal regulation of 2023. That regulation has also been mentioned in the 2026 regulation. For all sorts of individual complaints that are not based on group identity, or group-based discrimination, there is already a redressal mechanism. So what is this uproar that “we don’t have a redressal”?

The 2023 student grievance regulations are caste-neutral, gender-neutral, disabilities-neutral. Any student can file a grievance of victimisation. The definition in the grievance redressal regulation says it includes harassment and victimisation.

We are not suggesting that upper-caste students do not experience harassment or victimisation in educational institutions. They certainly can. However, such experiences are typically individual-specific and not rooted in ascriptive group identity.

By contrast, discrimination faced by Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe students, women, or persons with disabilities, religious minorities arises from their group-based, ascriptive status. This form of discrimination is systemic and structural in nature, operating across institutions and contexts, and is qualitatively different from the individualised harassment or victimisation that an upper-caste student may encounter.

Former India women’s cricket team captain Jhulan Goswami has been summoned for a hearing under the special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal, along with her two siblings, over a discrepancy in their father’s name, PTI quoted an unidentified official as saying on Friday.

Their father’s name appeared as “Nishith Ranjan Goswami” in some documents and “Nishith Goswami” in others, the official was quoted as saying.

“The hearing was scheduled on January 27,” PTI quoted the official as saying. “Goswami was not required to appear in person and resolved the matter from her residence, while her two siblings attended the hearing at a local school.”

Goswami, a fast bowler, represented India in 12 Tests, 204 One Day Internationals and 68 T20 matches.

Former footballer Mehtab Hossain, who represented India in several international matches, was also summoned for a hearing under the voter roll revision process, India Today reported.

He received a notice to appear on Sunday at a school in Mallikpur in South 24 Parganas district. Hossain lives in New Town in Kolkata but remains a registered voter in Mallikpur, his native place.

He said that the notice was issued because there was a mismatch between his name and his mother’s name in electoral records, India Today reported.

Earlier, cricketers Mohammed Shami and Laxmi Ratan Shukla had also received similar summons under the special intensive revision exercise.

The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the special intensive revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of over 58 lakh voters were removed from voter lists in the state as they had either died, migrated outside the state or did not submit their enumeration forms.

Voters with “logical discrepancies” in their forms are separate from those whose names were removed, and from about 30 lakh “unmapped voters”, who could not establish a familial link with the voters’ list of 2002.

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen was among those who got such a notice, with the Election Commission citing a gap of less than 15 years between him and his parents.

The revision exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state, during which voters identified for verification are being called for personal hearings.

The second phase of the hearing process under the revision exercise in West Bengal is being held in 294 Assembly constituencies and will continue till February 7. A final electoral roll will be published on February 14.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the next three to four months.

Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday cited a 2005 Supreme Court judgement to defend his recent remarks targeting Miya Muslims in the state, saying that acknowledging the “reality” is neither hatred nor communalism but a recognition of a “grave and long-standing” problem.

The BJP leader has been repeatedly claiming over the past few days that Miya Muslims will be deleted as voters during the special revision of the electoral rolls in the state, and that it was his job to “make them suffer”.

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

In a post on social media on Thursday, Sarma said that those who were questioning him about his remarks about the community should “pause and read” what the court had said about Assam while striking down the 1983 Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act in 2005.

Those who are attacking me for my remarks on “Miyan”—a word used in Assam in the context of Bangladeshi Muslim illegal migration—should pause and read what the Supreme Court of India itself has said about Assam. This is not my language, not my imagination, and not political…

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) January 29, 2026

The Act was enacted in 1983 to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, primarily from Bangladesh, residing in Assam. It established special tribunals to determine the status of “illegal” immigrants who arrived on or after March 25, 1971.

The legislation was meant to expedite the detection and deportation of “illegal” immigrants. The provisions of the Act, however, placed the burden of proof on the state and not the accused.

In 2005, the court struck down the law after hearing a petition filed by former Chief Minister and BJP leader Sarbananda Sonowal. The petition had contended that the provisions of the 1983 law for identifying foreigners were so stringent that few persons had been declared as such and deported.

On Thursday, Sarma claimed that the court had warned that a “silent and invidious demographic invasion of Assam” may lead to the loss of the “geostrategically vital” districts of lower Assam.

The chief minister added that the court had observed that the “influx of illegal migrants is turning these districts into a Muslim majority region…it will then only be a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh may be made”.

The Supreme Court had not made these remarks but was quoting them in its judgement from a 1998 report submitted by Lieutenant General SK Sinha (Retired), the Governor of Assam, at the time.

The chief minister said that when the highest constitutional court of the country used “words like “demographic invasion” and warned of the possible loss of territory and national unity, acknowledging that “reality” was neither hatred nor communalism or an attack on any community.

He added: “It is a recognition of a grave and long-standing problem that Assam has lived with for decades.”

Reacting to Sarma’s statement, Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi said that the chief minister is “misusing the name of the Supreme Court”.

“The language he quotes is not the Supreme Court’s,” Gogoi said on social media. “The…court neither authored the said words nor adopted it. To pass off an executive report as judicial pronouncement is a deliberate contempt.”

A chief minister, a constitutional office, to “falsely attribute words to the…Supreme Court is not just contemptuous, it is an assault on constitutional propriety and institutional integrity”, the Assam Congress chief added.

Dishonesty and shamelessness define Himanta Biswa Sarma’s politics.

He has stooped so low that he is misusing the name of the Hon’ble Supreme Court.

He claims to rely on the Hon’ble Court’s “own words” from the case of Sarbananda Sonowal. This is a blatant lie.

The language…

— Gaurav Gogoi (@GauravGogoiAsm) January 30, 2026

Congress spokesperson Aman Wadud also noted that the Supreme Court judgement was based on a report by former Assam Governor SK Sinha. “Based on which empirical data did SK Sinha came to the conclusion of large scale illegal migration?” he asked.

Enough with one-sided propaganda, Sir.

How about a DEBATE – On your preferred channel , at a place of your choice ?

You are quoting Sonowal-I judgement, the SC made this observation based on a report by Assam Governor SK Sinha.

Would you care to answer ?

1. Based on… https://t.co/nG1zq8Jf32

— Aman Wadud (@AmanWadud) January 29, 2026

Wadud also asked how many “demands for merger” with Bangladesh have been made since Sinha warned of such a possibility 28 years ago.

“The people you are calling Miyan are Indian citizens , migrated way before partition,” the Congress spokesperson said. “Half a million migrated a few years before 1930 – according to census commissioner CS Mullan.”

State’s actions not against any religion, claims CM

Nevertheless, Sarma on Thursday claimed that the state government’s actions were not against any religion or any Indian citizen.

“Our effort is to protect Assam’s identity, security, and future, exactly as the Supreme Court cautioned the nation to do,” he added. “Ignoring that warning would be the real injustice – to Assam and to India.”

Sarma’s remarks on Thursday came a day after he said that BJP workers had filed more than five lakh complaints against suspected foreigners during the special revision of the electoral rolls in the state.

The Election Commission is separately conducting a “special revision” of the voter list in the state, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll. Assam is not among the 12 states and Union Territories where the poll panel is conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The state is expected to hold Assembly elections in three to four months.

Several Opposition parties have accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls amid the special revision and filed police complaints.

On Wednesday, Sarma claimed that four lakh to five lakh Miya voters would be deleted when the special intensive revision of the voter rolls takes place in the state, and acknowledged that the BJP was attempting to prevent them from voting.

“What does ‘vote chori’ [vote theft] mean to us?” the chief minister had asked reporters. “Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes. Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh.”

Reacting to Sarma’s comments, Congress leader Aman Wadud had said that Sarma had “made the Constitution absolutely ineffective” in Assam.

On January 24, the chief minister said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the special revision in the state.

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed statements on demographic changes in Assam to the Supreme Court. The statements were not authored by the court but were quoted in the 2005 judgement from a report submitted in 1998 by the then governor of Assam.

“This is not a survey marker for me – it is like a dagger driven into my heart,” lamented Hafizullah Ganie, an apple farmer in Pulwama district’s Babhara village pointing to a bright yellow concrete pillar indicating the route a planned railway line will take through South Kashmir.

When the 27.6-km Awantipora-Shopian railway line is built, the project will consume Ganie’s half-acre orchard.

Similar survey pillars were installed in December in orchards in Babhara, Tikken, Keegam, Kunso and other villages in Pulwama and Shopian districts.

In December 2023, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Parliament that the final location survey has been sanctioned for this project.

The construction, villagers claim, will swallow hundreds of acres of orchard land and between half a million and 700,000 trees. The district authorities say they have not yet begun to estimate how much land will be required for the project and how many trees will be cut.

But since the markers were installed, apple farmers in several affected villages have held peaceful protests. They say that the railway line imperils the prosperous lives they have built since they shifted from paddy cultivation to apple farming around 25 years ago.

Since the 1970s, apple farming has lifted incomes in Kashmir, reshaping aspirations and making horticulture the backbone of the Valley’s economy. The industry directly or indirectly provides a living for 3.3 million people.

The decision to change what was grown on their land was born not just of the desire to produce a more lucrative commodity – it was the result of growing water scarcity.

Traditionally, paddy cultivation in this area would be irrigated by water from snow-fed streams, said 58-year-old Abdul Hamid, a farmer in Babhara village. But now, he said, “snow has almost vanished… and so has the water”.

Ganie still remembers how he and other farmers from Babhara were beaten up by farmers of a nearby village in 2001 when they attempted to divert a stream there to provide water to their farms.

“That day many of us decided to convert our paddy land into orchards as apple trees and other fruit trees are not reliant on irrigation,” Ganie said. It took him a year to move from paddy to growing apples. Many of his neighbours followed suit.

Not only did this solve their water problem, it also turned around their fortunes because the earnings from apple farming are far higher than paddy farming, he said.

Ganie said it is hard to believe how the snow and glaciers that fed Kashmir’s streams have diminished over the past few decades. “When I was a young boy, Pir Ki Gali [a mountain pass] had snow even in July and August,” he said. “Today, there is none even in April.”

Over the past 60 years, glaciers in the Kashmir and Ladakh Himalayan regions have reduced by 25% to 30%, said Irfan Rashid, an assistant professor at the earth sciences department of University of Kashmir who has studied the phenomenon.

Farhat Shaheen, an agricultural economist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology who has done extensive research on the impacts of climate change on agriculture, said that the decisions of farmers in recent years in some water-stressed villages of Kashmir have turned out not just to be economically advantageous for farmers – they were climate-smart too.

“The water footprint of apple is very low compared to paddy,” Shaheen said. While paddy needs irrigation, apple orchards are largely rain-fed. He added that horticulture also has a significantly smaller carbon footprint. Apple trees, he noted, help sequester carbon. Paddy fields, on the other hand, are a source of methane emissions.

From a climate lens, Shaheen observed that apples are well suited to Kashmir’s conditions, requiring only a few showers during the growing season and minimal irrigation in dry spells.

The effects of climate change have been especially intense in the region. After analysing the recession patterns of nine glaciers in the Kashmir Himalaya over 28 years from 1992 and 2020 with the help of satellite images and field measurements, Rashid of the University of Kashmir and his co-researchers found that glaciers here are melting faster than in other regions across the Himalayan arc.

Farmers have sensed such changes way earlier. Farmers in Babhara, Drubgam and other villages in Pulwama said that shifting from paddy cultivation to apple cultivation wasn’t just a way to seek better returns – in the face of water shortages, it was a survival strategy.

Adjusting to climate change will not be cheap. A new regional analysis report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development has found a $12.05 trillion gap in amount of money the Hindu Kush Himalaya will require to address the region’s adaptation and mitigation needs between 2020 to 2050

The report notes that global climate finance flows, which reached approximately $1.3 trillion annually in 2021-’22, are predominantly directed toward mitigation in developed and larger emerging economies. The Hindu Kush Himayala region received significantly lower shares.

Despite this, resilient farmers in various Himalayan villages have already found their own solutions to climate-driven problems – such as switching crops.

Paddy cultivation, said the agricultural economist Shaheen, is increasingly unviable from a farmer’s perspective though it is crucial for food security in a region where rice is a staple. “It does not even recover the costs farmers incur every season,” he said.

In contrast, horticulture offers quicker and higher returns. High-density apple plantations, for instance, begin bearing fruit from the second year, with production peaking by the sixth year.

Still, apple production isn't without problems. From an environmental perspective, Shaheen acknowledged that pesticide use in horticulture remains a concern. “But it can be taken care of by bio-pesticides in due course,” he said.

He said that horticulture has been a critical economic lifeline in Kashmir, particularly during years of conflict and economic uncertainty.

The prosperity apple farming has brought is written into the landscape. In most villages in South Kashmir, beautiful houses, most of them built in recent years, stand amidst rolling orchards.

In this region, homes and orchards stand in close proximity. They are sometimes separated only by a narrow street because apple farmers do not want orchard land eaten into by broader roads.

Ganie has not yet told his 78-year-old father how much of the family’s land will be lost to the rail project. “That would simply crush him,” he said. “Land is all he has known in his life.”

In Babhara, farmer Altaf Ahmad pointed to the stylish houses around the village surrounded by orchards, noting that these signs of prosperity would have been unimaginable 10 or 15 years ago.

“Thanks to our incomes from our orchards, every household is now prosperous enough to construct a house and afford whatever it takes to live a good life,” said Ahmad.

But with the rail project, “all this hard-earned success is at stake now”, he complained.

Ahmad hastened to add that the residents do not oppose the idea of development. Many years ago, he said, the people of South Kashmir gave land for the railway project that connected the region to the rest of the country.

But they could not see the reason for the Awantipura-Shopian line, he said. “We are already connected through a network of roads,” Ahmad said. “For god’s sake, a small distance of around 20 km doesn’t need a railway connection.”

Another villager said that the line “would achieve nothing except slicing our land and our future”.

Farmer groups in Pulwama and some Kashmiri political leaders have emphasised that such projects require a Social Impact Assessment and formal consultations with affected families. The farmers claimed that the surveyors installed the project's boundary markers without informing residents, “breaching procedures” meant to safeguard landowners’ rights.

Shahbaz Ahmad Bodha, Pulwama district’s Assistant Commissioner Revenue, said that his office has not yet received communication to carry out a complete estimation of land and trees involved.

“We will carry out the assessment as and when we get specific directions ... and the compensation will be provided to those whose land gets involved as per the Fair Compensation Act,” Bodha said. He added that protesting farmers had not approached their office directly.

Himanshu Shekhar Upadhyay, Chief Public Relations Officer of Northern Indian Railway, said that he had not heard about “any such protests” against the project.

“I will get the information regarding your questions and get back to you,” he said. “But, as of now, I will only say that Railways is for people. People are not for the railways...so whatever is in the interest of people, Railways will do that after taking the people in confidence.”

When contacted several times later for further information, he did not pick up the phone nor answer the email sent to him. This story will be updated if he responds.

Athar Parvaiz is a resident fellow at the Climate Change Media Hub, Asian College of Journalism.

The “mother of all deals”: that’s how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the new free trade agreement between the European Union and India, announced on Tuesday after about two decades of negotiations.

The deal will affect a combined population of 2 billion people across economies representing about a quarter of global GDP.

Speaking in New Delhi, von der Leyen characterised the agreement as a “tale of two giants” who “choose partnership, in a true win-win fashion”.

So, what have both sides agreed to – and why does it matter so much for global trade?

What has been agreed?

Under this agreement, tariffs on 96.6% of EU goods exported to India will be eliminated or reduced. This will reportedly mean savings of approximately €4 billion annually in customs duties on European products.

The automotive sector is the big winner. European carmakers – including Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Renault – will see tariffs on their vehicles gradually reduced from the current punitive rate of 110% to as little as 10%.

The reduced tariffs will apply to an annual quota of 250,000 vehicles, which is six times larger than the quota the UK received in its deal with India.

To protect India’s domestic manufacturers, European cars priced below €15,000 will face higher tariffs, while electric vehicles get a five-year grace period.

India will almost entirely eliminate tariffs on machinery (which previously faced rates up to 44%), chemicals (22%) and pharmaceuticals (11%).

Wine is particularly notable – tariffs are being slashed from 150% to between 20%-30% for medium and premium varieties. Spirits face cuts from 150% to 40%.

In return, the EU is also opening up its market. It will reduce tariffs on 99.5% of goods imported from India. EU tariffs on Indian marine products (such as shrimp), leather goods, textiles, handicrafts, gems and jewellery, plastics and toys will be eliminated.

These are labour-intensive sectors where India has genuine competitive advantage. Indian exporters in marine products, textiles and gems have faced tough conditions in recent years, partly due to US tariff pressures. That makes this EU access particularly valuable.

What’s been left out?

This deal, while ambitious by India standards, has limits. It explicitly excludes deeper policy harmonisation on several fronts. Perhaps most significantly, the deal doesn’t include comprehensive provisions on labour rights, environmental standards or climate commitments.

While there are references to carbon border adjustment mechanisms (by which the EU imposes its domestic carbon price on imports into their common market), these likely fall short of enforceable environmental standards increasingly common in EU deals.

And the deal keeps protections for sensitive sectors in Europe: the EU maintains tariffs on beef, chicken, dairy, rice and sugar. Consumers in Delhi might enjoy cheaper European cars, while Europe’s farmers are protected from competition.

Why not?

Three forces converged to make this deal happen. First, a growing need to diversify from traditional partners amid economic uncertainty.

Second, the Donald Trump factor. Both the EU and India currently face significant US tariffs: India faces a 50% tariff on goods, while the EU faces headline tariffs of 15% (and recently avoided more in Trump’s threats over Greenland). This deal provides an alternative market for both sides.

And third, there’s what economists call “trade diversion” – notably, when Chinese products are diverted to other markets after the US closes its doors to them.

Both the EU and India want to avoid becoming dumping grounds for products that would normally go to the American market.

A deal-making spree

The EU has been on something of a dealmaking spree recently. Earlier this month, it signed an agreement with Mercosur, a South American trade bloc.

That deal, however, has hit complications. On January 21, the European Parliament voted to refer it to the EU Court of Justice for legal review, which could delay ratification.

This creates a cautionary tale for the India deal. The legal uncertainty around Mercosur shows how well-intentioned trade deals can face obstacles.

The EU also finalised negotiations with Indonesia in September; EU-Indonesia trade was valued at €27 billion in 2024.

For India, this deal with the EU is considerably bigger than recent agreements with New Zealand, Oman and the UK. It positions India as a diversified trading nation pursuing multiple partnerships.

However, the EU–India trade deal should be understood not as a purely commercial breakthrough, but also as a strategic signal – aimed primarily at the US.

In effect, it communicates that even close allies will actively seek alternative economic partners when faced with the threat of economic coercion or politicised trade pressure.

This interpretation is reinforced by both the deal’s timing and how it was announced. The announcement came even though key details still need to be negotiated and there remains some distance to go before final ratification.

That suggests the immediate objective was to deliver a message: the EU has options, and it will use them.

India and Australia

For Australians, this deal matters more than you might think. Australia already has the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, which came into force in late 2022.

Australia has eliminated tariffs on all Indian exports, while India has removed duties on 90% of Australian goods by value, rising from an original commitment of 85%.

This EU-India deal should provide impetus for Australia and India to finalise their more comprehensive Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, under negotiation since 2023.

The 11th round of negotiations took place in August, covering goods, services, digital trade, rules of origin, and – importantly – labour and environmental standards.

The EU deal suggests India is willing to engage seriously on tariff liberalisation. However, it remains to be seen whether that appetite will transfer to the newer issues increasingly central to global trade, notably those Australia is now trying to secure with Indian negotiators.

Chasing an Australia-EU deal

Australia should take heart from the EU’s success in building alternative trading relationships.

This should encourage negotiators still pursuing an EU-Australia free trade agreement, negotiations for which were renewed last June after collapsing in 2023.

These deals signal something important about the global trading system: countries are adapting to American protectionism not by becoming protectionist themselves, but by deepening partnerships with each other.

The world’s democracies are saying they want to trade, invest, and cooperate on rules-based terms.

Peter Draper is Professor, and Executive Director: Institute for International Trade, and Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Trade and Environment, Adelaide University.

Mandar Oak is Associate Professor, School of Economics, Adelaide University.

Nathan Howard Gray is Senior Research Fellow, Institute for International Trade, Adelaide University.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Odisha Police on Friday formally informed the family of Muntaz Khan that he and his two elderly siblings had been deported to Bangladesh on December 24. This came more than a month after they were reported missing, following their detention by the police in Kendrapara district.

In a written intimation issued to the family, the police stated that 63-year-old Muntaz Khan, his 59-year-old brother Insaan Khan and their 70-year-old sister Ameena Bibi had been identified as Bangladeshis after “due verification”.

The document, seen by Scroll, added that the three persons had been handed over to the Border Security Force at Seemanagar in West Bengal’s Nadia district and were transferred to the Bangladesh Police on December 24.

It stated that the three siblings had been deported “as per practice in vogue”, in the presence of the police and officials from the intelligence bureau.

The intimation was issued weeks after the family said they had been kept in the dark about the whereabouts of the three elderly relatives.

Scroll had reported on Wednesday that the three persons were forced out of India and into Bangladesh, as confirmed by the Kendrapara superintendent of police on January 14.

The three had “confessed” to being Bangladeshis, the police officer had claimed.

He also said that the Odisha Police had contacted the authorities in West Bengal to verify the family’s claims that the three persons were Indian citizens. The authorities in Bengal had failed to verify the claims, the Odisha Police officer had told Scroll.

The procedure laid down by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in May requires the authorities to give a suspected undocumented immigrant 30 days to prove his or her citizenship, and ask the person’s home state to verify the claim.

However, Mitun Kumar Dey, the superintendent of police of West Bengal’s Purba Medinipur district, had denied receiving such a verification request, saying that neither the district intelligence nor the local police had been contacted by the Odisha Police.

“I completely rule out the claim of Odisha Police,” Dey had told Scroll.

On November 27, the Odisha Police picked up 12 members of the family from Garapur village on suspicion of being Bangladeshi citizens. Nine of them, including Muntaz Khan’s son Mukhtar Khan, were released after being detained for nine days.

However, the three elderly siblings were not released and were later found to be missing from a college hostel where they had been held.

Mukhtar Khan, who was born in India in 1979, was released after the police said he was an Indian citizen by birth. According to Indian citizenship rules, a person born in India after 1950 but before July 1, 1987, becomes a citizen by birth.

However, Muntaz Khan, the Odisha Police claimed, was a Bangladeshi because his father, Yasin Khan, had allegedly arrived in India from Bangladesh in the 1970s.

The family disputes this and showed Scroll land records from 1956 showing Yasin Khan as a cultivator in Purba Medinipur district, as well as voter lists from 2002, Aadhaar cards and land documents in the names of the expelled siblings.

This is at least the second Bengali Muslim family that the Odisha government has expelled to Bangladesh. As Scroll reported earlier in January, 14 members of a family, including a 90-year-old woman, were picked up from Jagatsinghpur district and forced out of India in December.

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

Also read: Son declared Indian, but father, uncle and aunt pushed into Bangladesh

The Supreme Court ruled that the right to menstrual health is a part of the fundamental right to life. It directed all states to ensure adolescent students in private and government schools are provided bio-degradable sanitary pads for free.

The bench, which ruled on a plea seeking nationwide implementation of the Union government’s menstrual hygiene policy for schoolgirls, also ordered states to ensure separate toilets for female and male students in all schools. Read on.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation said that no airline has been exempted from the weekly rest rules for pilots. The aviation regulator told the Delhi High Court that the mandate continues to operate and has not been withdrawn.

It was responding to a petition challenging its decision to suspend the new flight duty-time norms after large-scale disruptions to airline services in December.

The regulator said that only a limited and time-bound relaxation had been granted to IndiGo for night operations, which will remain in force till February 10. Read on.

No beef tallow or lard was used in the ghee supplied to Tirupati’s Sri Venkateswara temple between 2019 and 2024 to prepare prasadam, the Central Bureau of Investigation said in its final chargesheet. The agency is probing the alleged adulteration of ghee with animal fat during the period.

The ghee used for preparing the offering was adulterated with vegetable oils and esters, the central agency alleged.

In September 2024, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu claimed that substandard ingredients and animal fat had been used to make the prasadam during the YSR Congress Party government. Read on.

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The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday strongly criticised the Uttar Pradesh Police for its alleged practice of shooting accused persons in the legs and portraying such incidents as gunfights, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench of Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal sought explanations from the state’s Director General of Police Rajiv Krishna and Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sanjay Prasad.

The officers were directed to appear before the court through video conference on Friday. They were asked to state whether any verbal or written directions had been issued to police personnel to shoot accused persons in the legs or otherwise, and claim the incidents to be gunfights.

In its Wednesday order, the court observed that gunfights with security forces, particularly incidents that involve firing at the legs of accused persons, appeared to have become a routine, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench said that the action were ostensibly carried out to please superior officers or to teach the accused persons a so-called lesson. “Such conduct is wholly impermissible, as the power to punish lies exclusively within the domain of the courts and not with the police,” the order was quoted as having stated.

Deshwal said that India, as a democratic country, is governed by the rule of law with clearly defined roles for the executive, legislature and judiciary, and that any encroachment by the police into the judicial domain cannot be accepted.

He further observed that some police personnel may be misusing their authority to attract attention from senior officers or to create public sympathy by projecting incidents as gunfights.

The bench made the observations while hearing bail petitions filed by three persons who had been injured in separate alleged incidents of gunfight with the police.

The court noted that no police officer had suffered injuries in the incidents, leading to questions about the necessity and proportionality of the use of firearms.

In one case, the court had earlier sought details on whether a first information report had been registered and whether the injured person’s statement had been recorded before a magistrate or medical officer.

The state informed the court that while an FIR had been registered, no statement had been recorded, and that the investigation had initially been handled by a sub-inspector before being reassigned to an inspector.

Taking note of this, the court held that the Supreme Court’s guidelines on gunfights had not been followed.

The court directed the director general of police and additional chief secretary (home) to clarify whether any instructions had been issued to ensure compliance with the Supreme Court’s guidelines on the registration of FIRs, recording of statements and investigation procedures in cases of death or grievous injury during gunfights with the police.

During the hearing on Friday, Deshwal also raised concerns about police officers pressuring judicial officers, particularly chief judicial magistrates, to pass specific orders, Bar and Bench reported.

He said the court could not allow Uttar Pradesh to become a police state.

The judge stressed that there must be mutual respect between the police and the judiciary, and that a police officer should not consider himself superior to a judicial officer, Bar and Bench reported.

“Power to punish is in the domain of judiciary and not with the police,” the court underscored.

Krishna assured the court that instructions would be issued to ensure protocol and adherence to the law. “Majesty of law is supreme, there is no doubt about that,” he was quoted as saying.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation told the Delhi High Court on Friday that weekly rest for pilots is non-negotiable and that no airline has been granted any exemption from this requirement, Bar and Bench reported.

Appearing before a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia, counsel for the aviation regulator said that the mandate on weekly rest continues to operate and has not been withdrawn.

The aviation regulator was responding to a petition challenging its decision to suspend the new flight duty-time norms after large-scale disruptions to airline services in December.

In January 2024, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued revised Flight Duty Time Limit norms after concerns were raised about pilot fatigue. The norms were meant to take effect on June 1.

However, airlines asked for delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually introduced on November 1.

The new rules required longer weekly rest, restricted night landings, extended the definition of night hours and limited consecutive night duties.

As the revised norms came into force, air travel was severely affected in December when a shortage of pilots and crew forced IndiGo to cancel or delay hundreds of flights. The disruption also pushed fares to unusually high rates on several routes.

To reduce air travel disruptions, the aviation regulator temporarily placed the new flight duty-time norms in abeyance. It also granted exemptions to airlines until early February 2026 while they make sufficient adjustments to their roster to accommodate new government regulations.

On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court sought the stand of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on a petition challenging the suspension of the norms.

In its response on Friday, the regulator stated that no exemption had been given to any airline on weekly rest and that the rule could not be tampered with, Bar and Bench reported.

The regulator’s counsel clarified that a limited and time-bound relaxation had been granted to IndiGo airlines for night operations. The exemption will remain in force until February 10.

The counsel added that even after certain provisions of the Flight Duty Time Limitation norms were placed in abeyance on December 5, weekly rest for pilots continued to be mandatory under existing Civil Aviation Requirements, The Telegraph reported.

The court then issued notice to the Union government, the aviation regulator and Indigo and sought their responses on the matter.

The case was posted for further hearing in April, The Telegraph reported.

Also read:

• IndiGo disruption reflects the crisis in India’s aviation sector

• Flyers can seek damages from IndiGo. But most will skip that route\

The Central Bureau of Investigation, in its final chargesheet in the alleged adulteration of ghee used in the laddus offered as prasadam at Tirupati’s Sri Venkateswara temple, has said that no beef tallow or lard was used in the ghee supplied between 2019 and 2024, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The chargesheet was filed on January 23 before the Anti-Corruption Bureau court in Nellore.

It stated that the ghee used for preparing laddus was adulterated with vegetable oils and esters, used to chemically mimic dairy parameters, the newspaper reported. It did not find that animal fat was used in the ghee.

In September 2024, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had claimed that substandard ingredients and animal fat had been used to make the prasadam when the YSR Congress Party was in power in the state. The YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress Party lost the Assembly elections in June 2024.

In October 2024, the Supreme Court ordered the formation of a Special Investigation Team to probe the allegations by the Andhra Pradesh government.

The chargesheet filed this month alleged that the primary supplier, Bhole Baba Organic Dairy, based in Bhagwanpur, Uttarakhand, operated a “virtual” manufacturing unit, The Indian Express reported.

Between 2019 and 2024, the firm allegedly procured no milk or butter at its facility, but supplied at least 68 kg of ghee to Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams trust, which manages the temple. The ghee was synthetically manufactured without milk and was valued at approximately Rs 250 crore, the newspaper quoted the probe agency as having alleged in the chargesheet.

To make the product resemble authentic ghee, chemical esters, including acetic acid esters, were used to manipulate key test values, it alleged. They also added beta carotene for colour and artificial flavouring to imitate the smell of traditional ghee, The New Indian Express quoted the chargesheet as having alleged.

The final chargesheet accuses 36 persons in the matter, including procurement officials of the temple trust, representatives of the Uttarakhand-based supplier and intermediaries.

Several former officials have also been accused of accepting bribes and gifts in return for ignoring evidence of adulteration and signing off on flawed quality certificates, The New Indian Express quoted the chargesheet as having alleged.

After the Central Bureau of Investigation’s chargesheet became public, the YSR Congress Party said that Naidu and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan should apologise to former Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy for “false propaganda”, The Indian Express reported.

Addressing a press conference, YSR Congress Party’s Rajya Sabha MP YV Subba Reddy said that Tirumala, the town where the temple is located, is not a political platform but a spiritual centre for crores of devotees. He added that Naidu and Kalyan should apologise for bringing politics into the matter, the newspaper reported.

Ruling that the right to menstrual health is a part of the fundamental right to life, the Supreme Court on Friday directed all states and Union Territories to ensure adolescent students in private and government schools are provided bio-degradable sanitary pads for free, PTI reported.

A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan instructed the states to ensure separate toilets for male and female students in all schools, including facilities that are accessible to students with disabilities.

The court directed states to make sure that all schools set up menstrual hygiene management corners, which will have spare innerwear, uniforms and other necessary materials to address menstrual urgency, Live Law reported.

The ruling came on a public interest litigation seeking the nationwide implementation of the Union government’s menstrual hygiene policy for schoolgirls in government and government-aided institutes.

The plea had sought directions to the Centre and the state governments to provide free sanitary pads to female students between Class 6 and Class 12, and separate toilets in all government, government-aided and residential schools for girls.

“The inaccessibility of menstrual hygiene management measures undermines the dignity of a girl child, as dignity finds expression in conditions that enable individuals to live without humiliation, exclusion or avoidable suffering,” Bar and Bench quoted the bench as having said.

This critique of the guru-shishya system it seems to confuse the profound, time-tested tradition with its modern distortions and misinterpretations (“How the traditional guru-shishya system undermined critical thinking in India”). The foundational principle of the authentic guru-shishya relationship is trust, openness and dialogue, not blind submission.

The scripture which is the cornerstone of the philosophy, the Bhagavad Gita, is structured as a disciple’s sincere questioning and the guru’s compassionate clarification. Krishna never silences Arjuna; instead, he encourages dialogue, saying, “Now listen, O Arjuna, how with the mind absorbed in Me... you will know Me completely, free from doubt.” The system is built on removing doubt, or samsaya, not instilling fear.

The example of Karna from the Mahabharata is profoundly misunderstood. Parashurama’s curse was not about “caste supremacy”, but the fundamental breach of truthfulness, or satya, which is the bedrock of the relationship. Karna, by lying about his identity, broke that trust. The curse that knowledge would fail him at a critical moment symbolises a deep spiritual principle: knowledge acquired through deceit is unstable. To reduce this to “guru dominance” is to miss its ethical and narrative depth.

You are correct that the abuses witnessed in recent decades – where gurus, perhaps due to misplaced authority, institutional power, or social hierarchy, suppress questioning – are deviations from the tradition. They are symptoms of ego and institutional decay, not features of the system itself.

The article’s selective reading and forced framing seem less like a sincere analysis and more like an attempt to discredit a core civilisational educational and spiritual methodology by conflating its essence with its occasional corruptions. I request the editor to give enough attention in detail before publishing such articles henceforth. – Jayachandran Elumalai

***

I appreciate the concerns you raise about power imbalance, exclusion and abuse within certain historical and contemporary manifestations of the tradition.

At the same time, I would like to offer a nuance that may complicate the central claim that the guru – shishya system, as a whole, did not permit questioning or critical thought.

Classical Indian intellectual traditions – particularly in philosophy, grammar, logic and theology – were deeply rooted in structured debate (vāda), counter-argument (prativāda), and rigorous reasoning (tarka). Systems such as Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta evolved precisely through sustained teacher – student disputation, where questioning the guru’s position was not only permitted but methodologically necessary. Texts were taught through pūrvapakṣa-siddhānta frameworks, training students to first argue against a position before establishing one.

It is undeniable that social hierarchies, caste exclusion, and authoritarian misuse distorted educational spaces – and these distortions deserve critique – the ideal paedagogic model embedded in many traditional systems was not passive obedience but intellectual sharpening through dialogue, memorisation followed by interpretation, and debate conducted within ethical bounds.

In this sense, the problem may lie less with the epistemological foundations of the guru-shishya model and more with its social capture and institutional degeneration over time. Acknowledging this distinction, I believe, allows for a more historically balanced understanding – one that critiques injustice without dismissing indigenous traditions of reasoning that contributed to India’s long scholarly legacy. Thank you for provoking an important discussion. I hope this perspective adds another layer to the conversation. – Yeshaswini Pavankumar

‘Hindupohobic’, ‘bias’

This is unfortunately a biased, anti-Hindu outlook. The Dronacharya Award is named for the relationship between Dronacharya and Arjuna. Complete obedience is expected during the time of tutelage under the guru. Once guru dakshina has been paid, the disciple is independent and is supposed to follow his dharma.

The reason for imposing trials by guru before imparting knowledge is to test the worthiness, the mental strength and acumen. The casteist remarks are unfair, especially towards Dronacharya, who taught Arjuna the multiple usage of Bramhastra and taught only dispersal to his own son to prevent misuse.

Sanatana Dharma itself has a long history of philosophical debates conducted and encouraged by kings. I realise that Scroll is highly biased against Hindus and their philosophy, but I am sending this in the hope that there may be at least one person who may look at the philosophy with an unbiased view. – Vijaya Swati G

***

The disciple should have the shraddha to listen to the teacher. The right of questioning has never been denied. In reality, there were raging debates between the teacher and disciples on each issue! This type of writing only serves to catch the interest of the neoliberals. This is why people try to denigrate their own traditional knowledge systems. – Bratati Mukherjee

***

I challenge you to a public debate on this topic where all of India can see. – Arjun

***

This article is inspired by Hinduphobic intentions. I am not aware of any ancient text in which any shishya was punished or frowned upon for questioning his guru. Hindu philosophy is full of stories where established beliefs were questioned even challenged. Social reformer Basavanna protested against the established ritualistic Hindu culture.

Hindus have been inculcated by centuries of liberal thoughts and are open to reformation. How else was the Hindu Code Bill by BR Ambedkar be passed in Hindu-majority India? Scroll is an agent of the western deep-state and intolerant of the rising Hindu nationalist spirit which has been making Bharat strong and a force to reckon with. Your sabotage will not work. – Virupaksh Reddy Patel

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act achieved significant gains in participation, digitisation and transparency over time, but “persistent structural weaknesses” limited its effectiveness, the Union government’s annual Economic Survey stated on Thursday.

The document said that the 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act represented a decisive shift in India’s rural employment policy.

It added that the new Act was a “comprehensive legislative reset that aims to modernise rural employment guarantees, strengthen accountability, and align employment creation with long-term infrastructure and climate resilience goals”.

The Economic Survey, tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament three days ahead of the Union Budget for the financial year 2026-’27, details the state of the country’s economy and suggests measures to boost growth.

The 2025 VB-G RAM G Bill was given assent by the president on December 21, two days after it was passed by Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties. The new rural employment law will replace the MGNREGA.

The MGNREGA was introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and aimed at enhancing the livelihood security of households in rural areas. The scheme guaranteed 100 days of unskilled work annually for every rural household that wants it, covering all districts in the country.

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

The legislation has drawn criticism from economists and labour rights experts.

On Thursday, the Economic Survey said that monitoring in several states showed gaps under MGNREGA, including work not being done on the ground, expenditure not matching physical progress, the use of machines in labour-intensive work and frequent bypassing of digital attendance systems.

It added that misappropriation accumulated over time and only a small proportion of households completed the full 100 days of employment after the Covid-19 pandemic, indicating that while delivery systems improved, the overall architecture of MGNREGA had reached its limits.

The new Act represented a “significant upgrade over MGNREGA, fixing structural weaknesses while enhancing employment, transparency, planning and accountability”, the Economic Survey said.

It added that the VB-G RAM G Act “builds on past improvements while addressing their shortcomings through a modern, accountable and infrastructure-focused framework”.

Economy Survey calls for re-examination of RTI Act

The Economic Survey also called for a re-examination of the 2005 Right to Information Act. It said that this was not to dilute the law’s spirit, but to align it with global best practices, incorporate evolving lessons and keep it firmly anchored to its original intent.

The document noted that the legislation was powerful democratic reform that served as a tool for accountability and against corruption.

However, it added that the Act carried risks of becoming an “end in itself”, where disclosures were celebrated regardless of contribution to better governance.

The Economic Survey suggested exploring “adjustments” to exempt disclosures related to the deliberative process of policymaking. It also proposed considering a ministerial veto with parliamentary oversight, to prevent disclosures that could “unduly constrain governance”, among others.

The document added that the Act was never intended “as a tool for idle curiosity”, nor as a mechanism to micromanage government from the outside.

At least two suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on Thursday, PTI reported.

The exchange of fire broke out around 7 am in a forested area in the southern part of the district, when a team of the District Reserve Guard was conducting an anti-Maoist operation following intelligence inputs about the presence of a small group of armed Maoists, The Indian Express reported.

Bijapur Additional Superintendent of Police Chandrakant Governa told PTI that the bodies of two Maoists were recovered during a search operation after the gunfight.

With the latest deaths, at least 22 suspected Maoists have been killed in separate gunfights in Chhattisgarh so far this year, PTI reported.

On January 3, 14 suspected Maoists were killed in two separate gunfights with security forces in the state’s Sukma and Bijapur districts.

Between January 16 and January 17, six suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Bijapur.

The Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025.

Overall, 1,841 such persons had been killed, over 16,000 had been arrested, while 9,588 others had surrendered since 2014.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.

In October, the Union home ministry said that the number of districts across states affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to 11 from 18 in March.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three, it added. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

In the course of the Union government’s anti-Maoist offensive in 2025, key Maoist leaders like Ganesh Uike and Madvi Hidma have been killed, while others like Vikas Nagpure, alias Anant, and Mallojula Venugopal Rao, alias Bhupathi, have surrendered.

A report by Malini Subramaniam for Scroll on Hidma’s killing noted that in the Andhra Pradesh village closest to where he was killed, no one heard gunfire.

She had earlier reported that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena in a two-decade-old defamation case filed by activist Medha Patkar, Bar and Bench reported.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Raghav Sharma of the Saket courts held that the complainant had failed to prove the charges against the accused, PTI reported.

The case dates back to November 2000, when an advertisement titled “True face of Ms Medha Patkar and her Narmada Bachao Andolan” was published in The Indian Express, according to Bar and Bench. The advertisement was issued by the National Council for Civil Liberties, an organisation that Saxena headed at the time.

The organisation supported the Sardar Sarovar Dam project in Gujarat, which Patkar’s Narmada Bachao Andolan opposed.

Following the publication, Patkar issued a press note responding to the advertisement and subsequently filed a criminal defamation case against Saxena, alleging that the contents of the advertisement were defamatory.

Saxena, in turn, initiated defamation proceedings against Patkar in 2001, accusing her of making derogatory remarks against him through the same press note.

In that case, Patkar was convicted by the trial court, and the conviction was later upheld by the Supreme Court, Bar and Bench reported.

However, on January 24, a Delhi court acquitted Patkar in a separate defamation case filed by Saxena. Judge Raghav Sharma of Saket courts had held at the time Saxena had failed to prove that Patkar made defamatory statements about him during a television program in April 2006.

Following Thursday’s verdict, the Delhi lieutenant governor’s office described the acquittal as a “major judicial victory” in the case that had been pending since 2000, PTI reported.

Several Opposition leaders on Thursday welcomed the Supreme Court’s stay on the 2026 University Grants Commission’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, saying that the rules were “arbitrary and an attempt to create further discrimination on campuses”.

The rules, notified on January 13, had led to protests by upper-caste students who argued that it could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters contended that the rules were biased against students from the general category as they did not provide for measures against “false complaints”.

The court, while issued a stay on the regulations on Thursday, observed that its provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”. It asked the Union government to redraft the regulations and added that until then, their operation will remain in abeyance.

After the court order, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati said that the new rules implemented by the UGC to prevent caste-based incidents in universities had created an atmosphere of social tension.

“In light of these current circumstances, the Honourable Supreme Court's decision today to ban the new UGC rules is appropriate,” Mayawati said in a statement on social media.

She added that such an atmosphere would not have arisen in the matter if the UGC had taken all parties into confidence before implementing the regulations and had “given proper representation to the upper-caste society in the investigation committee etc. under natural justice”.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday said that “true justice does not do injustice to anyone”, adding that this was what the court had ensured with its order.

“The language of the law should be clear and so should its substance,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said on social media. “It is not just a matter of rules, it is also a matter of intention. No one should be oppressed, no one should be treated unjustly.”

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said that she was glad that the court stepped in and stayed the UGC guidelines, which she described as “vague, arbitrary and an attempt to create further discrimination on campuses”.

Chaturvedi said that the Union government’s “absolute abdication” of its responsibility to intervene and withdraw the UGC regulations showed “that they give no respect or consideration to peoples protests..”

Congress MP Pramod Tiwari also welcomed the decision of the court to stay the rules, PTI reported.

“The BJP [ruling Bharatiya Janata Party] government creates conflicts in the name of religion, caste and category to divert people's attention from real issues,” the news agency quoted him as saying.

CPI(ML), Bhim Army chief oppose order

On the other hand, the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation said that the observations made by the court on Thursday were deeply appalling, adding that it reflected a “myopic attitude”.

The party said that caste and racial discrimination were not abstract concepts or historical relics but “brutal, everyday realities in our educational institutions and across society”.

Data compiled by the UGC showed that complaints of caste-based discrimination in universities and colleges had increased by 118% between 2019 and 2024, the statement said. “These incidents of caste based violence are a consequence of a casteist system sustained by institutional and state complicity,” it added.

The party said that the stay issued by the court was a “capitulation before Brahminical pressure”.

The CPI(ML) Liberation urged “all rational sections of society to stand for the measures and reject any attempt to whip up caste hysteria in a bid to stall the long overdue measure”.

Earlier in the day, Azad Samaj Party chief and MP Chandrashekhar Azad said that he had written to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan seeking the implementation of the UGC regulations as a binding provision for eliminating discrimination prevalent in central institutions, including Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and All India Institutes Of Medical Sciences.

Azad added that the opposition to the regulations were “misleading” and were an organised effort against social justice, especially pertaining to the rights of students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The Bhim Army chief also told News18 India that the stay was issued as the Centre could not adequately defend the rules before the court.

Also read: UGC did not defend its equity guidelines in court. But activists explain why they must be defended

What the rules mandate

The UGC’s new equity rules require institutes to set up special committees, helplines and monitoring teams to address complaints, particularly from members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The UGC had in 2012 first released equity rules for higher education institutes, which required them to set up Equal Opportunity Cells and Anti-Discrimination Officers. However, those rules did not provide for action against institutions that did not comply with them.

In contrast, the 2026 rules require the UGC to set up a monitoring committee to oversee their implementation.

Institutes that do not comply with the regulations can be barred from participating in the commission’s schemes, offering degree programmes and online courses, and can be removed from the list of institutes eligible to receive central grants.

The University Grants Commission’s updated rules to address caste discrimination in higher education institutes have sparked outrage among Savarna commentators and students. They claim that they will become victims of false complaints and that the provisions will be weaponised against them.

But this reflects a continuing refusal to listen to experiences of caste discrimination on campuses, something I have witnessed closely since 2022 when I became the first elected student representative of the Equal Opportunity Cell at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

As part of student committees and through my research on caste injustice, I have seen how the claim that Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students misuse guidelines against general category students is invoked when a caste discrimination complaint is filed. This negative framing favours the student or professor accused of casteism and rarely accounts for the humiliation or insensitive behaviour faced by the student making the complaint.

Over the past few days, Savarna students have framed themselves as potential victims of the UGC rules, issued on January 13, recentering the issue of casteist discrimination around their anxieties. On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed the new rules after hearing a public interest litigation which claimed that the guidelines were vague and could be misused.

Akhil Kang, a queer Dalit scholar who has extensively written about “upper-caste victimhood”, argues that claims of upper-caste victimhood are not about actual harm. Instead, they are about preserving moral innocence in the face of caste accountability.

Illustrating Kang’s observation, upper-caste students are floating hypothetical situations in which they could be victimised by the UGC guidelines. For example, one Instagram post claims that a general category female student is now afraid of being accused of caste discrimination if she rejects the advances of a male student from the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe category.

Such claims displace attention from the everyday experiences of discrimination of Dalit and Adivasi students, who remain unacknowledged in classrooms and are rendered invisible on campuses where merit is routinely read through caste.

Now I’ve seen absolutely everything: the petitions challenging the UGC regulations have compared the upper castes to the criminal/denotified tribes. pic.twitter.com/72WhALHT1l

— Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) January 29, 2026

Caste on campus

As part of a meeting called by the National Task Force set up by the Supreme Court on January 12, I highlighted three crucial observations based on my experience of observing casteism on campus. The meeting was attended by anti-caste intellectuals, academics, activists and student representatives from universities in Delhi.

First, caste is seemingly invisible and so it is difficult to prove that it exists. But the discriminatory effects of caste are primarily experienced by Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students.

For example, a professor may make a student wait outside their office hours every day just to address one concern or speak to them. The student could wait for days on end, often feeling humiliated. But this will not be recognised as “casteism”.

This same professor could ask about the student’s rank in the entrance exam – using the phrase “hawa kya hai?”, or what’s the AIR, or all India rank. Ambedkarite student collectives across the IITs have stressed that asking a student’s rank should be counted as caste discrimination. Rank indicates whether a student was admitted in the general or Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students.

The student might then be labelled incompetent and underperforming, and the professor could suggest that they be expelled from IIT Delhi for not being meritorious.

The student could find their admission and place at the institute being attacked and so end up writing to the administration and Equal Opportunity Cell, or SC/ST cell, seeking legal recourse. The Equal Opportunity Cell registers the student’s complaint, and thereafter, a committee is set up to inquire into caste discrimination. This illustrates how faculty and resource persons in an institution refuse to listen to a student who feels neglected or socially excluded.

Second, caste reveals itself through networks and support systems.

A general category student might instantly feel a sense of belonging in the classroom while a Dalit, Adivasi or OBC student may continuously invest energy in proving or defending their merit.

As a student representative, I have observed that the network of Savarna scholars does not easily offer support to Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students and often has preconceived notions about who is meritorious or deserving.

Savarna students travel easily through these networks, receiving guidance on scholarships abroad, building academic connections, seeking funding and finding opportunities to get published. But Dalit students have to hustle merely to get signatures on recommendation letters.

Even if students have got admission on merit, they are always made to feel inadequate. “No matter how I perform, I feel invisible in the classroom,” a Dalit BTech student told me off the record on campus. “The Savarna professor never acknowledges my greeting.”

Such an environment attacks the confidence of Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students. The demoralisation shows itself in lesser grades, poor progress reports and lonely or isolated students in campus spaces.

It is a challenge to define this experience of being made to feel invisible, but what can be defined are broader actions – the implicit or explicit bias on the campus.

Many Dalit and Adivasi scholars report feeling depressed, which I believe is a result of an uncaring institutional structure that does not provide motivation, appreciation nor respond to their efforts properly.

In 2022, I emailed the IIT-Delhi mental health team asking why caste-based trauma was missing from the counselling options of gender, LGBTQ+, violence, relationship problems and campus problems. It was aimed at making the institute recognise the reality of the trauma of caste. IIT-Delhi positively implemented this, by adding “caste-based trauma” as an option on its YourDost website, which provides counselling to enrolled students.

The third observation was the challenge Dalit Adivasi students face to “prove” casteist discrimination. Students resort to methods such as recording verbal encounters with the perpetrators. Committees view this suspiciously, furthering the narrative that the complainant has “misused” their freedom as a student. I highlighted this concern to convey the need for camera surveillance inside hostel lobbies, as deaths often occur in hostel rooms.

Jaising: There's attempt to overreach orders in that matter. Concern court had was of all-inclusive society...

CJI: Prima facie language of the regulations...there is complete vagueness...capable of misuse...some expert may advise remodulation

Jaising: I will convince you…

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) January 29, 2026

The unheard testimony

The refusal to acknowledge casteism is a structural response to Dalit assertion, an indignation sparked by outspoken Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students. Students who file caste discrimination complaints are seen as “troublemakers” rather than lonely, isolated individuals who had no other recourse.

Listening demands acknowledging the testimony of the narrator. But the benefit of the doubt is largely given to the accused student in these instances since it is assumed that the perpetrator was “unaware that their behavior was casteist”.

Despite the complainant narrating that they were made to feel socially excluded or discriminated against through certain actions, words, or behaviour, the perpetrator is likely to dismiss such claims.

The events that follow the filing of such a complaint are rarely discussed.

Social redressal largely depends on the equity committee and how it is formed. The UGC had told the Supreme Court that 90% of caste complaints were “resolved”, but it does not state what the resolution entails. Committees often bargain to ensure that the accused apologises to the survivor, recognising discrimination. There are many instances when the complainant never receives an apology and the case is closed.

Finally, caste consciousness may differ among students as well: based on friendships or other ties, Dalit, Adivasi and OBC students can also disagree about whether an incident counts as caste discrimination.

Together, it shows how ending caste discrimination on campus is an enormous social challenge.

But until individuals and institutions embedded in caste privilege are willing to listen and extend care through listening, caste will continue to reproduce itself through denial and deepening divisions in universities.

Any equity policy, including the UGC’s latest guidelines, will do little to eradicate casteism unless there is an institutional commitment to listen to testimonies of discrimination without suspicion or dismissal.

Shainal Verma is a sociologist trained at IIT-Delhi, researching gender, labour, and caste, and was a former student representative of the SC/ST Cell.

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Election Commission to publish the names of about 1.6 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections during the special intensive revision exercise in Tamil Nadu, The Hindu reported.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi directed that the list be posted in taluk offices across the state. The court added that those whose names are on the list will have 10 days from the date of its display to submit their documents for verification.

The bench added that the list should also briefly mention against each name the “logical discrepancy” that the poll panel had found in their forms.

“Logical discrepancies” that the Election Commission has flagged during the special intensive revision process include mismatches in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six.

The draft electoral rolls for Tamil Nadu under the special intensive revision exercise were published on December 19. The names of 97.3 lakh persons were removed from the draft voter lists in the state.

The court on Thursday was hearing a petition filed by a group of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leaders, The Hindu reported. The petition had noted that the period to file claims and objections during the revision exercise in the state was ending on January 30.

It added that Electoral Registration Officers had submitted that there was a “staggering gap of 88%, that is, 1,21,05,441 voters” who had not yet received hearing notices, the newspaper reported.

The petition urged the court to extend the directions issued in a January 19 order on an application filed by the West Bengal government to Tamil Nadu as well.

On January 19, the court had told the Election Commission to publish the names of about 1.2 crore persons in West Bengal against whom logical discrepancy objections had been raised.

Besides Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 10 other states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, which had been notified around two weeks earlier.

The regulations were aimed at ensuring that educational institutions across the country had inclusive environments, free of discrimination. But their notification by the UGC had been met with protests, largely centred in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

Four petitions were also filed in the Supreme Court, challenging the regulations, and asking that the court strike them down or revise them.

The chief objection that the petitions raised was that some of the regulations were specifically aimed at protecting students who belonged to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes from discrimination, and did not mention students from other groups, such as upper castes and others in the general category.

The petitioners argued that this was, in fact, discriminatory towards those other groups of students.

In the January 29 hearing, the UGC did not put forth any defence of the regulations. In its order staying them, the Supreme Court described them as “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”. If implemented, the court said, they would “divide the country”.

The court issued notice to the Centre and the UGC in the matter, and reinstated earlier regulations that the UGC had issued in 2012. It scheduled the next hearing for March 13.

Activists and lawyers criticised the court’s decision, and argued that the protests and petitions were unfounded.

N Sukumar, a professor at Delhi University who has written extensively about caste discrimination on campuses, described one of the protesting general category students’ key demands, that they be included within the ambit of the current regulations on caste discrimination, as “meaningless”.

“It doesn’t make any sense, what they are asking,” he said. He noted that apart from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, the regulations also had provisions pertaining to women, disabled people and members of economically weaker sections. “So, technically, whoever is at a disadvantage from these communities have other regulations that have provisions for them,” he said.

Student leaders also spoke up against the court’s decision. “The court is saying that these regulations will divide the country,” Kiran Gowd, the president of the All India OBC Students Association said. “This country is already divided, and these regulations would have unified the divided sections on campuses.”

He added, “I hope the court will also listen to the grievances of students from SC, ST and OBC communities. We have enough data to show that suicides occur among these communities, and that there is severe discrimination on our campuses.”

The regulations

The UGC first issued regulations aimed at promoting equity on university campuses in 2012.

Among the measures those regulations mandated were that institutions establish equal opportunity cells on their campuses. They also forbade teachers from discriminating against students through means such as grading them unfairly, or allocating hostels on the basis of caste.

But the suicides of Rohith Vemula in 2016 and Payal Tadvi in 2019 led many students and activists to ask whether the regulations were sufficient, and whether they were being properly implemented.

In the aftermath of Tadvi’s death, a group of lawyers and a journalist filed a series of right-to-information requests, and determined that most universities had not implemented most of these measures, such as setting up equal opportunity cells whose responsibilities included overseeing complaints of discrimination.

“We filed RTIs in 2019 after Payal Tadvi’s death because in her case, she had complained and the issue had not been addressed,” said Disha Wadekar, one of the lawyers who filed the requests. “We found that nobody is implementing these regulations. At least 99% of colleges did not have an equal opportunity cell.”

In 2019, Radhika Vemula and Abeda Tadvi, Rohith and Payal’s mothers, filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking that the regulations be strengthened, and that the UGC take effective steps to implement them.

The 2025 draft regulations

The petition moved slowly through the courts. It was filed in August 2019, a few months after Payal Tadvi’s death. The Supreme Court held the first hearing in the matter shortly after, and issued notice to the UGC.

But it was only five years after the petition was filed, in December 2024, that the Supreme Court asked the UGC to respond to the petitions.

In February 2025, the UGC released a draft of the updated regulations. Activists and academics criticised it fiercely, noting that the 2012 regulations had been diluted, and that the new guidelines were vague and inadequate.

Among their key criticisms were that the regulations did not include clear definitions of what constituted discrimination, and that they did not contain provisions to protect students from other backward class groups. They also argued that provisions to deter false complaints were unduly harsh, and could effectively discourage students who had legitimate grievances. Further, they argued that the equal opportunity cells that would oversee complaints would not be sufficiently representative, and that universities should face penalties if they failed to comply with the regulations.

It was only in January this year that the UGC notified the updated regulations, which incorporated some of the changes that activists had demanded. For instance, they included OBC students within their ambit, and did away with provisions pertaining to false complaints.

The protests

Students on campuses across the country, particularly those from marginalised groups, were alarmed by the intense backlash that the new regulations saw from upper caste communities.

The response began with murmurs of discontent on social media. Some users criticised the regulations for lacking provisions that safeguarded the interests of general category students, while others claimed that they would be misused by students from marginalised communities.

The objections quickly gained in intensity and spread to the political domain – as a mark of solidarity with the protestors, at least 11 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders quit from their official party posts in Uttar Pradesh.

Then, over the last two days, protests erupted onto the streets. Students gathered at the UGC office in New Delhi, shouting slogans such as “UGC roll back” and “Batenge toh katenge”. In Uttar Pradesh, upper caste students carried out marches, tonsured their heads and tied black bands on their hands.

Online too, they spewed their anger at the original petition that led the new regulations, as well as the ruling party for supposedly favouring students from marginalised communities over those from the general category.

This aggressive response has left students from marginalised communities deeply fearful of the future of Indian campuses, particularly given that the regulations, they say, only sought to provide basic protections for them. Such protections were crucial, they added, given that UGC data showed that there had been a 118% rise in complaints of caste-based discrimination since 2019.

The protests seemed “to endorse caste-based discrimination on campuses”, said Kiran Gowd. “I don’t know how else to see this, because why would people protest against a set of regulations to merely prevent caste discrimination on campuses?”

Dayanidhi, the president of the Ambedkar Students Association in the University of Hyderabad, which Rohith Vemula was also a part of, echoed this argument. “If the upper caste students are not participating in caste discrimination, why are they scared of the regulations?” he said.

The opposition to the regulations

Among the key concerns of the protesting students and petitioners was that the regulations only referred to marginalised communities.

“By design and operation, this definition accords legal recognition of victimhood exclusively to certain reserved categories and categorically excludes persons belonging to general or upper castes from its protective ambit, regardless of the nature, gravity, or context of discrimination suffered by them,” one petition said.

Now I’ve seen absolutely everything: the petitions challenging the UGC regulations have compared the upper castes to the criminal/denotified tribes. pic.twitter.com/72WhALHT1l

— Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) January 29, 2026

Anti-caste activists described this as a strange argument, given that the regulations were specifically aimed at groups that might be targeted for discrimination.

“The demand is quite ridiculous, and is not consistent with how affirmative planning and inclusive justice works,” Ravikant Kisana, a professor at a private university, said.

Wadekar noted that it would be akin to men seeking “protection in women’s protective legislation, able-bodied person saying they are facing discrimination based on disabilities”. She added, “Caste and gender are social disabilities and it’s quite absurd to say they are facing discrimination on the basis of caste.”

Further, Kisana noted, “To be included, upper caste students must be able to prove that they are vulnerable, specifically that they suffer caste discrimination from SC,ST students.” But, he said, their “demands are not evidence based and not in the spirit of social justice. It seems like they just don’t want to be held accountable for their actions and thus making such demands.”

Further, Sukumar noted that an earlier set of UGC regulations, issued in 2023, contained provisions that allowed all students across the country to seek redressal for a wide range of grievances.

The petitions also objected to the inclusion of OBC communities in the regulations. One argued that doing so “mischaracterises them as castes alone, ignoring the constitutional distinction and restricting protection to a predetermined set of classes while excluding others who may suffer caste-based hostility irrespective of their class status”.

Such a position ignored the ground reality that there were vast numbers of castes within the OBC umbrella, many of which faced discrimination even today, Kisana noted. “People think OBC is just these 50-55 castes, but the problem is that OBC has thousands of communities, and many of these communities have never entered colleges,” Kisana said. “So rolling back the regulations or removing OBCs from the regulations is going to push these communities into an even more precarious position.”

Sukumar argued, “When the OBC communities are being given reservations and are recognised as backward communities, why would they not be included in these regulations?”

Kisana worries that in response to the protests, the UGC will most readily tone down provisions pertaining to these groups. “It is easiest to remove the OBC clause and tone down the policy further,” he said. “With issues regarding reservation or regulations like these, we take one step forward and two steps back.”

The intense opposition to the regulations had its roots in a general dissatisfaction that had been building up for some time among upper-caste communities against the ruling government, he reasoned. He said he had observed an increasing tendency among these groups to raise fears about problems such as “Brahmin-phobia”.

“I think there was already a lot of frustration among people, and now with the regulations it is suddenly exploding,” he said.

The recent debates around conducting a caste census may also have left upper-castes worried that they would lose some privileges or power. “It could also be the caste census issue, or that the opposition party is taking up caste issues more these days,” he said. “I think this anger has been building up for a while, and it is being unleashed on the UGC regulations.”

Sukumar noted that he was surprised at how quickly the court listed the recent petitions, particularly given how many years it took to hear Vemula and Tadvi’s petition, and given that the protests were restricted to only a few states. “There were no protests in any other part of the country, yet with such a hurry the court has stayed orders,” Sukumar said. “No states in the south, west or east had any such protests.”

Meanwhile, students say caste discrimination is still common on campuses. On the day of Rohith Vemula’s 10th death anniversary, for instance, Dayanidhi said, “People tore his posters.” He added, People will also say, ‘Don’t get us a teacher from reserved category, we want one from general category.’ All these are things people say so casually.”

An 18-year-old Kashmiri man selling shawls with his family was assaulted by a group of persons in Uttarakhand on Wednesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association said. His cousin was also allegedly assaulted, and suffered minor injuries.

The man, Tabish Ahmed, was stopped in the Vikas Nagar area near Dehradun and questioned about his identity, The New Indian Express quoted the student association as saying. The assault allegedly began after he told the group that he was a Muslim and from Kashmir.

Ahmed’s left arm has been fractured and he has suffered serious head injuries, the student body said. He was first taken to a local hospital and later referred to Dehradun’s Doon Hospital for further treatment.

Nasir Khuehami, the national convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association, said that the police have filed a case under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to voluntarily causing grievous hurt and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace. He said that he spoke to Director General of Police Deepam Seth, who assured him that the strongest possible action would be taken.

“This is a welcome first step, but accountability must be time-bound, transparent, and exemplary,” Khuehami said.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said such attacks were unacceptable, and had to stop. “It can’t be claimed that J&K is an inalienable part of India while people from Kashmir, in other parts of the country, live in fear for their lives,” he said. “My Government will step in where ever necessary & will do whatever is needed to ensure these incidents are not repeated.”

Abdullah said he spoke to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and urged him to take strict action against the perpetrators.

Commenting on the attack, Congress leader Pawan Khera said that while Kashmiri artistry is celebrated, the people behind it are denied dignity, safety and respect.

“What message does that send?” he asked. “That Kashmiri beauty is valuable. Kashmiri labour is useful. But Kashmiri lives are expendable.”

Anyone who owns a Kashmiri shawl wears it with pride.

And yet, too often, the very men who bring these shawls to us are met with suspicion, harassment, intimidation - even violence.

The irony is stark. These are the same shawls that drape the shoulders of the Prime Minister and… https://t.co/QhQ8s5C7o4

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) January 29, 2026

In December as well, a Kashmiri shawl seller named Bilal Ahmed Ganie was attacked in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar when he was going from door to door to sell shawls. He said he was assaulted by men who demanded that he shout “Bharat mata ki jai”.

The toll in the fire that broke out at two warehouses in Kolkata on Monday has risen to 21, PTI quoted the police as saying on Thursday.

Twenty-eight persons remain missing, the news agency reported.

The warehouses, one operated by quick-service restaurant chain Wow! Momo and the other by a decorator, are located in East Kolkata’s Anandapur area. The fire reportedly began at about 3 am on Monday in one of the warehouses and spread to the other.

DNA profiling of the recovered bodies, to establish their identities, was likely to begin on Thursday, the news agency quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.

“DNA profiling is essential in this case as many of the bodies are severely charred and identification through conventional means is not possible,” the officer said.

Search and recovery operations continued in the area on Thursday where several structures were gutted or partially collapsed, PTI reported.

Fire department and forensic teams are investigating what caused the fire.

The authorities imposed prohibitory orders on Thursday, restricting public movement in Anandapur ahead of a visit by Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Suvendu Adhikari and other Bharatiya Janata Party leaders.

Adhikari visited the area on Thursday evening but was stopped by the police from entering the actual site, PTI reported.

“I follow the law,” PTI quoted him as telling reporters. “I will observe the situation from 100 metres away.”

Adhikari criticised the state’s Trinamool Congress government for alleged laxity and claimed that “fire services were late in reaching the spot”.

“The TMC government’s chronic apathy, corruption and failure to enforce basic regulations have caused this,” Adhikari added on social media. “Mamata Banerjee is yet to visit the site days after the tragedy.”

Adhikari also announced a protest rally at Narendrapur on Friday, which the Calcutta High Court has permitted, The Indian Express reported.

India’s real gross domestic product is expected to grow between 6.8% and 7.2% in the financial year 2026-’27, the government’s annual Economic Survey projected. The cumulative impact of policy reforms in recent years appeared to have lifted the economy’s medium-term growth potential closer to 7%, the Department of Economic Affairs said.

The document, tabled in Parliament ahead of the Union Budget on Sunday, details the state of the country’s economy and suggests measures to boost growth.

“With domestic drivers playing a dominant role and macroeconomic stability well anchored, the balance of risks around growth remains broadly even,” it said. “The outlook, therefore, is one of steady growth amid global uncertainty, requiring caution, but not pessimism.” Read on.

The Supreme Court stayed the 2026 University Grants Commission’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations. The provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”, the court observed, asking the Union government to redraft the regulations. Until then, the operation of the rules will be in abeyance.

The bench verbally raised questions about why “caste-based discrimination” had been separately defined when the definition of “discrimination” already covered all forms of discriminatory treatment.

The regulations, notified on January 13, led to protests by upper-caste students, who have argued that the framework could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters have contended that the rules are biased against students from the general category as they do not provide for measures against “false complaints”. Read on.

The Supreme Court refused to entertain a public interest litigation seeking a declaration that domestic workers have a fundamental right to be paid minimum wages. The plea, filed by domestic workers’ unions, sought to bring domestic workers under the minimum wages notification.

A bench held that the reliefs sought were legislative in nature and that the court could not issue a writ asking the Union government and the states to consider amending the laws.

The court expressed concerns that fixing a mandatory minimum wage could lead to fears that trade unions may drag “every household” into litigation. This could backfire and result in a reluctance to hire domestic workers, the bench added. Read on.

The Indian rupee fell to a record low of nearly 92 against the United States dollar. The currency sank to 91.98 per US dollar, before marginally improving to 91.95 at the close of the trading session.

A widened balance of payments deficit, along with uncertainty about the trade deal with the US, has exerted pressure on the rupee, causing it to weaken, said the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Thursday.

The Indian currency has plummeted more than 2% this month after falling about 5% in 2025. Read on.

Activist Sonam Wangchuk told the Supreme Court that he has the democratic right to criticise the government and that it did not amount to a threat to national security. His counsel told the court that no act of violence was attributed to the activist and that the grounds of detention relied only on verbal statements, a protest march and a hunger strike, which were not violent acts.

The lawyer said that several statements cited by the authorities were either misattributed or misconstrued, including allegations that Wangchuk had threatened to overthrow the government or suggested that Ladakhis would not help the Army.

The authorities had ignored speeches in which Wangchuk had praised the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and relied selectively on material to justify the detention, the counsel added.

Wangchuk was detained under the National Security Act on September 26 following protests in Leh demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The bench was hearing a plea by his wife challenging the detention. Read on.

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Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk on Thursday told the Supreme Court that he has a democratic right to criticise the government and that such statements do not threaten national security, Bar and Bench reported.

Lawyer Kapil Sibal, representing Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali Angmo, made the argument while challenging the activist’s detention under the National Security Act.

Wangchuk was detained on September 26 after protests in Leh demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. During the protests, demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at security personnel, injuring several of them. Four persons were killed in police firing.

On Thursday, Sibal said there was nothing wrong with protesting against the destruction of the environment in Ladakh. “If Ladakh is to remain pristine, we don’t want any kind of activity that destroys the environment,” Bar and Bench quoted him as telling a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale.

The lawyer told the court that there was no case of violence against Wangchuk, and that only acts of violence attributed to him would constitute grounds of detention.

“All the statements relied upon are verbal statements,” Sibal was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench. “Other than that, there’s the padyatra [march] and anshan [hunger strike]. These are not violent acts.”

The lawyer said that many statements cited to justify Wangchuk’s detention were either misattributed or misconstrued. He said it had been wrongly alleged that the activist said he would overthrow the government if Ladakh was not given statehood.

Sibal quoted Wangchuk as having said that a government that did not have affection for citizens and did not care for the environment was “an obstacle in the progress of the nation”, the legal news outlet reported.

The court then asked him about an alleged statement by Wangchuk saying that Ladakhis would not help the Army. Sibal maintained that Wangchuk had not said so, adding that the speech in question was from over three months before the detention order.

The lawyer further said that the authorities had ignored videos in which Wangchuk had praised the government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bar and Bench reported.

“They don’t show all this,” Sibal said. “And put selective things in the grounds of detention. They show as if I am advocating a plebiscite. I never made such statements.”

Citizens are allowed to criticise the authorities, and anti-government sentiments do not affect the security of the state, the lawyer was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench.

“The Sixth Schedule was a promise given by a political party,” Sibal noted. “It was given in 2020. If in 2025 he says fulfil it before elections, what’s wrong with it?”

Including Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution would allow for the creation of autonomous development councils to govern land, public health and agriculture.

On August 5, 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 the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.

The lack of a legislature in Ladakh has led to increasing insecurities among the residents of the Union Territory about their land, nature, resources and livelihoods, and stoked fears that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem may be in jeopardy.

Following Wangchuk’s detention, key regional groups Apex Body Leh and Kargil Democratic Alliance withdrew from the talks with the government, stating that “talks cannot be held at gunpoint”.

Also read: Nine false claims about Sonam Wangchuk – and why they fall flat

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to entertain a public interest litigation seeking a declaration that domestic workers have a fundamental right to be paid minimum wages, Bar and Bench reported.

The plea, filed by domestic workers’ unions, sought to bring domestic workers under the minimum wages notification, Live Law reported.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi held that the reliefs sought were legislative in nature and that the court could not issue a writ asking the Centre and states to consider amending existing laws, PTI reported.

“No enforceable decree or order can be passed unless the legislature is asked to enact a suitable law” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “Such a direction…ought not to be issued by this court.”

The bench was also quoted as having expressed concerns that fixing a mandatory minimum wage could backfire as trade unions may drag “every household” into litigation, leading to a reluctance in hiring domestic workers.

“Once minimum wages are fixed, people will refuse to hire,” Bar and Bench quoted Kant as saying. “Tell me how many industries have been able to hire successfully using the trade unions. See all sugarcane unions closed.”

The chief justice also remarked that trade unions had, in his view, played a role in slowing industrial growth in the country, Live Law reported.

“How many industrial units in the country have been closed thanks to trade unions,” Kant was quoted as saying. “All traditional industries in the country, all because of these…unions have been closed, all throughout the country. They don’t want to work.”

“Of course exploitation is there, but there are means to address exploitation,” PTI quoted Kant as saying. “People should have been made more aware of their individual rights, people should have been made more skilled, there were several other reforms which should have been done.”

While acknowledging the plight of millions of domestic workers across the country, the bench maintained that the judiciary cannot encroach upon the legislative domain to mandate the enactment of laws, PTI reported.

Responding to the submission that collective bargaining could address these concerns, Bagchi noted that domestic workers are already covered under existing welfare frameworks, the news agency reported.

“It is not as if there is no safety net,” PTI quoted Bagchi as saying. “The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act does take care of several aspects.”

Advocate Raju Ramachandran, appearing for one of the petitioner organisations, Penn Thozhilalargal Sangam, argued that non-payment of minimum wages violated several constitutional rights pertaining to equality, prohibition against discrimination, equality of opportunity in public employment, among others, Live Law reported.

He submitted that domestic workers were deliberately excluded from the minimum wage framework despite the uniform nature of domestic work across states.

He also drew comparisons with countries such as Singapore, where statutory safeguards, mandatory leave and service conditions applied to domestic workers.

The court, however, said that a declaration recognising a fundamental right to minimum wages would amount to “lip service if not implemented”, Bar and Bench reported.

It reiterated that courts must be cautious in matters of economic policy and declined to interfere, suggesting that the petitioners approach the concerned state governments or, where appropriate, the High Courts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the operation of the 2026 University Grants Commission’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the Union government to redraft the regulations. Until then, their operation will remain in abeyance, the legal news outlet reported.

The bench verbally raised concern about the regulations, questioning why “caste-based discrimination” had been separately defined when the definition of “discrimination” already covered all forms of discriminatory treatment. It also asked why incidents of ragging had been excluded from the ambit of the new rules, Live Law reported.

The 2026 University Grants Commission Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations were notified on January 13. The regulations have led to protests by upper-caste students, who have argued that the framework could lead to discrimination against them.

The protesters have contended that the rules are biased against students from the general category as they do not provide for measures against “false complaints”.

Three writ petitions had been filed in the Supreme Court challenging Section 3(c) of the regulations, which defines caste-based discrimination as discrimination against members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, Live Law reported.

One of the petitioners, advocate Vineet Jindal, had contended that the provision renders protection against caste discrimination non-inclusionary. He had argued that the provision, in its current “exclusionary form”, denies grievance redressal mechanisms and institutional protection to individuals who do not belong to the three categories.

What the rules mandate

The University Grants Commission’s new equity rules require institutes to set up special committees, helplines and monitoring teams to address complaints, particularly from members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The UGC had in 2012 first released equity rules for higher education institutes, which required them to set up Equal Opportunity Cells and Anti-Discrimination Officers. However, those rules did not provide for action against institutions that did not comply with them.

In contrast, the 2026 rules require the UGC to set up a monitoring committee to oversee their implementation.

Institutes that do not comply with the regulations can be barred from participating in the commission’s schemes, offering degree programmes and online courses, and can be removed from the list of institutes eligible to receive central grants.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said that the workers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have filed more than five lakh complaints against suspected foreigners during the special revision of the electoral rolls in the state.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event at Demow in Sivasagar district on Wednesday, the BJP leader said that filing complaints during the exercise was a “national duty”.

“Everyone in Assam knows that Bangladeshi Miya immigrants have entered the state,” Sarma said. “If no one receives a notice under SR [special revision], what does that imply? That there are no foreign nationals in Assam.”

He added: “That is why our workers have filed over five lakh complaints. Otherwise, everyone would have been legitimised.”

SR में शिकायत दर्ज कराना एक राष्ट्रीय जिम्मेदारी है। यह केवल भाजपा तक सीमित नहीं, बल्कि असम के सभी दलों और संगठनों का समान दायित्व है। pic.twitter.com/Uj4Qz5ADrr

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) January 28, 2026

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

The poll panel is separately conducting a “special revision” of the voter list in the state, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll. Assam is not among the 12 states and Union Territories where the Election Commission is conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The door-to-door verification took place in the state between November 22 and December 20. The process did not involve document verification, unlike the special intensive revision.

On December 27, the Election Commission said that the names of more than 10 lakh voters were identified to be deleted in Assam after a house-to-house verification process.

Claims and objections to inclusions and deletions in the draft electoral rolls had to be filed between December 27 and January 22. These are to be disposed of by February 2 and the final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on February 10.

The state is expected to hold Assembly elections in three to four months.

On Wednesday, the chief minister said that if no complaints were filed now, what answer could be given if somebody later claimed that there were foreigners in Assam.

“If foreigners existed, why did no complaint reach the SR process?” the BJP leader asked. “Therefore filing complaints under the SR is a national responsibility.”

He added that this responsibility did not lie with the BJP alone but also with other parties and organisations.

However, they had not filed any complaints, he added.

This came a day after Sarma claimed that four lakh to five lakh Miya voters would be deleted when the special intensive revision of the voter rolls takes place in the state, adding that his job was to “make them suffer”.

“What does ‘vote chori’ [vote theft] mean to us?” the chief minister had asked reporters. “Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes. Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh.”

Reacting to Sarma’s comments, Congress leader Aman Wadud had said that Sarma had “made the Constitution absolutely ineffective” in Assam.

On January 24, the chief minister said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the special revision in the state.

Sarma had said at the time that there was “nothing to hide”.

“We are giving them trouble,” the chief minister had said, referring to his earlier statements that “Miyas” would face problems in his regime. He added that serving them notices as part of the special revision exercise was a way to “keep them under pressure”.

Several Opposition parties have accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls amid the exercise and filed police complaints.

On January 25, the chief minister said that the eviction drives in the state were only targeting Miya Muslims and not Assamese people.

Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, several demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Sarma claimed earlier this month that the government has “reclaimed” close to 1.5 lakh bighas of land in the course of the eviction drives.

Also Read:

• In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells

• BJP workers in Assam say their names used to seek mass voter deletion – without their knowledge

When I returned to my village of Hemisshukpachan in Ladakh in November after a hiatus of three months, I noticed a new architectural trend: steel roofing.

The next day, at a meeting in the community hall called by an NGO to distribute solar lamps, some villagers were in a rush to leave because there were workers at their homes installing steel roofs. This sparked a discussion about this new trend. There was a general agreement that all the residents should install steel roofs.

The impetus to build these roofs had come from the unprecedented rainfall we received in August. Leh recorded 80 mm of rain – roughly 930%. The flat mud roofs of the region’s traditional houses could easily withstand the historical average annual precipitation (both rain and snow) of around 100 mm. But my neighbours thought that steel roofing was necessary to face the changing weather patterns.

As a result, Ladakhis were spending their early winter getting ready for the summer instead of the phenomenon we have historically spent our time preparing for – the cold.

As I see it, the loosening ties of Ladakhis with the cold is responsible for the region’s new obsession with heritage preservation – and even our political anxiety.

Till the early 2000s, Ladakh’s winters (October-March) were harsh. Agricultural activities came to a halt. Everything froze: the rivers, streams, water canals, grassland and land with moisture in it. Precipitation mostly came in the form of snowfall. “In the past, winters were very cold and snowfall was abundant,” an octogenarian fellow villager told me.

In the shaded parts of the village, the early winter snow was transformed into sheets of ice. As residents shovelled the snow off their roofs, towers of sleet grew in the alleyways. In the winter, some parts of the village used to be covered permanently with ice.

These tough conditions entailed that there was always the looming danger of food and fuel scarcity. As a result, Ladakhis spent their summers preparing for the winter.

The summer months were used to cultivate barley and wheat (the main foodgrains), collect apricots and vegetables (both wild and cultivated) for dry preservation, and to secure essentials not found locally, such as salt, from distant outposts.

Talking to my Buddhist neighbours about the time before Ladakh joined the Republic and a couple of decades after it became part of India, they told me many stories about the cruel, cold months. The most prominent theme was food scarcity.

By mid- to late winter, pantries became empty, and people went to seek loans of grain from relatively wealthy neighbours. Stories of people venturing to the nearby monastery to steal from the granary are also remembered. Young men went on expeditions to hunt wild sheep, goats and birds for subsistence. People slept early so they would be under the covers during the freezing nights.

The local architecture reflected the necessity of tackling the frosty conditions. The older houses have thick walls that act as thermal insulation. Homes had a special winter chamber, called yokhang, on the ground floor. This floor also had rooms for the livestock. Moving nearer to the animals provided the much-needed warmth.

The preparations made for the dreary winter months underscore the intimate relationship Ladakhis had with the cold. Living in Ladakh meant getting ready, tackling and facing the icy circumstances head-on.

Ladakh’s social institutions reflect this. Elaborate systems of community cooperation in villages – norms related to water sharing, social groups that assist in ploughing, funerals and weddings – were the safety nets. A powerful village-level decision-making institution headed by the goba (chief) and representing all the households had authority on important aspects like water sharing.

Social practices were designed to negotiate the frigid landscape. For instance, polyandrous marriage, in which a woman had several husbands, controlled the population. In many families, younger siblings became monks and nuns, which secured their survival in monasteries with generous endowments.

One bit of small talk in Ladakh is “Thogs babs se rag, ta” (the warm has descended). Essentially, Ladakhis, at both the individual and collective level, had a fundamental purpose in this world – to survive the cold environment.

But geopolitics-related increase in military deployment, development programmes and tourism slowly began to upend this purpose. Food and fuel also became available from the civil administration and the military, which provided employment to Ladakhis.

Life became easier. But it made a social world designed to negotiate coldness inconsequential. Practices like agro-pastoralism, settlement patterns, mud buildings, mud stoves, livestock and much more became anachronistic.

The upending of Ladakh’s social world produced a sense of crisis. This became evident in the rush to preserve traditional architecture, pottery, metal works, dress, languages, festivals, monasteries, stupas, water-mills, heirloom seeds, animals, agricultural practices, water distribution systems, the institution of goba and even villages (which were being depopulated by outmigration).

The region now has an abundance of heritage-preserving individuals and organisations.

The looming planetary ecological crisis that has widespread public acknowledgement in the region adds another dimension to the threats. For example, the majority of families in Kulum abandoned their village due to water scarcity. After the 2010 floods, the village spring, the main source of water, dried up.

Due to rising temperatures, glacier-lake outburst floods (GLOF) have become frequent. A prominent example is the 2014 Gya village GLOF. Studies have shown a significant increase in temperature in Ladakh and neighbouring regions of around 1.6 degrees celsius in the last century, with winters heating at an increased rate.

All of these processes portray Ladakhi people as endangered. This atmosphere of risk underpins the recent political movement in Ladakh.

The sense of crisis in contemporary Ladakh is fundamentally an altered relationship with coldness, which provided a purpose to live. This relationship with the coldness is deeply ingrained in the social psyche of Ladakhis. These broken ties with frigidity finds articulation with the help of common discourses of heritage protection, tribal rights, and local governance.

If all the important heritage items and sites are protected, if all the tribal rights are recognised, if the region is empowered through extension of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution and even statehood, the question is how do we live with our changed relationship with coldness on a dangerously warming planet even while enjoying modern amenities.

Steel roofs are only a temporary answer.

Padma Rigzin is a social anthropologist from Ladakh.

This is the first of a two-part series on Ladakh. Read the second part here.

India’s real gross domestic product is expected to grow between 6.8% and 7.2% in the financial year 2026-’27, the government’s annual Economic Survey projected on Thursday.

The document said that the cumulative impact of policy reforms in recent years appeared to have lifted the economy’s medium-term growth potential closer to 7%.

“With domestic drivers playing a dominant role and macroeconomic stability well anchored, the balance of risks around growth remains broadly even,” the Economic Survey said. “…The outlook, therefore, is one of steady growth amid global uncertainty, requiring caution, but not pessimism.”

The Economic Survey, tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament three days ahead of the Union Budget for the forthcoming financial year, details the state of the country’s economy and suggests measures to boost growth.

In the financial year 2025-’26, India’s gross domestic product is projected to grow at 7.4% as compared to 6.5% in 2024-’25, according to the first advance estimates released by the National Statistics Office on January 7. The projection released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation is slightly higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s forecast of a growth rate of 7.3%.

The advance estimates give a broad picture of how the country’s economy may perform in the upcoming year, and help the finance ministry decide on budgetary allocations.

The Budget Session of Parliament began on Wednesday. Both Houses were adjourned after President Droupadi Murmu addressed a joint session of Parliament.

On Thursday, the Department of Economic Affairs stated in the Economic Survey that the global economy has been subjected to “multiple upheavals”, with the most disruptive among them being tariffs imposed by the United States on several countries.

Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy imposed in August.

The punitive tariffs of 25% were introduced as part of US President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against countries purchasing discounted oil from Russia amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

After the punitive levies were announced, New Delhi had said it was “extremely unfortunate” that the US had chosen to impose additional tariffs on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.

Six rounds of negotiations have been held so far on a proposed India-US trade agreement, Moneycontrol reported on January 9.

Rupee decline

The Economic Survey said that a widened balance of payments deficit, along with uncertainty about the trade deal with the US, has exerted pressure on the Indian rupee, causing it to weaken.

At 2.30 pm Indian time on Thursday, the rupee was valued at 91.95 against the US dollar.

The document noted that from April 1 to January 22, the Indian currency depreciated by about 6.5% against the US dollar. However, the movement of the rupee has been “orderly”, the Economic Survey said.

“Over the medium to long term, exchange rate dynamics are expected to be guided by structural fundamentals, such as productivity gains, export diversification towards higher-value goods and services, deeper integration into GVCs [global value chains] and a stable policy environment rather than short-term fluctuations,” the document said.

Growth remains strong, says CEA

In the Economic Survey, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said that “even as the global economy navigates uncertainty, India continues to chart a strong growth path”.

Speaking about the first advance estimates on GDP, the survey noted that it surpasses projections of the last Economic Survey.

In the previous survey, the Union government had estimated that India’s real GDP will grow between 6.3% and 6.8% in the financial year 2025-’26.

Also watch: Scroll Adda: Why India's GDP data can't be believed

The Kerala High Court stated that the first information reports registered against expelled Congress leader and Palakkad MLA Rahul Mamkootathil in two other sexual assault cases against him cannot be treated as criminal antecedents in the rape and forced miscarriage case it was hearing on Wednesday, reported Live Law.

Justice Kauser Edappagath also reserved the verdict on Mamkootathil’s petition for anticipatory bail.

The prosecution contended that two other FIRs have been registered against the MLA, which constitute criminal antecedents.

However, the judge noted that all three cases were in the FIR stage, adding that no final report had been filed in any of them.

“All are under investigation,” Live Law quoted Edappagath as saying. “Law of antecedents is that mere registration of complaint is not sufficient. At least final report should be there...Is there a single FIR which is registered prior to this?...Not a technicality…We will take this case alone.”

The prosecution also argued that the cases against Mamkootathil showed a pattern of intimidation and similar offences against multiple women, Bar and Bench reported. This was not just a case where a consensual relationship turned sour, the judge was told.

In response, the judge said: “Even consensual relationship with a married spouse is permitted under law then what is wrong in an unmarried man having consensual sexual relationship with so many persons. What is wrong and because of that how can this bail be rejected.”

The MLA faces three cases of rape. He has been granted bail in the other two cases.

While a sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram allowed the anticipatory bail petition of the expelled Congress leader in one of the cases on December 10, he was granted relief by another sessions court in Pathanamthitta district earlier on Wednesday in the third case against him.

Mamkootathil was arrested on January 11 in Palakkad after the complaint was filed in the third case.

The matter before the High Court on Wednesday pertained to a complaint submitted directly to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on November 27 by a woman and her family, accusing the Palakkad MLA of rape, pregnancy through sexual assault and forced abortion, Bar and Bench reported.

She claimed that Mamkootathil recorded their intimate videos without her consent, adding that he also threatened to circulate them if she did not comply with his demands.

A Thiruvananthapuram sessions court had denied him bail in the matter in December. The expelled Congress leader subsequently moved the High Court and got a stay on his arrest on December 6.

In his petition for anticipatory bail, Mamkootathil admitted to having a physical relationship with the complainant but claimed that it was entirely consensual, Bar and Bench reported.

However, the woman claimed that the Palakkad MLA repeatedly attempted to mislead the High Court by presenting distorted versions of the event.

She alleged that the abuse she suffered was not a one-time incident but part of a systematic pattern of violence and coercion, adding that Mamkootathil repeatedly subjected her to sexual violence, physical abuse and psychological intimidation.

In August, the Congress suspended Mamkootathil from its primary membership following multiple allegations from women of misconduct. Following this, he resigned from his post as the Kerala Youth Congress chief.

He was later expelled from the party but continues to serve as the MLA from Palakkad.