A man and a woman jumped from the second floor of a pizza shop in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur district after they were allegedly accosted by members of a Hindutva organisation on Saturday, PTI quoted police officials as saying.

Both of them sustained serious injuries and are undergoing treatment.

While they were waiting for the food they had ordered at the shop, members of a Hindutva organisation started questioning them about their caste, the police were quoted as saying.

After they said that they were both Hindus, some persons started filming them.

The 21-year-old man then pulled out a window bar and jumped from the second floor, the police said, adding that the 19-year-old woman followed him, according to PTI.

The police arrived at the spot after receiving information about the incident, Superintendent of Police Rajesh Dwivedi was quoted as saying. He added that no complaint had been filed in the matter so far.

“We will take strict action as soon as we receive a complaint,” said Dwivedi.

A Delhi court on Saturday acquitted activist Medha Patkar in a 20-year-old defamation case filed against her by Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, reported Bar and Bench.

Judicial Magistrate First Class Raghav Sharma of the Saket Courts stated that Saxena had failed to prove that Patkar made defamatory statements about him during a television program in April 2006.

The case was filed when Saxena was heading the Ahmedabad-based non-governmental organisation National Council for Civil Liberties. Saxena alleged that Patkar had made defamatory allegations about the NGO receiving civil contracts, which he had denied.

The court held that Patkar was not a panellist on the program in question and only a pre-recorded video clip of hers was played during the telecast, reported PTI.

“It is important to note that neither the reporter who actually recorded the audio-video nor any person who had seen the accused making the impugned statements has been examined as a witness,” the judge was quoted as saying by the news agency.

He added that the video played during the telecast appeared to be a part of an interview or a press conference held by Patkar.

It is essential to submit the entire video and audio of the press conference for the court to establish anything, the judge held.

He said that Saxena had failed to produce the original video footage or the recording device that recorded the allegedly defamatory statements. As a result, the allegations cannot be established, the judge added.

In August, the Supreme Court had upheld Patkar’s conviction in a separate defamation case filed in 2001 by Saxena.

Saxena had alleged that Patkar had defamed him in a press note titled “True face of patriot”, which the activist had issued in November 2000.

In May 2024, Metropolitan Magistrate Raghav Sharma convicted Patkar in the case. She was found guilty of criminal defamation and held liable to serve two years in jail, pay a fine, or both.

The court also observed that Patkar had accused Saxena of “mortgaging the people of Gujarat and their resources to foreign interests” and held the allegation to be a “direct attack” on his integrity and public service.

While upholding the decision, the Supreme Court had modified the probation condition requiring her to appear before the trial court periodically, instead allowing her to furnish bonds.

Beyond the highways that cut through farmlands, down winding paths that lead into Amaragori village in West Bengal’s Howrah district, stands the Gajalakshmi temple. Its red walls have been darkened with time.

The carvings on its terracotta panels are beginning to recede into the brick. Floral roundels and trellises, a Durga pantheon, rows of birds and men setting out to sea struggle against oblivion. A crouching man stares back at the viewer from one corner panel, inches away from a gaping crack opened up by a tree that now grows out of the temple.

The Gajalakshmi temple was built in 1729 by a wealthy local family, like most of Bengal’s terracotta temples.

Many were built as family shrines by prosperous landed merchants who made their fortunes in the colonial economy of the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of these temples were built by merchants’ guilds.

According to folk art historian Tarapada Santra, there were about 234 such terracotta temples across Howrah district in the 1970s. Many of these quietly moulder away in the neighbouring districts of South Bengal.

They are found in the courtyards of family homes, though the family itself may have scattered or died out. They crop up in the middle of market places, or in lonely spots which once hummed with activity.

At a time when Bengal’s colonial architecture is being rediscovered and explored by research scholars, heritage enthusiasts and cultural organisations, conservation efforts have largely bypassed the terracotta temple, a vital part of Bengal’s built heritage.

The neglect of Bengal’s brick temples is the result of colonial biases that continue to shape the idea of architectural heritage in independent India.

Built mostly between the late-17th and late-19th century, these temples had neither the aura of hoary antiquity nor the prestige of valuable stone to recommend them to foreign Indologists in their construction of India’s past.

With the flight of capital and talents to Calcutta, the metropolis of opportunity and modernity under British rule, the villages of Bengal went into economic decline. In the colonial imagination, the temples were relegated to a pre-modern past that was not worth preserving.

West Bengal’s economic fortunes did not look up after 1947, as the state struggled to deal with the cataclysmic fallout of Partition. For successive state governments, heritage conservation was a luxury and the terracotta temples were not a priority. After all, they were not built by mighty dynasties, nor did they commemorate famous victories or coronations.

As terracotta temples slowly disappear from Bengal, they take with them a slice of the region’s layered cultural history, formed by waves of external influence blending indigenous knowledge. What remains of this storied past must be salvaged.

Texts in terracotta

In their choice of material and form, Bengali builders showed remarkable architectural wisdom. The temples are made of brick, bamboo and clay, readily available material in this fertile region. Their roofs replicate the curving slopes (chalas) of thatched village huts, ensuring the easy drainage of rainwater.

A long history of cultural assimilation under Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and even colonial rule has produced syncretic styles and novel temple forms. The simple charchala (four-sided) structure of the early temples evolved into more complex forms with the passing of time. The chalas multiplied in steps to add height. Sometimes, they were surmounted by ratnas (turrets). Several later temples are flat-roofed, resembling the mansions of the rich in the 19th century, thus reflecting changes in the rural landscape.

Abjuring the use of expensive stone, which had to be brought from other regions, the makers of these temples chose to craft local clay into richly engraved panels. Terracotta, in the hands of unsung village artisans, sings of the religious and quotidian life of the community.

Stories from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the life of Krishna jostle for space with folk deities on the terracotta panels. From the 18th century onwards, social scenes and battles scenes from recent historical memory appear on the walls. These temples are also texts in terracotta waiting to be deciphered.

What isn’t ‘Indian art’

Yet, it is this very uniqueness of Bengal’s terracotta temples that has excluded them from the imagination of Indian art. In the quest for a national idiom after Independence, the terracotta temples, built in a regional style long after the major temples in other parts of India, proved to be a disadvantage.

For instance, architect Srishchandra Chatterjee wrote in favour of a School of Indian Architecture and Regional Planning in 1948. He mentioned several schools of Indian architecture but ignored the terracotta temples of Bengal.

Similarly, many Indians have heard the story of the discovery of the Ajanta caves, but only a handful know how scholar David McCutcheon stumbled upon the Chandranath Shiva temple, with European figures on its walls, while accompanying director Satyajit Ray during the shooting of the film, Abhijaan, in Hetampur.

The evolution of the 19th-century Bengal school of art has been researched but studies of the terracotta temple are scarce, stymied by the untimely death of notable field researchers like McCutcheon and folk art historian Tarapada Santra. Otherwise, Mukul Dey’s Birbhum Terracottas, published by the Lalit Kala Academy in 1959, remains a path-breaking compendium.

Poor conservation

Today, a few of the terracotta temples are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. These include the famous complexes at Bishnupur as well as those in Ambika Kalna and Jaydev Kenduli in Bardhaman district, all built by relatively important local feudatories.

A handful of temples are nominally under the protection of the state’s archaeological department but their maintenance leaves much to be desired. Take the Dadhimadhab temple, built some years after the Gajalakshmi temple in the same village. Carved panels above the entrance to the sanctum, once mentioned in a survey by Santra, appear to have been plastered over.

Social and economic factors also played a part in the destruction of terracotta temples. They were built to signal wealth and influence, but they did not become hubs of economic activity, which meant they faded from community life.

Now abandoned or owned by fragmented families, the structures have been vandalised or engulfed by vegetation which cracks open walls and brings the roof down. In many cases, there are too many stakeholders in the families that own them, leading to deadlocks in decisions over upkeep. Some structures have been razed to the ground as the land they stood on proved more profitable than derelict temples.

Even structures that remain strong are sometimes marred by well-meant but inept attempts at maintenance, with kitsch replacing the original craftsmanship. At several temples in Howrah district, for instance, paint on terracotta panels has blunted the sharpness of the engravings, diminishing the play of light on the panels as the sun changes. Ceramic tiles pave brick plinths and porches, their cold hardness at variance with the earthy warmth of the original brick.

It is the same story across the districts of South Bengal. With no clear advisory on conservation or financial support from the state, owners and local stakeholders have opted for cheap makeovers, resulting in technicolour terracotta and crude workmanship.

Temples in Howrah’s Rautara village and Birbhum district’s Surul village have been painted red with synthetic colour.

At the Rautara temple, a number of missing panels have been replaced with mass produced terracotta tiles featuring mainly the figure of Hanuman. The dhoti-clad, bow-bearing figure, executed in shallow relief, is a jarring contrast to the naturalness of the primates in the older panels.

Green shoots

In recent years, improved connectivity has brought urban bloggers and terracotta enthusiasts to the temple sites. Many post about them, stoking interest among Kolkata’s middle classes. Organisations such as the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata and the Delhi Art Gallery have started conducting tours.

Terracotta enthusiasts from Kolkata have started initiatives to involve local communities in conservation. For instance, Kamal Banerjee, a heritage activist from Kolkata, recounts how community participation helped save terracotta temples in Chamka in West Midnapore district and Joypur in Bankura district. The projects aimed to clear access to the temples and encourage locals to keep them clear of undergrowth. This is a recurrent task, funded by enthusiasts from the city and abroad.

In Chamka, a member of the Nag family, who own the temple, got all stakeholders on board with the project. The temple has now regained prominence with the local community gathering there for festivals.

In Joypur, the temple cleaning was completed just before the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. During the lockdown, news reached Banerjee that well-meaning but overzealous local residents were planning to “restore” the temple. The block development officer was contacted and he dissuaded them from going ahead with uninformed conservation and restoration.

If terracotta temples are to survive, they must be linked to the lives and livelihoods of those around them. Few remain centres of religious activity, which has shifted to new, more easily maintained temples. They could, however, generate economic activity. Creative efforts at conservation are urgently needed.

Tourism projects could involve local stakeholders, particularly women, students and indigenous artists. Homestays, local guides, opportunities to taste the local cuisine could be organised in a way that does not disrupt the life of the community but offers livelihoods

Suchandra Chakravarty retired as an associate professor of English from The Bhawanipur Education Society College.

The Union government has directed social media platforms to take down a video of a 29-year-old man being shot dead in Manipur’s Churachandpur district by unidentified assailants, reported The Hindu on Saturday.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued the takedown order on Thursday on the grounds that the video was “likely to disturb public order”, according to the newspaper. The order came after a request from the Ministry of Home Affairs under the Information Technology Act Section 69A.

Section 69A states that online content can be blocked on grounds such as national sovereignty, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign countries or public order.

The man, Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh, was a member of the Meitei community. He was shot dead on Wednesday at a village named Nathjan. For the past month, he had been staying in the Churachandpur district with his wife Chingnu Haokip, who belongs to the Kuki-Zo community.

A purported video of the killing, which surfaced on Wednesday night, showed the man sitting on the ground in the dark. He could be seen pleading with folded hands to persons not seen in the video, after which two shots were fired at him.

The video carried the text “No peace no popular government”, in a reference to attempts to restore an elected government in Manipur.

Manipur has been under President’s Rule since February 2025, when Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh resigned as the chief minister.

At least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced in the state since the ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

After Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh’s killing, the state government had also moved the Manipur High Court seeking directions for social media platforms to take down the video of the incident.

On Thursday, the court issued notice to the Union Government in this regard and asked it to place on record information on the progress of removing the viral clips from all platforms by the next date of hearing, scheduled for February 18, reported PTI.

The video of Singh’s killing was initially shared on WhatsApp from an IP address based in Guwahati.

The Kuki National Organisation, an umbrella group of Kuki militant outfits, denied allegations that it had given Singh “permission to visit” the area. It claimed that it neither knew about his visit nor was it involved in the killing.

On January 4, as a pastor named Bipin Naik was conducting a prayer meeting in the village of Parjang in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district, a Hindutva mob attacked him. His hands were tied up, he was beaten with sticks and garlanded with slippers, and force-fed cow dung.

After more than two weeks of inaction, nine people were detained in the matter on Wednesday, The Hindu reported.

Odisha has a long history of anti-Christian violence. In January 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt to death as they slept in their jeep. In December 2007 and August 2008, in large-scale attacks on Christians in Kandhamal district, Hindutva mobs killed 100 people and injured nearly 20,000.

The attack on pastor Naik is part of the continuing pattern of systematic violence perpetrated by Hindutva groups on Christian communities, which are largely composed of Dalits and Adivasis.

In the last fiscal year, the Rashtriya Christian Morcha documented about 87 attacks against Christians, said bishop Pallab Lima, the organisation’s state general secretary. Of these, the police registered cases relating only to 15 incidents, while action was taken in only three or four cases, he said.

Lima observed that while anti-Christian sentiment had always existed in Odisha, Hindutva groups had been emboldened by the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state – the party swept the Assembly elections in Odisha in June 2024, ending the Biju Janata Dal’s 24-year reign.

Activists noted that under the new state government, accusations of forced conversions had increased.

Odisha was the first state to enact an anti-conversion law – the Odisha Freedom of Religion Act, which was enacted in 1967. But “for decades there were hardly any convictions under this law”, said a minority rights activist, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

In recent years, though, the law has been frequently invoked by Hindutva groups who monitor prayer meetings, attack participants and then drag them to police stations to be booked under it.

“This has contributed to a climate of fear and vulnerability among Christian communities,” the activist said. “While the anti-conversion law allows complaints to be filed by the converted person or close relatives, in practice it is often these third-party groups who initiate the process, using allegations of conversion to legitimise violence and silence victims.”

The activist also expressed dismay at the lack of action from the police in such incidents.

“In many of these cases, the police response has been inadequate or delayed,” this person said. “Some incidents of violence have occurred in the presence of the police, while in other cases the police have expressed helplessness.”

Often, while perpetrators are set free, the victims of their attacks are detained or booked. “When local remedies fail, victims are forced to seek justice through higher authorities, human rights bodies, or the courts, a process that is long and exhausting,” the activist said

Activists observed that this pattern of communal violence in the state seemed particularly illogical, given that almost 94% of Odisha’s population is Hindu.

“There is no reason why they should feel insecure,” said political scientist Bijay Bohidar. “Virtually speaking, the state is already a Hindu rashtra.”

Hindus control the bureaucracy, education, media and medicine, he said. “There are hardly any Christians or Muslims in positions of power,” Bohidar said. “So the majority have no reason to feel threatened by the 2% minority population of Christians.”

He said that anti-Christian violence in Odisha was a strategy to divert the attention of citizens from the government’s failure to fulfil its promises.

“They have a lot to distract the public from, like growing unemployment, the gradual transfer of resources from people to corporations, the complete collapse of the educational system and perpetuation of inequality in an intergenerational manner,” Bohidar said. “How else will they cover this all up?”

He argued that the right to religious conversion was an important constitutional freedom.

“How many people actually choose their own religion?” he said. “Most people just inherit it from their families, they don’t read religious scriptures and pick the one they like the best. So it is the right to religious conversion that gives actual freedom to people to exercise their agency.”

But he and others worry that anti-minority sentiment is becoming even more firmly entrenched in Odisha.

“The minds of people have been affected in a very deep way,” Bohidar said. “I think even if the BJP is defeated from power in the future, the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] mindset will not go away soon.”

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

Governors vs the Opposition. The governors in three Opposition-ruled southern states had run-ins with the governments there this week. On Thursday, protests erupted in the Karnataka Assembly after Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot only read out two lines from his customary address to the joint session of the state legislature. Gehlot objected to 11 paragraphs in the speech prepared by the state’s Congress government.

The speech contained criticism of the Union government, including its introduction of the new rural employment guarantee act.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah alleged that Gehlot had violated the Constitution as he was bound to read the address prepared by the Cabinet and “has no authority to substitute it with a speech of his own”.

On Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi walked out of the Assembly without delivering the customary address. This is the fourth consecutive year that Ravi has walked out during the opening ceremony. He alleged that the Assembly had disrespected the national anthem and that his mic had been switched off during the proceedings.

On the same day, in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan edited Governor Rajendra Arlekar’s address to the Assembly. After Arlekar left the Assembly, Vijayan told the House that the governor had made changes to three paragraphs in the speech. Among the changes, Arlekar said that Kerala was facing financial stress arising from “curtailment of advances”, while the speech approved by the Cabinet had attributed the stress to “adverse Union government actions that undermine the constitutional principles of fiscal federalism”.

The struggling rupee. The Indian currency fell to an all-time record low of 91.9 against the United States dollar on Friday. It has plummeted more than 2% this month after falling about 5% in 2025.

The slide has continued amid foreign fund outflows and risk aversion triggered by geopolitical tensions.

Proving your identity. The Supreme Court told the Election Commission to publish the names of 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections during the special intensive revision in West Bengal. The names should be displayed in gram panchayats, block offices and ward offices, the court said.

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and cases where parents have more than six children.

The court said that persons who had received notices from the Election Commission could submit their documents or objections through booth-level agents. If the documents submitted as proof are found to be unsatisfactory, the persons should be given an opportunity to be heard, the bench said.

It also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit cards issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process.

Also on Scroll last week

• ‘Attempt to silence national press’: Four Kashmiri journalists get police summons
• In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells
• Why the chatter about a separate Jammu state is back in J&K politics
• ‘Legally untenable’: Why UP police arresting people for offering namaz is a misuse of the law
• Is ‘fair use’ really fair to artists under Indian copyright law?
• Why an Uttarakhand district has banned paddy farming in the summer
• When India needed support, Venezuela stood firmly by its side
• Silence as citizenship: The burden of being a ‘Good Muslim’ in India
• Review: Timothee Chalamet reigns supreme in ‘Marty Supreme’
• Review: ‘Border 2’ is ‘Border’ too, the whole package better packaged

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Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Saturday that only Miyas, and not Hindus or Assamese Muslims, were being served notices under the special revision of electoral rolls in the state, reported PTI.

“There is no controversy over the special revision,” the chief minister was quoted as saying by the news agency. “Which Hindu has got notice? Which Assamese Muslim has got notice? Notices have been served to Miyas and such people, else they will walk over our heads.”

“Miya” is a derogatory term for Bengali-speaking Muslims. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam has often labelled the community as “infiltrators” who are allegedly taking over resources, jobs and land of the indigenous people.

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 under the ‘special revision’ exercise. The final list will be published on February 10.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of 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.

Assembly elections are expected to be held in March-April.

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 Saturday, Sarma said that there was “nothing to hide”, reported PTI.

“We are giving them trouble,” said the chief minister, referring to his earlier statements that Miyas would face problems in his regime, according to the news agency.

He added that serving them notices as part of the special revision exercise was a way to “keep them under pressure”.

“They have to understand that at some level, people of Assam are resisting them,” said the BJP leader. “Otherwise, they will get a walkover. That is why some will get notices during SR, some for eviction, some from border police.”

Sarma added: “We will do some utpaat [mischief], but within the ambit of law… we are with the poor and downtrodden, but not those who want to destroy our jati [community].”

This came a day after the Assam Congress and Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi filed separate complaints with the police against the BJP for allegedly attempting to tamper with voter lists in the Boko-Chhaygaon Assembly constituency.

In a complaint filed at the Boko Police Station on Friday, Boko Block Congress Committee chief Tuleswar Rabha claimed that BJP leaders, along with a few locals and office staff, entered the election branch of the Boko co-district commissioner’s office in the evening a day earlier.

He alleged that the group attempted to access the electoral roll revision portal using a government password to delete and include names using data from Form 7.

Form 7 of the Election Commission is the official application used to object to the inclusion of a name or to request the deletion of a name from an existing electoral roll.

In his complaint in Jorhat, Gogoi said that he had received video footage a day earlier showing four persons “unlawfully entering and operating inside the Boko co-district commissioner’s office, Kamrup (Rural), Assam”.

He added that the video footage showed the four persons “unauthorisedly accessing” official documents and electronic databases.

“As such, there may be every possibility to illegally adding fictitious voters’ names and deleting names of genuine voters, without any lawful authority,” the Sivasagar MLA said.

On January 7, the Congress, the Raijor Dal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and the Assam Jatiya Parishad also filed a police complaint, accusing Assam BJP president and MP Dilip Saikia of being involved in an alleged conspiracy to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls.

The parties claimed that Saikia had directed the Hindutva party MLAs to ensure the deletion of the names of “anti-BJP voters” in at least 60 of the state’s 126 Assembly constituencies.

Odisha’s Nabarangpur district has been declared “Naxal-free” after nine Maoists surrendered in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, PTI quoted the police as saying on Saturday.

Seven of those who surrendered were women and the group carried a combined bounty of Rs 47 lakh.

They were active in Nabarangpur and neighbouring Dhamtari district in Chhattisgarh, the police were quoted as saying.

“With their surrender, Nabarangpur district has become free from Naxal activity,” PTI quoted the police as saying in a statement.

Of Odisha’s 30 districts, Maoist activity is now confined to pockets of seven districts, PTI quoted an unidentified police officer as saying. These are Kandhamal, Kalahandi, Bolangir, Malkangiri, Koraput, Rayagada and Boudh.

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 2,167 “Left-wing extremists” had surrendered and 335 had been killed in the first 11 months of 2025. More than 940 had been arrested.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed and over 16,000 had been arrested between 2014 and December 1, 2025. More than 9,580 had surrendered during the period.

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

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

The International Cricket Council has formally informed the Bangladesh Cricket Board that Bangladesh has been replaced by Scotland in the upcoming men’s T20 World Cup after it refused to travel to India.

Since January 4, the interim government in Bangladesh has been saying the country’s cricket team does not want to travel to India for the world cup, citing what it alleged was a “violent communal policy” of the Indian cricket board.

This came after the Kolkata Knight Riders on January 3 dropped Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman from its squad ahead of the 2026 edition of the Indian Premier League, following instructions from the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

Rahman had been dropped amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka after the killing of a Hindu man in Bangladesh in December. India has repeatedly condemned hostilities against religious minorities in the country.

Bangladesh had been urging the International Cricket Council to shift its matches to Sri Lanka, where Pakistan is also scheduled to play.

Bangladesh was in Group C alongside England, West Indies, Italy and Nepal. The team was scheduled to play its first three group stage matches in Kolkata followed by one in Mumbai.

On Wednesday, the International Cricket Council said that the Bangladesh Cricket Board had repeatedly linked its participation in the tournament to an “isolated and unrelated development” concerning one of its player’s involvement in a domestic league”.

The linkage has no bearing on the tournament’s security framework, it had said at the time.

Security assessments, including independent reviews, have indicated that there was no threat to Bangladeshi players, media persons, officials and fans at venues in India, the council had said.

Also read: For Hindutva groups, Bangladesh is the new Pakistan

In August 2023, the Indian parliament approved a bill authorising the establishment of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation and the act came into force on February 5, 2024. As a funding agency for scientific research, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation is charged with raising and disbursing around $6 billion to universities and research laboratories over five years.

Of the proposed target, the Anusandhan National Research Foundation is expected to invert current funding ratios by raising at least 70% from non-governmental sources, including industry and philanthropy. Industry contribution to research today stands at 36% overall. State funding for science is today at 64% and when seen as Gross Expenditure on Research and Development, in percentage of GDP, has been 0.66% (2018-’20) and 0.64% (2020-’24). For comparison, the equivalent figure for the US stood at 3.59% in 2023 and China was at approximately 2.5% in 2023-’24.

This is not the first time that India has considered an independent funding body for science research at an arms-length from the government. The idea was already proposed in 1944 by the biologist Archibald Vivian Hill in his report to the British Government of India about the post-war reconstruction of India. Hill envisioned a “Central Organisation for Scientific Research” while Indian scientists with the National Institute of Sciences at the time proposed a “National Research Council.” Since independence, the government or administration of science for development in India has been important to those in India and interesting to observers outside.

Two decades after Hill, the American educationist and activist Ward Morehouse (1929-2012) comprehensively surveyed the organisation of science in India yet again and wrote a 500-page manuscript, Sarkar and Vigyan (“Government and Science,” Hindi) in 1967 and a revised version in 1970. These drafts that surveyed the first 20 years after independence have remained unpublished to date. Historian David Arnold, in his paper on “Nehruvian Science”, noted that in 1961, India had 400,000 science and technology degree holders and 70,000 full time researchers. Between 1948-1960, state expenditure on scientific research grew from Rs 10.8 million to Rs 133.7 million. We can understand the thinking behind and the implications of these numbers in Morehouse’s work. No other book-length critical account of science under Nehru’s leadership has been written thus far.

This book is a witness of its time. Morehouse explores the Indian state as administrator and chief patron of scientific research. In his words, this is an account of “public patronage of scientific work in India – about three-quarters of the total in the mid 1960s: industrial research, atomic energy, and agricultural research.”

Morehouse makes three main claims: first, about the bureaucratisation of science in India, evident in the book’s title. He then speaks about the difficulties of building enduring institutions for science, in contrast to the more common leader-dependent organisations, and finally, he speaks to the concerns related to the social structures within which science and scientific institutions in India function. Morehouse’s arguments and observations remain astonishingly relevant today.

In preparation, Morehouse interviewed over a hundred key figures in Indian science and science policy, organised a conference with them in New York, and had access to robust documentation from the Research, Survey, and Planning Organization Unit of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Today’s commentators on science in India may well envy the robustness of the data to which he had access.

I stumbled upon the manuscript a few years ago and have now prepared it to be published. Drawing on my introduction to the soon to be posthumously published Sarkar and Vigyan: Government and Science in Nehru’s India, I make a case for what we might gain from reading Morehouse today.

Contemporary Debates

Sarkar and Vigyan is necessary reading today not only as a primary source, for historical reasons, or for the interesting intellectual journey of its author, but also because of its relevance to contemporary debates on science, technology, and development in India. This book is a reminder of some of the questions already posed, debated, discredited, ignored, or abandoned in the past.

Morehouse’s approach to public policy and science in India was to centre the goal of reducing inequality on the path to social justice. There are two moments when he could still have published this book in the 14-year period between 1970 – when Morehouse revised the manuscript – and 1984 when, following the gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, we saw a complete shift in Morehouse’s thinking on science for development.

The first is the long seven years between 1971, when he published Science in India and 1978, when he signed the statement on “The Perversion of Science and Technology: An Indictment.” Signed at the 14th meeting of the “World Order Models Project” (Poona, July 1978) by Rajni Kothari, Shiv Visvanathan, and Giri Deshingkar, among others, this statement called for a rejection of the contemporary approach to science and development. In calling for a reorientation of science, the statement still carried the belief that a different kind of science could – and should – shape development.

The other moment when Morehouse could have published the book was between 1978-’84. During this time, he was still interested in India and published a report on the state of policy and research and development for electronics in India (1983) but his faith in science and technology as drivers of development was shattered by the “world’s worst industrial disaster”, a gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Bringing justice to the victims and survivors of the tragedy completely swallowed his attention until he died in 2012.

Even then, years after he first wrote it, Sarkar and Vigyan would still have been relevant as a critique of the obstacles to a social transformation shaped by science. Perhaps the academic critique of his manuscript was far too strong, perhaps he found it difficult to get a publisher of his choice or, perhaps his interest in revising a long manuscript simply waned with time.

Government ‘before’ science

Six years before Morehouse’s first draft, the British bureaucrat and scientist Charles Percy Snow published Science and Government (1961), which likely informed Morehouse’s choice of title. Snow was important for Morehouse’s thinking on the purpose of science and engineering in developing societies. It is, however, interesting that he flipped the order – government came before science.

At the risk of reading too much into what may have been a stylistic choice, in putting government before science in India, Morehouse may well be suggesting the primacy of bureaucracy in the organisation of science in India, an argument he makes strongly in this book.

In his use of Hindi, we may read that this level of bureaucratisation was likely specific to India, or at least true of India in particular ways. Finally, and this too is drawn from his use of Hindi, Morehouse seemed to indicate that the strong arm of administration was located in Delhi – the capital – rather than other parts of the country where Hindi was not a working language. Bureaucratisation was a concern then and remains one today in the debates on science in India today.

‘Appropriate Technology’

Technology, even more than science, is now seen as the panacea for all problems – and this book offers one genealogy for why that came to be the case.

The late 1960s were a moment of transition. Morehouse captures these final years of an era when the first generation of independent India’s leadership was giving way to the next: the physicist Meghnad Saha passed away in 1956, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964, Homi Bhabha (of the nuclear program) in 1966, Vikram Sarabhai (of the space programme) in 1971, and the statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in 1972. Each of them believed in the power of science for development and global relevance.

Internationally, after the student protests of 1968, critiques of science and engineering as being overwhelmingly beholden to the state went briefly mainstream. Morehouse was writing at the threshold of this transition, and the book is marked faintly by the tensions of thinking about social justice in the shadow of statism and big science and technology.

Along the way, Morehouse became associated with Ernst Friedrich Schumacher’s Intermediate Technology Development Group (United Kingdom, 1965), focusing, among other things, on a Gandhian approach to technology and economics. Schumacher, the German-born British statistician and economist, published Small is Beautiful (1973), a book that sought to recenter people and integrate the environment into government policies.

Given this association, it is curious that Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi does not figure meaningfully in the book. Missing also is a reference to the work of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (est. 1962) and more generally, the people’s science movement in India, as well as a direct engagement with the debate on appropriate technology led by, among others, chemist Amulya Reddy at the Applied Science and Technology for Rural Areas, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

In effect, disagreements on how to develop science and utilise technology to alleviate poverty are missing from the book. Was there a Delhi Consensus, and was it so strong that Morehouse had to wait for a disaster before any critique of the Nehruvian project captivated his imagination?

‘The White Brahmin’

When Morehouse started writing, Walt Whitman Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) was well absorbed by American bureaucracy of the Cold War. Rostow begins, “With the phrase ‘traditional society’ we are grouping the whole pre-Newtonian world…the dynasties in China; the civilisation of the Middle East and the Mediterranean; the world of medieval Europe.” The US, argued Rostow, had the responsibility to lead the newly independent nations through the stages of industrial development toward democracy and prosperity. Under the Lyndon Johnson presidency, Rostow would go on to advocate Operation Rolling Thunder for the carpet bombing of North Vietnam. In the year that Morehouse was writing the first draft of this book, George Basalla published The Spread of Western Science: A Three-Stage Model (1967) about the introduction of what appears to be an almost alien modern science into any non-European nation.

Both Rostow and later Basalla are broadly covering the same terrain as Morehouse. It is interesting, then, that Morehouse’s approach is at a distance from both Rostow and Basalla even as he held on to his faith in a “scientific revolution for the third world.” Morehouse was acutely aware of his position as an American in India. He knew that his claims about what mattered to Indian leadership and to Indian scientists was written through foreign eyes. In the spirit of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955) and Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s The Ugly American (1958), Morehouse wrote The White Brahmin – a critique of American presence and behaviour in India and in the world during the Cold War (Illustrated Weekly of India, 1970).

A lot has changed since Morehouse wrote the book. Aspiration to global power and the specter of a rising China has tenuously taken over earlier goals of modernisation in India. Today, Indian science and politics are taking stock of capabilities in science and engineering, and not surprisingly, also of the Nehru era. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is tasked with delivering internationally competitive research. How that unfolds – and if it can do so while addressing the major concerns around how science is organised in India, including those that Morehouse posed decades ago – remains to be seen. If we want to trace genealogies of the socio-technical imaginaries of our time and re-evaluate problems with the organisation of science and engineering in India, then this is a book worth reading.

Jahnavi Phalkey (CASI Spring 2025 Visiting Scholar) is a historian of science, filmmaker, and the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. She was awarded the Infosys Prize in Humanities (2023).

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

The Madras High Court has quashed an order issued by the Tamil Nadu government to collect sensitive personal data on the social background of higher secondary students in model schools, saying that the move violated their right to privacy, Bar and Bench reported on Saturday.

Model schools were established in Tamil Nadu to coach higher secondary students to clear competitive exams and help them secure admission to premier higher educational institutions.

The matter before the bench pertained to an order issued by the state Education Department on September 4, 2025, which directed government-run model schools to collect personal and social background information from students studying in Classes 9 to 12, Bar and Bench reported.

The information to be collected comprised 25 questions about the social and familial background of the students, including whether they were from refugee, nomadic or gypsy communities, migrants from other states, or from oppressed caste backgrounds.

Other questions included whether students had gender non-conforming identities, were survivors of abuse or violence, or had families with a history of substance abuse, the legal news portal reported.

The order directed teachers to collect the information from students and upload it on a portal.

On January 5, Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan of the Madurai bench held that collecting such data without a clear purpose also amounted to discrimination against students from vulnerable backgrounds.

“The data sought to be collected as well as the manner in which, it is to be documented…is absolutely in violation of privacy and…is clear discrimination and ill-treatment of the students of the model school,” the legal news portal quoted the bench as saying.

The move would only demoralise students who came from “stigmatic” social backgrounds, it said, adding that it was an “absolute abuse of power”.

The order came in response to a writ petition filed before the court challenging the direction.

Earlier, the authorities of the model schools had maintained that the details were being collected to ensure special attention could be given to students who required it.

While quashing the order, the court noted that the counsel representing the authorities was unable to provide justification for the collection of such information. The bench added that it was also not explained what kind of special attention the students were expected to receive.

The bench further rejected the authorities’ argument that the data was being collected in their role as parens patriae, Bar and Bench reported.

Parens patriae, which is Latin for “parent of the country”, is a legal doctrine allowing the state to act as the ultimate guardian for individuals unable to care for themselves, such as children, the incapacitated, or the disabled, intervening to protect their welfare and interests when their natural caretakers fail or are absent

Last December, Delhi hosted a concert by AR Rahman and his Sufi ensemble. On paper, this was an accessible concert, at least for wheelchair users who could afford the premium tiers priced at Rs 6,000 or Rs 25,000. The lowest-priced ticket, at Rs1,000, offered no wheelchair access at all. The Rahman concert was symptomatic of a larger issue – one where accessibility is treated as a luxury feature rather than a basic design requirement.

Many other musicians like Sunidhi Chauhan, AP Dhillon, and Papon came and captured Delhi in the same month. Unfortunately, unlike Rahman, even money could not buy you access to these concerts.

And we are only talking about accessibility for wheelchair users here. People with visual, hearing, or sensory impairments do not even enter the conversation in most cases. Are they not seen as individuals who have a right to access and enjoy public spaces?

Some countries such as the United Kingdom have made considerable progress in terms of mainstreaming accessibility for different disabilities. In addition to the Equality Act of 2010 that makes access a statutory right, many organisations including universities, event management and ticketing platforms and charities have guidelines on designing inclusive events.

This is an outcome of years of disability rights advocacy that has made accessibility a core part of how people think about public spaces.

Attitudinal barriers

So, why are live events still not universally accessible nearly a decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act came into force? In India, people with disabilities are treated with indifference at best and prejudice at worst. We grow up consuming television and popular culture that ridicules difficulties in speaking (“atki hui cassette” in Aankh Micholi), hearing (Bunty Malhotra in Housefull 3), walking (“Langda Tyagi” in Omkara), normalising disdain and embedding it deep within our collective consciousness.

These attitudes do not remain on screen – they actively shape how public infrastructure is imagined, funded, and prioritised. When people with disabilities are stereotyped as belonging to “special” schools or distant, segregated spaces, they are rendered invisible in everyday public life.

This institutionalised invisibility means event organisers do not perceive them as a legitimate audience. And when a group is not recognised as an audience, its needs are never designed for. This results in them being systematically excluded from the very public spaces where leisure, culture and social life unfold.

Apart from attitudinal barriers, organisers often point to practical concerns such as fear of backlash “if something goes wrong” or the additional resources required to make venues accessible. But these claims ring hollow because when accessibility is built into planning from the outset, it does not significantly inflate costs.

Another common argument is that accessible venues offer poor returns as not many people with disabilities attend such events. Of course they wouldn’t if the venue itself isn’t accessible. This argument is circular: without access, there is no attendance; without attendance, access is never built.

Some bright spots

Not all is grim in India, though. The recently concluded Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa is an exemplar of accessible and inclusive events. In addition to being wheelchair accessible, exhibitions were curated with multisensory elements such as tactile installations, Braille, audio descriptions, and visual cues to include Deaf and Blind audiences.

Coldplay’s 2025 concert provided vibration jackets that enabled deaf individuals to feel the rhythm and beats and actually feel the music. In fact, Coldplay has been prioritising inclusivity and has ensured that their events cater to people with different needs. Another example is the India Art Fair, which not only offers tactile and Braille artworks along with sign language interpretation but also provides quiet rooms for people with cognitive disabilities who may need respite from sensory overload.

Making live events accessible is ultimately a matter of intent. People with disabilities are not a niche market but citizens with equal rights to culture, leisure and public life. Investing in accessibility is both socially just and economically sound – brands gain goodwill, loyalty, and reach, while people with disabilities get to participate in leisure and culture on equal terms and with dignity.

While having a legislation which mandates accessibility is certainly necessary, its objective falls flat if there is no concomitant effort to visibilise people with disabilities and bring them into public discourse.

On paper, India has an extremely strong legislation in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. However, on the ground, its implementation continues to be dismal, especially when it comes to events. This is reflected in an absence of a commitment towards accessibility by most Indian musicians.

As Siddhant Shah, Founder of Access for ALL (the organisation that made Coldplay’s India experience accessible), puts it, “Accessibility should not be seen as a virtue. It should become a habit. It should be something we live by every day, not something we do only to look good.”

Seventy-nine years after Independence, the conversation around disability still often gets restricted to skilling, employment and pensions. However, persons with disabilities are complete human beings with a spectrum of needs and desires. It is time we start looking at them as complete human beings with a right not just to life, but to live. It is time we start looking at them as a market and not just as a charity.

More importantly, it is time to look for “us” in them because everyone in the world is temporarily able bodied and when we are designing for the disabled, we are designing for universal access.

Nipun Malhotra is a disability rights advocate He is the founder of Nipman Foundation and director of The Quantum Hub. Teesta Shukla is a senior analyst at The Quantum Hub.

India on Friday voted against a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution that censured Iran’s crackdown on the recent anti-government protests.

The resolution, also demanding an end to “brutal repression” by Tehran, was passed by the 47-member council. While 25 members of the council voted in favour of the resolution, 14 abstained. Seven, including India and China, opposed it.

Ambassador of Iran to India Mohammad Fathali on Saturday thanked New Delhi for its “principled and firm support” of Tehran “including opposing an unjust and politically motivated resolution”.

“This stance reflects India’s commitment to justice, multilateralism, and national sovereignty,” Fathali said.

I extend my sincere gratitude to the Govt. of India for its principled and firm support of I.R. of Iran at the UN_HRC, including opposing an unjust and politically motivated resolution. This stance reflects India’s commitment to justice, multilateralism, and national sovereignty. pic.twitter.com/kLFnqpNjmB

— Iran Ambassador Mohammad Fathali (@IranAmbIndia) January 24, 2026

The protests, which began on December 28, initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded as protesters in more than 100 towns demanded an end to clerical rule.

On Friday, the council in its resolution said that it “deplores the violent crackdown of peaceful protests” resulting in thousands of deaths, and urged the Iranian government to “respect, protect and fulfil its human rights obligations”.

The resolution asked Tehran to take measures to end and prevent extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance and arbitrary arrests.

The toll in the crackdown on the protests is at least 5,000, AP quoted activists as saying on Friday.

The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency was quoted as saying that the toll includes more than 4,700 protesters, over 200 demonstrators affiliated to the Iranian government, 43 children and 40 civilians who had not participated in the unrest.

This would make the protests the deadliest unrest in Iran in several decades.

More than 26,800 persons have been detained by the authorities in a widening arrest campaign, AP quoted the US-based human rights group as saying.

On Wednesday, the Iranian government said that the toll was more than 3,100. More than 2,400 of those killed in the protests were civilians and security personnel and the remaining, Tehran claimed, were “terrorists”.

On January 8, the Iranian government snapped internet access and telephone lines, largely cutting off the country from the outside world. The authorities have accused the US and Israel of inciting the unrest.

The restrictions were eased on January 13, AP reported. However, text messaging services were still down and internet users were only able to connect to government-approved websites locally.

The internet shutdown has made it difficult for international human rights groups to independently verify the toll.

On Friday, to deepen scrutiny of Tehran’s actions, the UN body also extended for two years and broadened the mandate of the independent investigators gathering evidence to ensure accountability for human rights violations in Iran.

The collector and district magistrate of Koraput district in Odisha have directed officials to impose a one-day ban on the sale of non-vegetarian food items on Republic Day, Monday, ANI reported.

In a letter issued on Friday, the administration instructed all tehsildars, block development officers and executive officers in the district to enforce a ban on the sale of “meat, chicken, fish, eggs and other non-vegetarian items” on the day.

Odisha: Koraput Collector & DM has written to all Tahsildars, all Block Development Officers and all Executive Officers of the district to issue an official order in their jurisdiction for prohibition on selling of meat, chicken, fish, egg, etc and non- vegetarian food on the… pic.twitter.com/4WmcCMtOXv

— ANI (@ANI) January 24, 2026

In 2025, the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation had ordered all slaughterhouses and meat shops within its jurisdiction to remain closed on Independence Day. The move had sparked a row, with Opposition parties describing it as “food policing”.

Also read: The illogic of meat bans

The Assam Congress and Raijor Dal chief Akhil Gogoi have filed separate complaints with the police against the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly attempting to tamper with voter lists in the Boko-Chhaygaon Assembly seat on Thursday during the “special revision” of electoral rolls.

Unlike in 12 states and Union Territories, the Election Commission is not conducting a special intensive revision exercise in Assam. Instead, on November 17, it had directed the state chief electoral officer to conduct a “special revision” of 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.

Assembly elections are expected to be held in March-April.

In a complaint filed at the Boko Police Station on Friday, Boko Block Congress Committee chief Tuleswar Rabha claimed that BJP leaders, along with a few locals and office staff, entered the election branch of the Boko co-district commissioner’s office in the evening, PTI reported.

The complaint named Zila Parishad member and South Kamrup district BJP general secretary Prahlad Biswas, South Kamrup district BJP secretary Mrinmoy Boro, South Kamrup district BJP Scheduled Tribes Morcha secretary Buddheshwar Rabha, two employees of a local gas agency and unnamed election officials.

It alleged that the group attempted to access the electoral roll revision portal using a government password to delete and include names using data from Form 7.

Form 7 of the Election Commission is the official application used to object to the inclusion of a name or to request the deletion of a name from an existing electoral roll.

Rabha said that the alleged attempt came to light at around 8.30 pm on Thursday, following which the group was confronted. He demanded an impartial enquiry into the matter and action against those involved.

Gogoi also filed a complaint on Friday at the Jorhat Police Station, saying that he had received video footage a day earlier showing four persons “unlawfully entering and operating inside the Boko co-district commissioner office, Kamrup (Rural), Assam”.

He added that the video footage showed the four persons “unauthorisedly accessing” official documents and electronic databases.

“As such, there may be every possibility to illegally adding fictitious voters’ names and deleting names of genuine voters, without any lawful authority,” the Sivasagar MLA said.

He added that the video showed that the group allegedly entered the office unauthorised on Thursday night and that none of them appeared to be government staff or other officials.

The complaint also named Biswas, Boro, Rabha and an employee of a gas agency.

He claimed that the activity was being carried out without permission from the Election Commission and appeared to have been done “with mala fide intention to manipulate the electoral roll for political gain, especially in view of the [upcoming elections]”.

The Raijor Dal chief added that the alleged act could not have been carried out without the help of Boko Co-District Commissioner Priyanshu Bharadwaj, Kamrup (Rural) District Commissioner Debo Kumar Mishra and the chowkidar at the Boko co-district commissioner’s office.

He sought the registration of a first information report under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to theft, forgery, criminal trespass, and forged document or electronic record and using it as genuine.

The actions also violated provisions of the 1950 Representation of People Act, the complaint said.

A few points regarding the article on generic drugs (“Hard questions remain about the quality of generic drugs in India”)

​1. The authors claim the results are “too good to be true” compared to historical data.

Historical data, like the 2017 survey, often focused on smaller, unregulated manufacturers. Dr Abby Philips’s study focused heavily on centralised procurement – Jan Aushadhi. Centralised systems have strict pre-dispatch testing. The 100% success rate suggests that when the government acts as a bulk buyer, the quality control at the source is more rigorous than at the local, unorganised retail level.

2. Private labs might have been biased or intimidated by the government’s “flagship scheme”.

Professional NABL-accredited labs risk their licences and international reputation if they falsify data. Furthermore, Philips’s study was crowdfunded and public; any discrepancy discovered later would destroy his own credibility as a public health advocate. The transparency of the Twitter thread acts as a safeguard against “under-the-table” bias.

3. A drug can pass a lab test for purity but fail to work in the human body (bioequivalence).

This may be technically correct, but the authors are moving the goalposts. Pharmacopeial testing (purity, dissolution, disintegration) is the legal legal standard for quality in India. While Bioequivalence is the “gold standard” for efficacy, a drug that passes pharmacopeia standards is legally and scientifically considered “Standard Quality”. Demanding bioequivalence for every single common generic (like Paracetamol) would exponentially increase medicine prices, defeating the purpose of affordable healthcare.

​4. Generics for sensitive issues (like transplant or thyroid) are risky without bioequivalence studies.

There is a consensus here. Most doctors agree that for narrow therapeutic index drugs (example, levothyroxine, cyclosporine), patients should ideally stick to the same brand to avoid minor fluctuations. However, using this specific “high-risk” category to cast doubt on all generics (like common antibiotics or painkillers) is a logical fallacy that creates unnecessary “medicine hesitancy” among the poor.

​5. One-off testing doesn’t prove the factory produces good medicine every day.

It may be true, but this is why we have the Revised Schedule M (India’s updated Good Manufacturing Practices). The government has recently made international-grade manufacturing standards mandatory for all MSME pharma units. Testing market samples is the only way a third party can verify the system. If market samples consistently pass, it is a strong indicator that the underlying manufacturing process is stabilising.

6. ​The study results would be worse if samples came from small, local private pharmacies.

This argument actually supports the case for Jan Aushadhi. If the “centralised bulk strategy” produces 100% quality results, the solution isn’t to doubt generics but to expand the Jan Aushadhi model and centralised procurement to all states to eliminate the “smaller, poor-quality manufacturers” the authors are worried about. – Suraj Anandan

Sinhala Buddhism ‘tarnished’

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it is said. That captures The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia by Sonia Faleiro (“Militant Buddhism: A long history of how Sri Lankan Buddhist monks treated non-practitioners”). The author has twisted Hindu ideologies with compassionate philosophy of Buddhism to tarnish the spiritual elements of the great religion of Buddhism. The excerpt is made up of mudslinging towards Buddhism and its followers in Sri Lanka.

To better understand Buddhism, one needs to study Buddhist doctrines and the fundamentals of Buddha’s teachings by the monks who are monastically educated, especially elderly monks who have reached the higher levels of spiritual attainment. The clergy of all religions are fallible and one cannot randomly interview novice monks or monks who were not educated about Buddha’s teachings.

The Mahavamsa is not the Buddha’s teachings. Mahavamsa, or the Great Chronicle, is considered the world’s longest and unbroken historical record of Sri Lanka since 543 BCE. Mahavamsa is also updated as a modern continuation in volumes under the ministry of cultural affairs of Sri Lanka. In a nutshell this book is nothing but a potboiler. – Asela Unantenne

***

Every country in the world has their own culture and religion. There is no such thing as a multi-cultural country. There are many examples of countries who tried to experiment with multiculturalism and failed.

Sri Lanka is the only country the Sinhalese have. If they lose it, they will become like the Jews before the creation of the State of Israel, orphans travelling the world with no purpose, freedom, identity or dignity. The Hindus mentioned in the article were responsible for the death, mutilation and sacking of Sinhalese cities. They stole the wealth of the Sinhalese, turning them into paupers while destroying Buddhist temples.

The Mahavamsa has also been falsely interpreted to portray King Dutugamunu as some sort of Sinhalese Buddhist supremacist. It is a pity that this article is favoured towards the minorities but does not paint the Sinhalese as people who have their own identity to maintain and protect.

When people talk about Sinhalese Buddhist supremacists, they never shift their focus towards minorities who are not satisfied with whatever they have been given. If the minorities are subjected to intimidation due to a “sinhala buddhist supremacist” attitudes, where do they get the freedom of speech, religion and access to basic human rights and have coexisted alongside us for 78 years of independence? – Wathsara Halangoda

The administration in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore district has deployed survey teams and set up two temporary hospitals in Mhow after residents fell ill after consuming allegedly contaminated drinking water, PTI reported on Saturday.

In a statement, the administration said that at least 12 suspected cases of persons suffering from a stomach infection were detected in Mhow’s Patti Bazaar area on Friday. However, the news agency quoted residents as having claimed that about 24 persons had fallen ill after allegedly consuming contaminated water in the neighbourhood.

This came a month after more than 1,400 persons fell ill in Indore’s Bhagirathpura area due to water contamination, with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhoea and dehydration. The cases were first reported on December 24.

While residents of the locality had claimed that the outbreak had led to 25 deaths, a status report submitted by the state government to the court on January 15 reported seven deaths, including that of a five-month-old boy, PTI reported.

The authorities in Indore had earlier said that residents of the Bhagirathpura area had complained that the water supplied to them had an unusual smell.

In Mhow on Friday, 12 teams were deployed in Patti Bazaar on directions of District Collector Shivam Verma, and more than 80 households had been surveyed, the administration was quoted as saying in a statement.

It added that two temporary hospitals had been set up in the area.

The Mhow town, officially Dr Ambedkar Nagar, is located about 23 km away from Indore city.

Twelve suspected patients had been identified and were undergoing treatment, including some in hospital, PTI reported. Two persons had recovered and had been discharged.

Blood and water samples were being collected for testing in Patti Bazaar.

The statement added that the administration had also roped in local paediatricians and two other child specialists in the affected area, PTI reported.

The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Friday unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Union government to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to ensure that the right to work of persons living in rural areas is protected, PTI reported.

Chief Minister MK Stalin, while moving the resolution, said that the 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin Act that replaced the MGNREGA was “designed in a manner that undermines the livelihoods of rural people across India, the financial structure of the states, the self-reliance of the local bodies and employment opportunities for the rural women”.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief said that Opposition parties had objected to the new Act, adding that he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the new law on December 18.

However, the Union government passed it without regard to the voice of the public, he added.

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

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.

Apart from Tamil Nadu, the Assemblies in Telangana and Punjab have also adopted resolutions demanding that the Union government retain the MGNREGA. The Karnataka Cabinet has decided to move the Supreme Court against the VB-G RAM G Act.

On Friday, Stalin said that all initiatives, whether an infrastructure project or a scheme to provide livelihood, had been implemented efficiently without discrimination in Tamil Nadu, PTI reported.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief claimed that the Union government was not releasing funds based on progress of a project. The Centre was deliberately avoiding the immediate release of funds, showing a “step-motherly” attitude towards the development of the state, he alleged.

TNLA_Resolution: #Withdraw_VBGRAMG #Restore_MGNREGA!

மக்களின் தேவையின் அடிப்படையில் அமைந்த #MGNREGA திட்டத்துக்குப் பதிலாக ஒன்றிய பா.ஜ.க. அரசு கொண்டு வந்துள்ள #VBGRAMG வேலை உறுதித் திட்டமே அல்ல, அது அழிவுத்திட்டம்! கிராமப்புற மக்களின் வாழ்வாதாரத்தை ஒழித்துக்கட்டும் சதி!

இதன்… pic.twitter.com/emgPzE4l3l

— M.K.Stalin - தமிழ்நாட்டை தலைகுனிய விடமாட்டேன் (@mkstalin) January 23, 2026

Referring to the MGNREGA, the chief minister added that Rs 1,026 crore for wages and Rs 1,087 crore for material components remain unreleased, PTI reported.

“Who is affected due to the delay of the funds,” the news agency quoted him as asking. “It is the common people and farmers living in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu.”

Why is there discrimination against our state, Stalin asked.

The chief minister added that under the VB-G RAM G Act, employment was not provided as a right but was based on a provisional allocation determined by the Union government. The name of Mahatma Gandhi has also been removed and replaced in the Act with ulterior motives, he added.

“This House insists that the scheme must continue under the name of Mahatma Gandhi to forever commemorate the principles and the path he laid out for this nation,” the news agency quoted him as saying in the Assembly.

“This House unanimously urges the Union government to ensure that the Right to Work of rural people is upheld as per [MGNREGA] and that funding is guaranteed based on the demand for employment,” he added.

The chief minister said that the Union government should abandon the “new practice of arbitrary financial allocation based on ‘provisional estimates’ and continue the previous practice of demand-based funding”.

He added that the funding ratio should be revised to match the MGNREGA contribution pattern.

BJP criticises adoption of resolution

Later on Friday, the Bharatiya Janata Party questioned the adoption of the resolution in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, asking whether it had the constitutional authority to do so when the law had been passed by Parliament, The Hindu reported.

Speaking to reporters, BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi asked if any district panchayat or municipal corporation had the authority to pass a legislation saying they would not follow the state laws.

“If not, the same logic applies in this case as well,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “And I would like to ask [Congress leader] Rahul Gandhi ji whether the Constitution is in danger if an Act of Parliament is being openly defied by a state Assembly”.

The Congress is an ally of the DMK.

Tamil Nadu is expected to head for Assembly elections in the next three to four months.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said that more than 110 persons had died in West Bengal because of anxiety about the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, The Hindu reported.

Banerjee said three to four persons were dying of suicide every day, PTI reported. The Trinamool Congress chief said that the Election Commission and the Union government should take responsibility for the deaths.

“Why will the case not be filed against EC?” Banerjee asked at an event to mark the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. “The Election Commission of India will have to take responsibility for these deaths, the Government of India will also have to take responsibility.”

The chief minister has been accusing the Election Commission of harassing voters and endangering democratic rights through the voter roll revision process.

In recent months, several booth-level officer in West Bengal have died allegedly by suicide or illnesses due to the alleged work pressure during the process. In one case in October, a 95-year-old man died allegedly by suicide as, according to his family, he was anxious about being excluded from the voter list.

In November, Banerjee in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that the voter roll revision process had reached an “alarming” and “dangerous” stage, emphasising that the manner in which it was being carried out was unplanned and chaotic, and putting citizens and officials at risk.

The draft electoral rolls for West Bengal under the voter roll revision exercise were published on December 16. The names of more than 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.

The deletion from the draft roll is provisional and citizens can object to their names being removed from the list. Citizens whose names have been dropped from the list can file their claims and objections.

At an event on Thursday, Banerjee was quoted by PTI as saying that people, including senior citizens, were having to line up at the special intensive revision camps for hearings and wait for five to six hours in the open every day.

“Citing logical discrepancies, they [poll panel] are picking up issues like surnames of Bengalis which had been known and accepted for years,” the chief minister said.

“I am known as both Mamata Banerjee and Mamata Bandyopadhyay,” she said. “In the same way, Chatterjee and Chattopadhyay are the same surname. Thakur also came to be known as Tagore during British rule.”

Logical discrepancies include a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and cases where parents have more than six children.

On Monday, the Supreme Court told the Election Commission to publish the names of 1.2 crore persons against whom the poll panel had raised “logical discrepancy” objections.

The court said that persons who had received notices from the Election Commission could submit their documents or objections through booth-level agents. If the documents submitted as proof are found to be unsatisfactory, the persons should be given an opportunity to be heard, the bench said.

It also verbally observed that the Class 10 admit cards issued by the state education board must be accepted as a proof in the enumeration process.

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

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

For the last few days, Mridul Basumatary, a 28-year-old resident of Bhoroluwa Gaon, a village in Upper Assam's Lakhimpur district, has been trying to convince his neighbours that he has not filed any complaints against any resident of the village.

On January 18, 250 Bengal-origin Muslim residents of his village were informed that Basumatary, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s youth wing, had filed objections to the Election Commission, asking their names to be taken off the voter roll of Ranganadi Assembly constituency.

But Basumatary denied doing so. “How could I doubt the people of my own village?” he told Scroll. “They have been living here since my grandfather's time. I have known them since my childhood. I know all of them. We have grown up together. How can I doubt their citizenship?”

A special revision of electoral rolls is on in Assam, ahead of the Assembly elections this year.

The first draft of the state’s voter roll was published on December 27, after a door-to-door verification by booth level officers. This was followed by the claims and objections process, when voters get the opportunity to flag anyone they believe should not be on the voter list.

As Scroll reported on Thursday, in several Muslim-majority districts and areas of Assam, bulk objections have been filed against voters, seeking to strike their names off the electoral roll.

Strikingly, some of these complaints have been called out as “fake”. Scroll found at least seven people who denied having filed the complaints, even when their names, voter identity cards and phone numbers had been used in the objection forms.

Basumatary, a booth agent appointed by BJP, is one of them. “Someone forged my signature, used my phone number and voter ID number to file complaints against 250 people,” he told Scroll. “I was shocked.”

He has filed complaints with the North Lakhimpur deputy commissioner and the district election officer.

As Opposition parties accused the BJP of manipulating the revision process, two more people with links to the party – a party member and a booth level agent – told Scroll that their details were misused to file objections against voters without their knowledge. A fourth person accused a BJP worker of getting him to sign an objection form under false pretences.

Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, the BJP parliamentarian from Assam’s Kaziranga, said the Opposition parties were misleading the people. “Anyone can file complaints and objections. It is for the Election Commission to take a final call,” Tasa told Scroll. “Has any voter’s name be deleted yet? No. They are creating noise over a non-issue.”

A flood of fake complaints

Across the state, hundreds of Form 7 applications – the document signed by a voter seeking to strike others off the roll – are being called out as fake.

In addition to Basumatary, Scroll found three people in Ranganadi assembly constituency, whose phone numbers and voter identity cards were allegedly used without their knowledge to file objections against at least 200 people.

Nayan Mondal, a resident of Bishnupur village, said that over 150 people from his village had received notices that he had filed objections against their inclusion in the voter list. “I don’t know who made the complaints,” he told Scroll. “My EPIC [Election Photo Identity Card] number and phone number have been misused and forged. These people are my neighbours and they have been living here even before my birth.”

Another resident of Ranganadi assembly constituency, Nishikanta Das, too, told Scroll that his name, phone number and voter ID have been falsely used to make objections against the voters of Borbam Pathar and Singhara villages in Lakhimpur district. “Someone called me up and said that I have filed complaints and objections against Muslim voters,” Das, a cultivator, told Scroll. “I was shocked. Later, I filed written complaints to the election office stating that I have not asked to delete any voters.”

Even BJP workers and agents appear to be caught unawares by the scale of the objections.

Like Basumatary, Pinki Biswas Roy is a booth level agent appointed by the BJP in Phulbari village of Ranganadi constituency.

She claimed that her signature was forged and voter card misused to file objections against 53 people in her village. “I have not filed any objections and I am thinking of filing a written complaint,” the 24-year-old said.

In another constituency in Lakhimpur district, a BJP worker was named in a police complaint over filing fake objections against 500 Muslim voters, alleging that they had shifted.

“There are about 2,300 voters in my village, of whom about 500 Muslims received summons,” said Ubaidur Rahman, a resident of Ahmedpur Block village in Nowboicha constituency. “All the objections were made by someone named Dulal Hazarika.”

On January 20, Rahman filed a police complaint at Bihpuria police station, alleging misuse of electoral process. He said that he would persist till a first information report is filed in the case.

Hazarika told Scroll that he had not filed any objections. “I have received five- six phone calls in the last three days that I have filed objections against them," he said. “But that is not true.” However, he is yet to file a complaint about the misuse of his name.

BJP workers named in complaints

On January 16, Bishnu Das, a voter of Barhampur assembly constituency in Nagaon district filed a complaint with the Nagaon district election office.

He alleged that his name and Election Photo Identity Card number have been misused to file objections against 75 voters during the ongoing special revision.

In his complaint, Das accused a BJP worker of getting him to sign on a paper that “was written in English”. “When I asked about [the purpose of the form], he told me that I would receive an electric rickshaw from the BJP MLA Jitu Goswami [if I signed it],” he said in the complaint, seen by Scroll. “I am an illiterate person and cannot read or understand English. I was not informed that the paper was related to deletion of voters' names.”

He went on to say that he knew the 75 voters personally and had “never applied or agreed to delete their names from the voter list.”

Das alleged that the BJP worker threatened to get him arrested in a false case, if he asked too many questions.

A day before Das’s complaint, the Hojai unit of the All Assam Minorities Students’ Union, an influential students’ body representing both religious and linguistic minorities, had filed a police complaint against Das and two other complainants.

Between them, the three men named in the complaint had filed forms asking for the names of 142 voters of Barhampur constituency to be struck off the voter rolls.

On January 20, the Nagaon district administration issued a public notice that hearings in Barhampur constituency, as well as Nagaon-Batadraba and Raha assembly constituencies were being suspended after several complaints of fake objections.

The district administration took action on the basis of a complaint from Arfi Begum, a 64-year-old retired government employee of Nagaon district, who had received a notice asking her to appear for a hearing.

A 19-year-old booth level agent appointed by the BJP, Bishal Roy, had filed an objection against her inclusion in the electoral roll of Nagaon-Batadraba constituency, claiming that she had died.

Begum said she was shocked to receive the objection notice and filed a written complaint with the district election officer the same day. The next day, she attended the hearing with all relevant documents. Bishal Roy, she said, did not turn up and so the complaint was rejected. He told Begum that he had not filed the complaint.

Scroll’s calls to Roy’s phone went unanswered.

Begum said: “I have worked as a government employee for the last 35 years in the Nagaon district commissioner office. I am from Sivasagar and I belong to the Assamese Muslim community. Now I am being made a bohiragoto (outsider).”

In Biswanath district, Ahmed Ali, a 62-year-old maulana of Adaveti village, filed a police complaint against a BJP member Ranjan Adhikari after the latter filed an objection, saying that Ali had died and so his name should be struck off the rolls.

“He wanted to [delete my vote] by falsely showing me dead,” Ali said. “There are about 450 voters in my booth. But only 30 of us, all Muslims, were served notices.”

Adhikari, the BJP worker, refused to take Scroll’s calls.

Political parties object

Opposition leaders and representatives of the Bengal-origin Muslim community in Assam, too, alleged that the fake objection forms were an organised attempt to delete Muslim voters at the behest of the BJP.

They pointed to statements made by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and other BJP leaders, which they say have influenced election officials to manipulate the process.

Sarma has recently declared that preparing a correct voter list is "BJP’s agenda". "Is it not our responsibility to check that illegal Miyas' names are not included in the voter lists. Checking that our lands are not under the control of illegal Miyas is our duty. People had voted for us to do these works only," Sarma said.

Miya Muslims is a pejorative term used for Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who are often vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having roots in Assam that go back before Independence.

My letter to Chief Election Commisioner of India @ECISVEEP about extending the time for hearings of Form 7 objections/deletions & co relating data with the NRC list released in 2019 in Assam.

I have given specific examples of @BJP4Assam workers filing form 7 in bulk with fake… pic.twitter.com/leCzE4eMKl

— Sushmita Dev সুস্মিতা দেব (@SushmitaDevAITC) January 23, 2026

Debabrata Saikia, the leader of Opposition in Assam Assembly, in a letter to Election Commission alleged that “local BJP leaders are involved in the removal of the names of electors who were previously enrolled in the electoral rolls.”

“It is significant that many of the affected electors belong to the Muslim community, along with other indigenous residents who have lived in the area for generations,” he said.

Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev on January 19 met Assam Chief Election Commissioner Anurag Goel and flagged the fact that false complaints by unknown and non-existent entities are being used to intimidate and harass genuine voters. “The complainants are being filed by people who don’t exist and don’t appear for the hearings,” Dev told Scroll. “It is targeted against the minorities and I suspect it is by the BJP.”

The hills of Eravikulam wake slowly. Before sunrise, the slopes are almost invisible, holding the last cold breath of night. Then a thin, colourless light appears over the rounded grass ridges and reveals shola hollows, rock faces, and faint animal paths. A Nilgiri tahr steps out near its main point Rajamala, pausing above a cliff as if listening for something familiar in the wind.

Located close to the famed hill town of Munnar in Idukki district of Kerala, Eravikulam looks inevitable today, as if these vast expanses of high grassland had always been destined to become a national park. Nothing about its present stability indicates how close it once came to vanishing under a file stamp at the state revenue department.

Fifty years ago, the same slopes, now described as prime habitat of the highly endangered Nilgiri tahr, were listed as surplus land under Kerala’s ​m​uch-celebrated and revolutionary land reform programme.

The grasslands that hold the highest concentration of Nilgiri tahr in the world, apart from supporting vast spreads of Strobilanthes kunthiana, known as kurinji or Neelakurinji, which blooms once in 12 years, were treated in official language as “vacant”, “idle”, and “available for redistribution” among the landless.

When grass was insignificant

In fact, the misunderstanding did not begin in the 1970s. It began much earlier, when colonial hunters arrived in their old plantation town, Munnar, with rifles. In British estate records, the high grass country above Munnar was referred to by names such as “top grass”, “spare slope”, “estate waste”, indicating that it was not of any use.

Hunters travelled to shoot Nilgiri tahr on weekends and took trophy photographs beside carcasses on the bare granite of Anamudi. Grass was treated as the space between the tea and the forest. The colonial eye looked at slope vegetation and saw only entertainment. That vocabulary persisted in settlement records, revenue manuals, and land classification documents long after independence. Grass was not timber. Grass was not a plantation crop. Therefore, grass was considered nothing.

When Kerala vested private forests with the state after 1971, revenue officers used that inherited language. Everything not under the tea estate boundaries was considered surplus by default. The administrative categories were dangerous because they carried a century of misunderstanding. Land not classified as a plantation was marked ready for redistribution. Officials in Munnar repeated a familiar line in those years. Grass has no purpose. It appeared regularly in file notes and in discussions with foresters.

Quiet persuasion

Environmental activist and senior journalist MJ Babu, who lived in Munnar during the 1970s, recalled how persistent that official view was. Revenue officers questioned why anyone would want to protect an area where nothing edible or tall seemed to grow. He remembers the response of a certain conservationist in the plantation town. They relied on a simple ecological truth. Growth, they said, does not mean height. “Life here moves sideways, not upwards,” they said. “It is not a tree. It is a slope.”

Babu believed persuasion worked best in that time before public protest shaped conservation. He remembers one evening in the early 1970s, when a sceptical senior revenue officer went to Rajamala. He watched a herd of Nilgiri tahr move in single file across a narrow cliff ledge with slow confidence. At dusk, the officer said only one sentence. “This cannot be chopped.” That line marked the beginning of a shift in the file language that would eventually save Eravikulam.

Memories of slopes

Before any forest officer took an interest, Munnar’s famed Muthuvan tribal community protected the slopes in their own quiet way. Tribal forest watcher PV Sreenith said that his elders understood breeding cliffs and grazing patterns of the endangered species long before government surveys arrived in Munnar. They knew where the animals moved naturally through rock formations before calving season near the Lakkom forest region, and which ridges bachelor herds used when moving between grass patches. They learned by repeating the same walk for generations. No formal training was involved.

Muthuvan Krishnan, who lived as a living repository of forest knowledge in Eravikulam till the age of 85 and passed away on July 30, was a long-time watcher of Nilgiri tahr under the forest department. “We never used the word protect,” Krishnan used to remind visitors. “We called it respect.” He also described how elders sometimes misled surveyors by inventing stories of dangerous leopards or sudden landslides to keep them away from maternity slopes. Their methods were simple, but their effect was long term. “Grass listens,” he said. “Heavy steps break it.”

Retired Indian Forest Service officer James Zachariah, who worked for long in Eravikulam as a divisional forest officer, recollects how science began to influence policy decisions at around the same time through the work of several researchers. They moved through the slopes with notebooks, tracking seed dispersal, sketching shrubs, and studying the Neelakurinji, the plant that flowers once in twelve years.

He observed that policy sees flowering, not waiting, but waiting is the life of kurinji. The plant remains underground for most of its cycle, storing energy until a single collective bloom. Today, threats such as soil compaction from tourism and road construction, and climate change, pose risks to this ancient ecosystem, underscoring the need for careful management and community engagement to protect Eravikulam’s delicate balance.

At first, the scientific arguments were not enough. But they were not alone. Behind the shift was MK Ranjitsinh of the Central Forest Department, an architect of the 1972 Wildlife Protection Act, who repeatedly spoke to the Prime Minister about Eravikulam based on reports from scientists and a Scotsman with a deep attachment to those hills. That Scotsman was JC Goldsbury, a former officer of the Gurkha Regiment during World War II who later served as manager of Vagavur Estate under the Kannan Devan Company.

Goldsbury knew every footpath, ridge line, and unseen gully in what later became the national park. He argued that building a motorable road through this landscape would destroy its wildness. He believed the essence of Eravikulam lay in its lack of roads. In April 1976, the then Prime Minsiter Indira Gandhi visited Kochi to inaugurate the first ship keel at Cochin Shipyard.

Then, Navy Chief Admiral OS Dawson arranged a helicopter to take her to Munnar so she could see Eravikulam from the air. But unforeseen political developments led to urgent meetings, and she had to refuse the flight. She said, “Next time I come, we will go to Munnar.” That next time never came. Dawson later flew over the hills himself, photographed them, and sent the pictures to her. The images showed long ribbons of grass, shola patches like dark tears in the green, and slopes like frozen waves. It was those images, not speeches, that helped persuade the highest levels of government that Eravikulam mattered.

Rice, files and a sanctuary

There is a little-known episode from 1974 that demonstrates how unusual the sanctuary’s creation was. Kerala needed rice from the central stores during a food shortage. Union Food Minister Annasaheb Shinde, who also handled forest matters, told Kerala minister Baby John that rice stocks would be expedited if Kerala moved quickly to create a Nilgiri tahr sanctuary at Munnar, as it concerned the Prime Minister. The conversation produced momentum in a file that had stalled for months. A resource as ordinary as rice helped shift the fate of a wild grassland. Ranjitsinh, who held the additional charge of union food secretary, played the catalyst.

By 1975, forest officer G Mukundan drafted the sanctuary notification. Chief Conservator KK Nair supported it, and Forest Minister KG Adiyodi signed it. Kannan Devan Company promised to support patrolling expenses and involve Muthuvans as watchers. It was the first time a corporation, a government, and tribals came together for conservation. That year, Eravikulam became a national park, well ahead of the Silent Valley movement that would become a national symbol of environmental protest in the 1980s.

Eravikulam’s story remained largely hidden because it did not involve demonstrations or confrontations. It depended on persuasion, memory, and timing rather than slogans. Silent Valley needed public mobilisation and political struggle. Eravikulam needed a change in file description and a few crucial decisions made quietly.

Fifty years later, the numbers speak of success and risk. Recent census findings show 2,668 Nilgiri tahr across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Kerala has 1,365. Eravikulam alone supports 841. Officials say the number is considerably fair. But they hide worrying details. Tea plantations, roads, and tourism infrastructure genetically isolate the Eravikulam population. Wildlife veterinarians warn that diseases such as canine distemper, which can spread from stray dogs entering park fringes, could devastate the herd. Rangers have documented injuries from dog attacks on young tahr.

The Neelakurinji faces quieter threats. Tourism during bloom years compacts the soil where seeds lie dormant. Botanists have documented uneven bloom patches, delayed flowering on certain ridges, and reduced seed germination. Climate change brings erratic monsoons, prolonged dry spells, and warmer nights, disrupting the ​12-year cycle. The effects show themselves slowly, often invisibly.

The next 50 years

The shola-grassland mosaic demands humility. The fragmented corridors between Eravikulam, Chinnar, and Pampadum Shola need restoration to allow genetic exchange among tahr populations. Strict controls on feral dogs entering from nearby settlements are necessary to prevent disease. Scientific monitoring of kurinji cycles is required to understand shifts in flowering patterns under climate stress.

MJ Babu has said that the true challenge now is not changing the law but changing attention. Conservation originally succeeded in Eravikulam through persuasion. That method works only if new generations are willing to see the landscape correctly.

Eravikulam will always remain in the shadow of Silent Valley in public memory, but it came first. Silent Valley needed a protest. Eravikulam needed patience. Silent Valley was the country’s visible awakening. Eravikulam was its quiet rehearsal.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Minimum temperatures are likely to fall by 3 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius in northwestern India, including Delhi, over the next 24 hours, the India Meteorological Department said on Friday.

The drop in temperatures came after rainfall and snowfall in the northern parts of the country.

The weather department said that light to moderate rainfall and heavy snowfall were recorded at most places in Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh, and at isolated locations in Uttarakhand on Friday.

Between Thursday night and Friday morning, snowfall was recorded in Shimla, Manali, Keylong, Kufri, Bharmaur, Gulmarg, Kupwara, Pahalgam, Kukernag, Qazigund and Banihal, among other places. Snowfall was also reported for the first time this season in parts of Uttarakhand.

Heavy snowfall across the Kashmir Valley on Friday led to the cancellation of all flights at Srinagar airport, India Today reported. Icy conditions, particularly in the higher reaches, also forced the closure of several key highways and roads.

Current weather conditions indicate that normalisation of operations may take longer than expected. Snow clearance activities are ongoing at Srinagar Airport, and passengers are requested to stay in touch with their respective airlines for updates. @MoCA_GoI @AAI_Official… pic.twitter.com/1Hc9jMJ2WS

— Srinagar Airport (@SrinagarAirport) January 23, 2026

The India Meteorological Department has also forecast dense to very dense fog during morning and night hours in isolated parts of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh between Saturday and Monday.

Another intense western disturbance is expected to affect northwest India between Monday and Wednesday, bringing isolated heavy rainfall and snowfall over the western Himalayan region on Tuesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Northwestern India has been witnessing one of its driest winters on record, with an 84.8% rainfall deficit in December and an 84% shortfall during the first 10 days of January, leaving hill regions largely snowless during the peak winter period, the newspaper reported. This deficit is expected to reduce following the current spell of snowfall, the weather department said.

The Karnataka High Court permitted bike taxis to operate in the state, allowing a batch of petitions filed by cab aggregators Ola, Uber and Rapido against the ban on the service. The bench held that bikes used for taxi services fell within the definition of “transport vehicles” under the Motor Vehicles Act.

The state government cannot deny them permits on the grounds that bikes were not transport vehicles, said the court. Bike taxi operators could file applications to get contract carriage permits to operate motorcycles as bike taxis, it added.

In April, a single-judge bench ordered all bike taxi services to stop operations in Karnataka. The court had referred to a 2019 expert committee report, which considered the impact of bike taxis on traffic and safety. Unless the state government frames rules and guidelines to permit bike taxis, such vehicles cannot be permitted, the court had held. Read on.

Bike taxis are exploding in India – but are facing government roadblocks, writes Vineet Bhalla.

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time record low of 91.9 against the United States dollar. The Indian currency, sliding 41 paise during the day, continued to lose its value amid foreign fund outflows and risk aversion triggered by geopolitical tensions.

Speculative buying of the dollar by offshore players had also contributed to the fall. The rupee fell more than 1% this week as foreign investors have withdrawn about $3.5 billion from Indian equities in January so far. Read on.

The Bombay High Court granted bail to Kabil Kala Manch artists Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, who are accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case. A division bench allowed their bail application on the grounds of long incarceration.

Gorkhe and Gaichor were arrested in September 2020. The court was hearing their plea against a February 2022 order of a special National Investigation Agency court that denied them bail.

The NIA has accused Gaichor of using the Elgar Parishad event on December 31, 2017, to make inflammatory speeches to incite violence and “propagate Naxal activities and Maoist ideology”. It has alleged that Gorkhe used his cultural song and dance performances to propagate Maoist ideology. Read on.

The Delhi High Court set aside the bail granted to a Muslim man accused of being involved in clashes and stone-throwing during a demolition drive near a mosque and a graveyard at Turkman Gate in the national capital on January 7. The clashes had broken out when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was carrying out the demolition on land adjoining the Faiz Elahi mosque.

The 25-year-old man, Ubedullah, was among the 18 persons arrested in the case. He was booked under sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to rioting and attempt to murder.

On Tuesday, Ubedullah was granted bail by a trial court, just a week after it denied bail to five other persons accused in the case. The High Court said that the trial court’s order was “cryptic and unreasoned” and had not addressed the prosecution’s arguments. It directed the trial court to reconsider the man’s plea. Read on.

The toll in the crackdown on the recent protests in Iran is at least 5,000, human rights activists have said. This would make the ongoing protests the deadliest unrest in Iran in several decades.

The protests, which began on December 28, initially focused on discontent about rising inflation. However, they later expanded as protesters in more than 100 towns demanded an end to clerical rule.

The United States-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has said that the toll includes more than 4,700 protesters, over 200 demonstrators affiliated to the Iranian government, 43 children and 40 civilians who had not participated in the unrest. Read on.

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

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice in a writ petition filed by a Hindutva group seeking directions for the Archaeological Survey of India and other central organisations to take over control of the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple on the Thirupparankundram hill near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Live Law reported.

The petition has also sought permission to light a lamp permanently, for 24 hours a day, on a stone pillar located on the hill. The hillock has the Arulmigu Subramania Swamy temple and the Sikkandar Badhusha dargah.

The petitioner, the Hindu Dharma Parishad, has further sought directions from the court to allow the entire Thirupparankundram hill to be lit with lamps during the Karthigai Deepam festival, held in November or December, and to permit devotees to offer prayers at the site on that day, the legal news outlet reported.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and Vipul M Pancholi issued notice to the Union government, the Archaeological Survey of India, the Tamil Nadu government, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, the Madurai district collector, the Madurai Police commissioner and the executive officer of the temple.

When the matter was taken up, Kumar asked whether the case was still pending before the Madras High Court.

The counsel for the Tamil Nadu government told the court that on January 6, a division bench of the High Court had upheld a single judge’s order allowing the lighting of the lamp, and that the parties were considering filing a special leave petition challenging the decision.

The controversy arose after temple devotees sought permission to light a lamp at the stone pillar. On December 1, a single judge bench of the Madras High Court, led by Justice GR Swaminathan, ruled that the pillar was a deepathoon, or a structure meant for holding lamps, and directed the temple to restore the tradition of lighting the lamp at the site.

The judge had also held that the practice would not infringe upon the religious rights of the nearby Muslim shrine.

The Tamil Nadu government, the temple authorities and the dargah management, among others, had challenged the order, raising concerns about law and order, ownership of the site and the nature of the ritual that had been allowed.

On January 6, a Madras High Court bench of Justices G Jayachandran and KK Ramakrishnan upheld Swaminathan’s ruling. The bench had observed that the stone pillar is located on the land that belongs to the temple.

It had directed the temple management to light the lamp during the Karthigai Deepam festival.

However, the court had said at the time that the lamp should be lit only by members of the temple management and that the public would not be allowed to accompany them.

Separately, on December 9, a group of Opposition MPs submitted an impeachment notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against Swaminathan, saying that the judge’s recent orders and actions have been viewed as “disruptive to social harmony and detrimental to integrity of the judiciary”.

The impeachment notice had come against the backdrop of Swaminathan’s order in the Thirupparankundram matter.

The MPs had stated that Swaminathan’s conduct had raised serious questions regarding the impartiality, transparency and secular functioning of the judiciary. They alleged that the judge had shown undue favouritism towards a senior advocate and lawyers from a particular community in deciding cases.

Also read: ‘RSS agenda, favours Brahmins’: The controversial career of a Madras HC judge under impeachment fire

Were roads never built to Chardham (“How the highway to Hinduism's holiest shrines became a death trap”)? Whenever hills are cut, landslides follow for at least three to five years until the unstable areas become stable. Instability has been compounded by large-scale deforestation since the 1910s when a huge part of the forest cover was cut till the Chipko movement brought attention to devastation.

If roads are not widened, there may be accidents what with huge SUVs vying for space with smaller cars, not to mention the frequent bad driving manners of big car owners. So cursed if you do or don’t. Don’t try to make a living by criticising others. – Debasis Basu

***

Good work on the video on Chardham landslides but I feel it is incomplete (“On the road to Chardham, a landslide every two kilometres”). As shown in the video, there is data on when the road was built, the day and timing of landslide, and the weather condition. You now need high-resolution digital elevation models to understand the slopes above and below the road, calculate rock the mass and work out the instability factor.

Engineers cut rock mass along the road and do not understand how the rock mass above is going to behave. You also need to look into stratigraphy, which is the study of rock layers, and aspects of rock facies, which examines rock characteristics, and their strength and regolith thickness, or deposits, over the slope. Work this out and you have the solution.

If you are not geologist, collaborate with one for help. There is a desperate need for guidelines for making road in landslide prone region. Hope this comment helps. – Dhananjay

Trump’s Venezuela move

This is a stupid article (“When India needed support, Venezuela stood firmly by its side”). Politicians then and now have different objectives. It is a different matter that Venezuelans stood by India back then when their representatives were elected through a democratic process unlike now when their leader has not been democratically elected and has exploited his people and destroyed the economy.

[Editor’s note: In April 2013, Nicolas Maduro was elected president with a narrow victory margin. His opponent demanded a recount. In June 2013, the National Electoral Council said its audit found no discrepancies in the result.]

Venezuelans in Venezuela and outside are rejoicing the removal of Maduro since he had ensured the capture of all institutions, from the military to the courts and election commissions. How many Venezuelans has this writer spoken to? I personally know many who are overjoyed. It’s not a case of opposing imperialistic powers but that someone realised the oppression of the Venezuelans as well as the fact that, strategically, Maduro had allowed the presence of China, Russia and Iran in America’s backyard, threatening the country’s security.

Trump has solved two problems in one go. Also, Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is poor. Gaining from Venezuela’s is a distant objective but the people of Venezuela will also benefit from the oil economy which has been destroyed by Maduro. – Mohit Chuganee

***

Oil is big business and Americans are fixated on suspected losses due to Venezuela’s oil sale. This leads to other conclusions, like Venezuela sending illegal migrants through the south Mexican border. But jumping to wrong conclusions and making a country and its president a scapegoat for a whole lot of crimes of a whole lot of impoverished, poverty-stricken people of many South American nations is an easy way threaten real criminals. – Paul John

Ladakh must learn from Bhutan

Wonderfully put (“Why steel roofs in Ladakh are a sign of the region’s political and social crises”). This is the price of modernity. I was posted in Leh in the mid-1980s but even in those days the change was becoming apparent. It is sad but the old order must make way for the new. We must learn from countries like Bhutan and Switzerland: preserving ecology and maintaining a clean environment is the main focus. – DS Sarao

Don’t target Sambhaji Raje

Kindly mention the names of historians who have recorded Sambhaji Raje as a “debauched” and unfit ruler (“Harsh Mander: How Nazi cinema finds a reflection in Hindutva films”). The speakers should not have dragged Sambhaji Raje into this debate without thoroughly examining genuine books in Marathi. Check the work of a genuine historian and if you are satisfied, remove this sentence yourselves. – S Malode

The Delhi High Court has set aside the bail granted to a Muslim man accused of being involved in clashes and stone-throwing during a demolition drive near a mosque and a graveyard at Turkman Gate in the national capital on January 7, PTI reported on Friday.

The clashes had broken out when the Municipal Corporation of Delhi was carrying out the demolition on land adjoining the Faiz Elahi mosque and a nearby graveyard.

The mosque was not damaged during the drive, PTI had quoted an unidentified official of the civic body as claiming at the time. However, unidentified police officials had told the news agency that the situation escalated after social media posts claimed that the mosque was being demolished, leading to a large crowd gathering at the site.

They claimed that around 150 to 200 persons were involved in the violence, and six police personnel, including the local station house officer, were injured.

Ubedullah (25) was among the 18 persons arrested in the case, The Indian Express reported. He was booked under sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to rioting and attempt to murder.

On Tuesday, Ubedullah was granted bail by a trial court, just a week after it denied bail to five other persons accused in the case.

While opposing the bail in the trial court, the prosecution had relied on security camera footage and the disclosure statement of a co-accused, alleging that Ubedullah was part of a violent crowd that obstructed the police, threw stones and damaged public property, PTI reported.

Ubedullah’s counsel had argued that the case against him rested entirely on security camera footage that did not show any overt act by him, The Indian Express reported.

The counsel added that there was no video of him or any call records showing that he was involved in the violence. The defence also submitted that Ubedullah was the only breadwinner in his family and caregiver to his paralysed father, the newspaper reported.

On Wednesday, the High Court set aside the bail.

Remanding the matter to the trial court for fresh consideration, Justice Prateek Jalan said that the bail order in favour of Ubedullah was “cryptic and unreasoned”, PTI reported.

While courts are cautious about interfering with an order granting liberty to a person, this was an “exceptional case”, Jalan was quoted as saying.

He added that the bail order did not consider the prosecution’s arguments and did not analyse the factors required while deciding a bail plea.

The trial court has been directed to reconsider the bail plea on Friday.

The demolition drive on January 7 had followed a December 22 order of the municipal corporation declaring that structures beyond 0.19 acres of land around the mosque were encroachments and liable to be removed.

The civic body had said that no documentary evidence had been produced to establish ownership or lawful possession of the land by the mosque’s managing committee or the Delhi Waqf Board. The mosque is located within the 0.19-acre land.

The corporation’s order was issued after a November 12 direction of a division bench of the High Court, which granted the civic body and the Public Works Department three months to clear 38,940 square feet of encroachments near Ramlila Ground at Turkman Gate.

However, on January 6, the High Court said that the matter “requires consideration” while hearing a plea filed by the mosque’s managing committee challenging the December 22 order.

The Bombay High Court on Friday granted bail to Kabil Kala Manch artists Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor, who are accused in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case, reported Bar and Bench.

A division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Shyam Chandak allowed their bail application on the grounds of long incarceration, according to Live Law.

The case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon. Kabir Kala Manch was one of the 250 Dalit and human rights organisations that had organised the conclave.

One person was killed in the violence and several others were injured.

The National Investigation Agency has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Gorkhe and Gaichor were arrested in September 2020.

On Friday, the High Court was hearing their petitions against a February 2022 order of a special National Investigation Agency court in Mumbai, which denied them bail.

The NIA court had said that the material on record suggested that they hatched a “serious conspiracy”, along with members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), to overthrow the Modi government.

The High Court directed Gorkhe and Gaichor to be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh each, along with sureties of the same amount, reported Bar and Bench.

It also directed them to appear at the NIA office in Mumbai on the first Monday of every month.

The NIA has accused Gaichor of using the Elgar Parishad event to make inflammatory speeches to incite violence and “propagate Naxal activities and Maoist ideology”, reported Live Law.

It has claimed that Gorkhe used his “performances” of cultural songs and dances to propagate Maoist ideology.

Among the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, the Bombay High Court has granted bail to Rona Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale and Sudha Bharadwaj, while the Supreme Court has granted bail to Varavara Rao on medical grounds and to Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira on merits. In November, the Supreme Court also granted interim bail to Jyoti Jagtap.

One person accused in the case, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, died in prison in 2021.

When the Supreme Court in 2023 granted bail to two people accused in the case, it noted that the primary evidence cited by the NIA – a batch of letters – was of “weak probative value or quality”. In addition, a digital forensics firm, Arsenal Consulting, concluded that false evidence had been planted on the laptops and devices of the accused persons.

Also read: How Kabir Kala Manch, the anti-caste cultural troupe, challenges the hierarchical social order

The Karnataka High Court on Friday permitted the operation of bike taxis in the state, allowing a batch of petitions filed by cab aggregators ANI Technologies, Uber and Rapido against the ban on the service, The Hindu reported.

ANI Technologies owns Ola cabs.

On April 2, a single-judge bench ordered all bike taxi services to stop operations in Karnataka within six weeks. The court referred to an expert committee report from 2019, which had considered the impact of bike taxis on traffic and safety.

Unless the state government frames rules and guidelines to permit bike taxis, such vehicles cannot be permitted in Karnataka, the court had held.

The six-week deadline for bike taxis to stop operation in the state was set to expire in May. However, cab aggregators later urged the court to extend this deadline. Accepting the request, the court had allowed Ola and Uber to continue their bike taxi services till June 15.

On June 13, a division bench refused to stay the single-judge bench’s order. However, the court sought the response of state authorities on appeals filed by the cab aggregators against the ban, while rejecting their request to continue interim relief.

The bench said it would have allowed the request had the state government been in the process of framing rules. However, since the government had decided not to permit bike taxis, such an order could not be passed, it said.

During their arguments in court, the cab aggregators had said that the ban violated their fundamental right to trade under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, Live Law reported.

The cab aggregators had also said that the state government cannot, by executive action, claim to have a larger right and override all these provisions, as that would be in contravention of the 1988 Motor Vehicles Act.

On the other hand, the state government had argued that a motorcycle cannot be a transport vehicle, Live Law reported. It added that the statutory definition did not contemplate its use for carrying passengers or for hire.

If a motorcycle were to be considered a transport vehicle, “it is not a passenger vehicle and not to be used for hire or reward”, it had added.

During the hearing on Friday, the court held that bikes used for taxi services fell within the definition of “transport vehicles” under the Motor Vehicles Act, Bar and Bench reported. It added that the state government cannot refuse or deny permits to such vehicles on the grounds that bikes were not transport vehicles.

Bike taxi operators could file applications to get contract carriage permits to operate motorcycles as bike taxis, it added.

The bench added that while the state government was free to examine all relevant aspects to decide whether to accept such applications, permits cannot be refused merely on the ground that the vehicle was a motorcycle.

Also read: Bike taxis are exploding in India – but are facing government roadblocks

The Greater Noida Police on Thursday arrested two more builders in connection with the death of a 27-year-old software engineer who drowned after his car fell into a waterlogged pit near a construction site in Sector 150 of Noida, PTI reported.

The incident had occurred on Saturday at around 12.30 am when the engineer, Yuvraj Mehta, was driving to his home in Noida from Gurgaon through dense fog, the newspaper reported. The accident took place at a point where the road takes a sharp turn.

Mehta is suspected to have driven straight ahead, causing his car to fly over a two-metre-wide drain and a low boundary wall before plunging into a 70-foot-deep water-filled pit near the construction site.

The engineer was allegedly trapped, first inside the vehicle and then outside, for nearly two hours while pleading for help before drowning, PTI reported. His car was fished out of the pit by the authorities at around 6.30 pm on Tuesday.

An unidentified police officer told PTI that those arrested on Thursday have been identified as Ravi Bansal, a resident of Faridabad, and Sachin Karnwal, a resident of Ghaziabad.

Another officer told The Indian Express that Bansal and Karanwal were office-bearers at Lotus Greens Constructions Private Limited, a real estate company linked to the site where the accident took place, and also held shares in the plot.

On Sunday, the Greater Noida Police registered a first information report against Lotus Greens Constructions Private Limited and another real estate company also linked to the plot, MZ Wiztown Planners Private Limited.

In a statement, the police had earlier said that “on the intervening night of January 16 and 17, a car driver, Yuvraj Mehta (27), died after drowning in a waterlogged plot due to alleged negligence on the part of the builder and its associates at a construction site of Lotus Greens”, PTI reported.

However, a spokesperson for Lotus Greens Construction had issued a statement saying that the company had “no role to play because the said plot was transferred in 2019-20 to… [another company] with the approval of the Noida Authority”.

On Tuesday, Abhay Kumar, a promoter at MZ Wiztown Planners, was arrested and sent to six days’ judicial custody a day later after the court directed police to investigate the drain lapses, The Indian Express reported.

Kumar, however, has maintained that the plot was sold to them by Lotus Greens Construction and was already excavated in 2020.

“However, the Noida Authority withheld commencement permission, paralysing the project,” the newspaper quoted him as claiming. Kumar had also said that the land allotted to him was part of the Sports City Project and the project was halted.

A case of culpable homicide, causing death by negligence and an act endangering life was also filed against the two companies on Monday.

On Wednesday, the police filed a separate FIR in connection with the case and booked five named officials of the two companies, charging them with violating environmental and pollution norms, besides negligence at the construction site, PTI reported.

The Uttar Pradesh government has also formed a special investigation team to probe the matter.

NGT takes suo motu cognisance of incident

On Thursday, the National Green Tribunal took suo motu cognisance of the incident based on a news report published by Times of India on Tuesday, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, along with expert member A Senthil Vel, observed that the matter prima facie indicated a violation of the 1986 Environment Protection Act and failures in taking corrective steps by authorities that contributed to the incident.

“The news item raises substantial issues relating to compliance with the environmental norms and implementation of the provisions of scheduled enactment,” Bar and Bench quoted the tribunal as noting.

The incident also raised environmental concerns linked to stormwater management and regulatory compliance, it added. The tribunal sought responses from the Uttar Pradesh goverment and the authorities in Noida.

Can media organisations use the work of independent artists without credit or payment? Does it not amount to a violation of an artist’s copyright?

In recent years, several independent photographers, filmmakers and writers have accused mainstream media organisations of using their photographs, videos and writings without proper attribution, and sometimes even presenting them as their own content.

The issue came into sharp focus in December when Emmy-nominated filmmaker and photographer Ronny Sen filed a civil suit against Zee News seeking Rs 18 crore in damages. He accused the channel of a deliberate act of copyright infringement, alleging it had used his exclusive videos documenting the transport of cheetahs from Africa to India without authorisation.

A commercial court in Kolkata admitted the suit and will hear the matter.

Sen told Scroll that what had happened was “quite outrageous”. He alleged that Zee didn’t only “steal the work but have claimed it as exclusive and suggested that only they had access to it”.

Zee News did not respond to Scroll’s email seeking a response to the allegation.

Sen said that he hopes that “courts will do something so that the rights of photographers like me can be secured”.

For Sen, this was not an isolated incident involving Zee News. He has pointed out that, as far back as 2014, one of his photographs was used by Zee News’s Bengali channel during coverage of protests in Jadavpur University without his consent.

One of Sen’s main arguments in his suit is that Zee News cannot rely on “fair use” because the video was not used “incidentally or just for brief news reporting”. Instead, the channel used the entire photograph “repeatedly, without giving him credit, and even falsely claimed it as their own with exclusive access”.

At the heart of the debate lies a phrase that is frequently invoked but rarely understood, “fair use” – or as Indian law calls it, “fair dealing”.

What is fair dealing?

While the term “fair dealing” is widely used in India, the doctrine itself is distinct from the concept of “fair use” in the United States.

Fair use, a feature of American copyright law, is considered relatively “open-ended and flexible”, said Mumbai-based copyright law advocate Pankhuri Upadhyay. Under US law, courts apply a four-factor test that looks at the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market for the original work.

In India, the governing framework is Section 52 of the Copyright Act, which lists specific situations where the use of copyrighted material “does not amount to infringement”.

These include limited use for “criticism or review” and for “reporting current events and current affairs”, including public lectures. However, the law does not define fair dealing in clear terms, instead provides circumstances where it may be used as a defence if an instance of use is challenged.

Explaining how courts approach this, Pankhuri said that “commercial use is not automatically disqualified in India, but it does warrant greater scrutiny” and often weighs against a fair dealing claim.

Another key factor, she noted, is the “amount and substantiality of the work used”, warning that even short excerpts can count against fair dealing if they capture the most significant part of a creative work.

These factors, she said, are applied together, “not as a rigid checklist”.

Section 52 also makes author attribution mandatory in news reporting, while Sections 51 and 57 protect copyright and moral rights.

Advocate Prashant T Reddy, who practises in Delhi, added that even permitted uses cannot cross into “misrepresentation or distortion” that harms an author’s reputation.

Pankhuri emphasised that fair use is “not a rule but a defence”, and can only be determined by courts on a case-by-case basis.

‘Photographers have no rights?’

Media organisations are increasingly exploiting the work of photographers, Sen argued, because of a key structural shift within newsrooms.

“Media publications that used to hire photographers in the past don’t really hire anymore because there is a sense that images can be produced by anyone,” he said. However, when a story becomes important, “there is tremendous pressure on publications to generate some kind of visual material, and then there is a tendency by large media groups to use other people’s work without any due process”, he added.

Sen pointed out that photographers remain a “largely unorganised community, which makes it difficult for them to enforce their rights”.

“The crisis we see today is because photographers have been completely sidelined, and under pressure, big media organisations run photographs without consent,” Sen said. “Photographers, like any other creative professionals, put in just as much work. How is it that photographers have no rights?”

Photographer Gauri Gill echoed similar concerns. She said she was “disheartened” last year to discover that her photographs had been used “without permission by media organisations”.

Brilliant Gauri Gill took these viral photos of @MiraPagliNair and @ZohranKMamdani. She's being ripped off, they're being circulated without credit. These have her name on, let's share these and fix it. pic.twitter.com/hGsylPSKXY

— Karuna Nundy (@karunanundy) November 9, 2025

She recalled that in November 2025, major media organisations had taken her unpublished, older photographs of Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, with his mother Mira Nair, from her private Instagram account, without her permission. The images were subsequently made viral on social media.

Gill said she was upset that “major profit-making publications” had used her work without permission, credit, or payment, and chose to “let the matter go” instead of taking legal action.

“It has definitely given me pause to think and consider what to do in the future,” she added. “I was freely putting out original content on my Instagram account, just for the pleasure of sharing, and trusting people not to share without asking, but now, I don’t know.”

Gill said the problem has two sides – companies using images without permission or credit and individuals sharing photos online. “I wonder about the distinction in law as it applies to companies and individuals, print, TV and social media,” she said. “The internet has introduced a whole new dimension to the concern.”

Kolkata-based photographer Subhrajit Sen told Scroll that in May 2025, a major television network had “used his original photographs” while crediting itself as the source. The images were part of his work and had earlier been published with attribution by another publication.

Subhrajit raised the issue on Instagram, calling it “alarming and deeply irresponsible” to reuse his images without permission or credit, and said it violated his rights and reflected poorly on editorial ethics.

He said he took a stand publicly by posting about the issue on Instagram and tagging the news channel. It contacted him and “attempted to offer compensation”, which he declined. Subsequently, “they issued a public apology on LinkedIn”, he said.

Subhrajit said he chose not to approach the courts “as legal action is costly and time-consuming, especially against a large media house”. He also said the “lack of accessible contact details” left him with no option but to flag the issue on Instagram.

Another photographer, Ishan Banerjee, said he had a similar experience with the same television channel. After Subhrajit’s Instagram post, Banerjee said the channel used his photo and told him, “It’s just a photo. Why are you making a big issue?”

He said his credit request was refused, and the image was later quietly removed.

In its LinkedIn apology, the television channel said there was “absolutely no intention to misuse anyone’s work or to take credit for it”.

In April 2025, Delhi-based artist Anita Dube faced copyright allegations after using lines from poet Aamir Aziz’s poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jaayega in works shown and sold at Vadehra Art Gallery. Aziz accused her of theft, saying, “This is not conceptual borrowing. This is theft. This is erasure.”

View this post on Instagram

Aziz told Scroll that while the gallery came to a settlement with him, Dube did not. Aziz said that Dube tried to convince him that the use amounted to “fair dealing, claiming it was promoting his work”.

On legal action, he said approaching the court would itself require around Rs 2 lakh in court fees. “How struggling artists could afford such costs,” he said.

Mumbai-based photographer Prarthna Singh summed up the wider problem, saying the theft of creative work is rampant in India. Even when images are publicly available, she said, “that is not the way it should be used; even if it’s out in public, you should still reach out to the artist for permission”.

Burden of implementation

Speaking to Scroll, Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer Anshumaan Sahni explained that individuals often lack the resources needed to enforce their own copyright.

“Large corporations typically have strong systems in place to track copyright infringement and actively pursue violators,” he said. “However, when it comes to independent artists, photographers and writers, this system is against them because it requires constant vigilance.”

Sahni noted that even among individuals, there is a clear hierarchy. Since damages claimed in court have to be based on potential earnings lost by an artist, new artists are at a disadvantage.

“Someone who has goodwill and is already famous, there is a clear value attached to their work,” he said. “But for someone who is just starting, how do you value their work?”

While an established artist may be able to claim damages based on prior sales, “to pursue such a claim, the artist would often have to spend a significant amount on legal costs”, which Sahni said “strongly discourages independent artists” from seeking legal remedies.

Another Delhi-based intellectual property lawyer, Nishchal Anand, said that in many cases, a legal or takedown notice is sufficient. “Big organisations are also very conscious about their image, so they try to settle the matter outside court,” he said.

Anand stressed the need for artists to have “collective management organisations” to enforce their rights.

Advocate Reddy emphasised that “collective societies are important” because they will help reduce the high costs of enforcing copyright.

Once infringement occurs, advocate Upadhyay said, “the burden shifts entirely onto the artist”, and “the costs involved are insane”.

“Big organisations have power and money, and in many ways, the battle is already lost before it begins,” she added.

Questioning if the rule of law existed in Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court on Thursday asked whether Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has been “helpless” and unable to take action against a Cabinet minister whose son has evaded arrest for weeks in a rioting case, PTI reported.

The matter pertained to clashes that erupted between workers of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s faction of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party group led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar during the municipal elections in Raigad district’s Mahad on December 2.

The two factions, along with Fadnavis’s Bharatiya Janata Party, are part of the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra.

Cross-first information reports were registered based on the complaints filed by the Shinde Sena and the NCP faction led by Pawar after the clashes.

Vikas Gogawale, who is the son of Cabinet minister and Shinde Sena member Bharat Gogawale, and his cousin Mahesh Gogawale were among those booked in the rioting and assault case.

The two men sought anticipatory bail in the case, but their applications were rejected by a sessions court on December 23, Live Law reported. Vikas Gogawale has allegedly been absconding since then, PTI reported.

In the court on Thursday, Justice Madhav Jamdar was hearing another application filed by Vikas Gogawale challenging a petition for anticipatory bail filed by Shreeyansh Jagtap, who is the son of former MLA and NCP leader Manik Jagtap, PTI reported.

Shreeyansh Jagtap had been granted interim protection from arrest in December.

Criticising the failure of the state government to trace Vikas Gogawale, the court asked: “Is the state’s chief minister so helpless that he does not say anything against even one minister?”

Jamdar added that ministers’ children commit crimes and roam freely, even staying in touch with their parents. “…but the police cannot find them?” PTI quoted him as saying.

The judge also sought to know if the police had recorded the statement of Bharat Gogawale, Live Law reported. Jamdar asked how he could continue to be a cabinet minister in the state when his son was accused of a crime and had absconded.

“Your police could have at least recorded the minister’s statement and let him say no he does not have any details about his son,” Live Law quoted the judge as saying. “If the state wants, it arrests a person within 24 hours but here more than a month has passed but you are unable to track him [Vikas Gogawale].”

Jamdar asked: “Is this the rule of law in the state of Maharashtra?”

Advocate General Milind Sathe, representing the state government, urged the court to adjourn the matter, saying that efforts were being made to “connect” with Vikas Gogawale.

In response, Jamdar sought to know what would be done after “connecting” with the absconding accused.

“I have instructions that the minister will be connecting with his son and thereafter he will be asked to surrender,” Sathe replied.

The judge subsequently listed the matter for hearing on Friday. He also directed the advocate general to ensure that Vikas Gogawale surrenders before the hearing, adding that appropriate orders would be issued otherwise.

The private correspondence of business leaders with political elites in South Asia has rarely entered the public domain. This absence has left historians with an uneven, often frustrating archival record of how economic power interacted with political authority.

Unlike in parts of Europe or the United States, where corporate archives, private papers, and elite correspondence have long been central to historical inquiry, most businessmen in the region have shown little inclination to preserve their records or open them to independent scholarly scrutiny. Even where large industrial houses have established archives, access is often conditional and carefully managed, limiting the scope for critical research.

This archival silence has profoundly shaped how the history of Indian capitalism is written. The result is a literature rich in policy analysis and institutional narratives but thin on the everyday exchanges, disagreements, and anxieties through which business leaders engaged the state. Economic power appears abstract and depersonalised, while political authority seems to operate in isolation from elite negotiation. The reality, of course, was far messier.

There are a few notable exceptions. The relationship between Mohandas Gandhi and industrial families such as the Birlas and Bajajs is relatively well documented, largely because Gandhi’s letters and writings were meticulously preserved and published.

Similarly, the Tata group has attracted sustained scholarly attention. In addition, several institutional histories and Medha Kudaisya’s biography of GD Birla shed light on business-state relations in the late colonial period. Yet these examples remain outliers.

For most industrialists, their political thinking and behind-the-scenes influence must be reconstructed indirectly – from scattered private collections, government files, or fleeting newspaper references.

It is in this context that surviving correspondence assumes particular importance. Two letters written by industrialist JRD Tata – one addressed to freedom fighter and writer KM Munshi in 1939 and another to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi nearly three decades later – offer a rare window into elite dialogue across two distinct political eras.

Spanning late colonial rule and the post-Independence developmental state, these letters, found in the National Archives of India, reveal how candid exchanges between business leaders and policymakers shaped, and sometimes unsettled, national debates.

Politics of dissent

In 1937, following the first provincial elections under the Government of India Act of 1935, the Indian National Congress formed a ministry in the Bombay Presidency. Led by BG Kher, the cabinet included prominent figures such as Morarji Desai, KM Munshi, and Yasin Nurie. One of the ministry’s earliest and most ideologically charged initiatives was the introduction of Prohibition – a policy deeply associated with Gandhi and explicitly promised in the Congress manifesto.

Prohibition, however, was never merely a moral project. As I have argued elsewhere, its implementation had significant fiscal implications. The policy entailed the introduction of an urban property tax designed to compensate for the loss of excise revenue from alcohol. This immediately provoked resistance from trading communities and urban landlords. Hindu, Muslim, and Parsi property owners alike opposed the measure, not on moral grounds but because it threatened their economic interests.

The Congress ministry, convinced of the moral righteousness of Prohibition, interpreted such opposition as obstructionist, even reactionary.

Newspaper reports and administrative records provide ample evidence of widespread resistance to Prohibition. What they reveal less clearly is how major industrial houses responded – and how the political leadership reacted when dissent came from the commanding heights of Indian capital.

That silence was broken by a remarkable letter written by Tata on September 8, 1939, to Munshi, the home minister of the Bombay government. The letter is striking not only for its content but also for its tone. Tata dispensed with formal courtesies and plunged straight into the issue at hand: a rumour, allegedly circulated by Munshi, that the Tata group intended “gradually to get rid of their Hindu employees”.

“If this is correct,” JRD wrote, “I feel grieved that you should have given credence to such a fantastic rumour and also that, if you did believe it, you should have discussed the matter with third parties in preference to asking me or any of my colleagues directly.”

The bluntness of the opening is telling. It suggests a relationship in which a leading industrialist felt sufficiently secure – and sufficiently aggrieved – to challenge a senior Congress minister directly. Tata went on to remind Munshi that no Indian firm, regardless of community, could match his business group’s record on employment practices. The accusation, he implied, was not merely false but malicious.

Why had such a rumour gained currency? Tata made the connection explicit. Munshi, he suggested, was aggrieved by the Tata group’s refusal to support the Congress government’s Prohibition policy and had chosen to interpret this disagreement as evidence of an “anti-national outlook”.

This charge cut to the heart of the matter. Tata forcefully rejected the idea that dissent on an economic policy could be equated with disloyalty to the nation. “It is surely wrong,” he argued, “for a responsible minister to hold the opinion that for anyone to hold views different from those of the Government, particularly on an economic question such as this, is to be anti-national.”

The language is revealing for another reason. The term “anti-national” is often treated as a product of post-Independence political culture, yet here it appears firmly embedded in late colonial discourse. The letter demonstrates how easily the political elite could deploy nationalist rhetoric to delegitimise economic opposition – even when that opposition came from one of India’s most prominent industrial houses.

JRD Tata was careful to clarify that the Tata group’s objections to Prohibition were not motivated by narrow self-interest. The policy was flawed, he argued, not because it “touches our pockets” but because of the unsound procedures adopted by the government and the economic hardship inflicted on large sections of the population.

Whether or not one accepts this claim at face value, the letter underscores a crucial point: business opposition was framed, by the business leader himself, as a matter of public interest rather than private profit.

Munshi’s reply was polite and conciliatory, affirming his high regard for the Tata group. Yet it also conceded more than it denied. He expressed an “earnest desire” to dissipate the negative impression of the firm that was circulating in “high political and business circles”.

This acknowledgment suggests that JRD Tata’s complaint was not unfounded. Rumour, suspicion, and ideological policing were already part of the Congress government’s repertoire when dealing with elite dissent.

What stands out most is the confidence with which Tata addressed the political executive. The head of a major industrial house did not hesitate to challenge a minister, to accuse him of irresponsibility, and to defend the legitimacy of disagreement. This was not the posture of a timid capitalist seeking favour, but of an actor who saw himself as a stakeholder in national governance.

Speaking truth to power

Nearly three decades later, JRD Tata was still writing to those at the helm of political power. In 1968, with Indira Gandhi firmly ensconced as prime minister, he sent her a copy of his speech delivered at the 60th Annual General meeting of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber. “I hope,” he wrote, “that you may find at least parts of it of some interest.”

The understatement masked the boldness of what followed. In the speech, Tata ventured into one of the most sensitive areas of public policy: defence expenditure. Six years after India’s traumatic defeat in the war with China, defence was widely regarded as beyond criticism. Yet Tata deliberately challenged this consensus.

“If I may now rush in where angels fear to tread,” he remarked, “I believe that one avenue of considerable saving in expenditure lies in the realm of Defence expenditure.” He advocated more sophisticated procurement methods and the computerisation of inventory control – technocratic solutions that reflected his faith in managerial efficiency.

More provocatively, he questioned the culture of silence surrounding defence budgets. “While there can be no question that the military security of the country must be assured whatever the cost,” he argued, “I see no justification for the touching unanimity with which up to now any discussion of defence expenditure has been treated virtually as taboo.”

For Tata, defence spending – approaching Rs 1,000 crores annually – was one of the principal reasons why what was promised as a “decade of development” had turned into a “decade of disillusionment”. This was a damning assessment, delivered not from the margins but from the leadership of organised industry.

Even more striking was his foray into political analysis. In language that would be unthinkable for a corporate leader today, JRD Tata described India’s system as a “benevolent one-party autocracy” whose “façade of political stability and democracy in action” had long been sustained by the dominating personality of Jawaharlal Nehru.

“With Nehru gone,” he observed bluntly, “the façade has begun to crack.”

1950s :: JRD Tata With PM Nehru and Indira Gandhi pic.twitter.com/6tAlWCSFBo

— indianhistorypics (@IndiaHistorypic) August 6, 2022

This was not casual criticism. It reflected deep unease with the concentration of political power at the Centre and the absence of meaningful opposition. JRD Tata felt that the voice of the industry was treated with suspicion and mistrust and that the government’s crushing majority in Parliament meant it could follow economic policies from which it could not be moved.

Yet Tata’s critique was not nihilistic. He acknowledged the government’s achievements in education, health, electrification, science, technology, and heavy industry. Even in their “most misguided policies”, he conceded, political rulers were motivated by “the best of intentions and the belief that such policies would help the country forward”.

Indira Gandhi replied to JRD Tata, addressing him as “Dear Jeh”, saying that she would “read it with interest”. Indira Gandhi acknowledged receipt of the speech, a fact that is significant in itself. At a time when access to the prime minister was increasingly mediated by bureaucratic and political filters, the acknowledgment signals that Tata’s views were taken seriously, even if they were uncomfortable.

In fact Tata’s letter to Indira Gandhi (dated February 21, 1968) is annotated in thick black ink possibly by a staff at her office with the remark, “To be acknowledged.”

While there is no evidence that his recommendations on defence expenditure or political concentration translated directly into policy change, the exchange confirms that elite industrial opinion still had an audience at the highest levels of government.

This acknowledgment also highlights an important feature of post-Independence state-business relations: criticism from leading business figures was not automatically dismissed as illegitimate or self-serving. Instead, it was absorbed – selectively and cautiously – into the broader policy conversation.

The correspondence reflects a mode of engagement in which dissenting views could be expressed privately, acknowledged formally, and yet neutralised politically. In this sense, the exchange reveals both the confidence of a business leader willing to speak candidly and the resilience of a political system adept at listening without necessarily yielding.

Letters as historical evidence

Taken together, these two letters complicate any simple narrative of collusion or subservience between Indian big business and the state. They reveal a relationship marked by negotiation, tension, and mutual suspicion, but also by a shared sense of responsibility for national outcomes. JRD Tata emerges not as a silent beneficiary of political favour, but as an articulate, sometimes combative participant in public debate.

More broadly, the letters underscore the importance of private correspondence as historical evidence. In their absence, historians are left with official statements, policy documents, and retrospective memoirs – all of which flatten the texture of elite interaction. Where such letters survive, they restore contingency, conflict, and candour to the story of Indian capitalism.

That so few such documents are available is itself a political fact. The reluctance of business houses to preserve or open their papers has narrowed the archive and, with it, the range of questions historians can ask. Recovering and analysing these rare exchanges is therefore not merely an academic exercise.

It is essential to understanding how power has actually operated in modern India – and how dissent, even from the elite, has been managed, marginalised, or, at times, reluctantly accommodated.

Danish Khan is a historian and journalist based in London. His DPhil thesis titled Muslim Capitalism is under contract to be published by Cambridge University Press.

A key leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) carrying a Rs 1 crore reward on his head was among 15 suspected Maoists killed in a gunfight with security forces in the Saranda forest area of Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district on Thursday, The Hindu reported.

Anal alias Patriam Manjhi alias Toofan Da, a central committee member of the banned group, had been on the radar of security forces since 1987.

He, along with 15 others, was killed in the gunfight near Kumbhdih village under the Chotanagra police station limits during a special operation being conducted by the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or the CoBRA unit, and the district police, The Indian Express reported.

The operation was continuing on Friday.

Jharkhand Inspector General (Operations) Michaelraj S said that the gunfight began around 6.30 am. He alleged that the suspected Maoists started firing indiscriminately and the security forces retaliated in self-defence, The Hindu reported.

The police officer added that 15 bodies and a large quantity of weapons had been recovered so far.

“Preliminary investigations have identified 11 of the 15 deceased Maoists, including Anal, who was not only carrying a reward of Rs 1 crore in Jharkhand but Rs 1.2 crore reward in Odisha and Rs 15 lakh reward by the National Investigation Agency,” The Hindu quoted Michaelraj as saying.

The inspector general added that there were 149 cases filed against Anal in Jharkhand’s Giridih district. He claimed that the Maoist leader had been responsible for explosions and violent acts carried out by the banned group in the Saranda forest area of Kolhan in Chaibasa since 2022.

Apart from Anal, others killed included Anmol Da alias Lalchand Hembram, who was a member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)’s Bihar-Jharkhand special area committee, and carried a reward of Rs 25 lakh in Jharkhand and Rs 65 lakh in Odisha, the newspaper reported.

Hembram, who was a resident of Bokaro district in Jharkhand, had 149 cases against him.

Amit Munda, a member of the banned group’s regional committee, who was also killed, carried a reward of Rs 15 lakh in Jharkhand, Rs 43 lakh in Odisha and Rs 4 lakh from the NIA. There were 96 cases against him.

Sub-Zonal Committee member Pintu Lohra, who carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh in Jharkhand and had 47 cases against him, was among the dead, along with Laljit alias Lalu, who also carried a similar reward.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the ongoing operation had achieved a major success “in the campaign to make the region free of Naxals through encounters, with the neutralization of the notorious bounty-wanted Naxal Central Committee member ‘Anal alias Patiram Manjhi’ worth Rs 1 crore and 15 other Naxals so far”.

“I once again appeal to the remaining Naxals to abandon the ideology that connects to violence, terror, and arms, and join the mainstream of development and trust,” he added.

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

Between January 17 and January 18, six suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. On January 15, 54 Maoists surrendered before security forces in Bijapur. Forty-nine of them carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 1.4 crore.

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

On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha that 942 Left-wing extremists had been arrested this year.

Overall, more than 1,800 such persons had been killed, over 16,000 had been arrested, while at least 9,588 others had surrendered since 2014.

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 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”.

“I wish the sea was far away from here,” said wada pao seller Ashok Dharmameher. “Then this project would not be here.”

Dharmameher was among the thousands who participated in coordinated protests on Monday on National Highway 48 and the roads leading to the district collector’s office in Palghar district, 84 km north of Mumbai, to demonstrate against the proposed Vadhavan port, plans to build a “fourth Mumbai city” there and other development plans for the area.

One protest was led by the Vadhavan Bandar Virodh Sangharsh Samiti, an organisation that has been opposing the construction of the port. Another protest, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), related to problems with land acquisition for these projects. It involved a 44-km march that ended on Tuesday.

Some of the protestors, led by the Kashtakari Sanghatana, were demanding forest rights.

Dharmameher, a resident of Chinchani village village, 6 km from the proposed port, said that he earned enough to support himself and his wife. But with little information available about the projects in the area, he and many others fear they will be displaced from homes their families have lived in for decades.

Opposition to the Vadhavan port, planned off the coast in Palghar, has been mounting in recent years, especially from fishing villages in the district that fear they will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Though the port is planned to be located offshore, an extensive road and rail network will be built to connect it to National Highway 48 (which runs from Delhi to Chennai) and to other cities such as Nashik and Bhusawal. This would entail acquiring land in the area’s villages. In some places, residents have prevented surveys from being conducted.

The Rs 76,000-crore port is a joint venture between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and the Maharashtra Maritime Board. It will be spread over 17,471 hectares. Of this, 16,900 hectares have been earmarked for the port and 571 hectares for rail and road connections.

The project will also require land to be reclaimed, for which about 200 million cubic metres of sand will be quarried from a pit located 50 km off the Daman coast in nearby Gujarat. The reclamation will also use stones from quarries in Palghar taluka.

Vadhavan port is being developed along with a “fourth Mumbai” that will involve acquiring vast tracts of land in Palghar district. (After Navi Mumbai was built in the 1970s to decongest Maharashtra’s capital, a “third Mumbai” has been proposed in Raigad district.)

Also proposed in the area are an offshore airport, a textile park at Kelve, a new expressway and a freight rail corridor. Already, residents have had land acquired for the bullet train project that will connect Mumbai with Ahmedabad.

On Monday, in a memorandum to the chief minister submitted to the Palghar collector, representatives of 11 organizations representing fisherfolk, farmers, adivasis stated that these projects should be stopped as it threatened their environment and livelihoods.

They emphasised that the port was not legally permissible as Dahanu taluka, where the port is proposed to be located is an eco-sensitive zone. That is why the Supreme Court-nominated Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority had in 1998 rejected the location of a port here, they noted.

The project violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which assures the right to life and dignity, they contended.

The memorandum also cited the Public Trust doctrine, which asserts that natural resources are not the property of the government but are a public resource. The government is only a trustee of these commons.

The memo said that the public hearing for the project in 2024 ignored the widespread opposition to the proposal by residents and the Social Impact Assessment Report did not have plans to regenerate livelihoods for those who would be affected by it.

Importantly it stated that though the port authority had agreed to not begin work till the land acquisition process was completed in the case before the Supreme Court filed in May 2025, it was violating that commitment in some places. This, the memo noted, was contempt of court.

Among the participants in Monday’s protest was Devashree Kini, the deputy sarpanch of Vasgaon village in the district. “We don’t want this port or their jobs,” she said. “We are self -sufficient. This port will wipe out our existence and our next generation will be finished.”

Also in the crowd was Sachin Patil from Chinchani village, who owns seven acres of a chikoo and mango farm. He employs four people and said that he earns Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh a month. After visiting Mundra port in Gujarat, he fears that the displacement he witnessed there will be repeated in Palghar. “I saw that land around the port was used for so many things, and here too our villages will be affected,” he said.

Palghar is an Adivasi-dominated district that was bifurcated from Thane in 2014. It lacks basic amenities and a tertiary hospital. One section of protestors was focused on demanding forest rights.

The Forest Rights Act grants individual rights such as habitation and cultivation as well as community rights such as grazing, fishing and collecting minor forest produce to forest-dwelling communities

Brian Lobo of the Kashtakari Sanghatana said that while the government acquired land for new projects, it had not settled existing claims of Adivasis under the Forest Right Act. There were over 3,000 appeals related to forest rights pending in the area. Of these, 600 related to wrong survey numbers, a crucial detail in cases when land is being acquired.

Prasad Shinde from Chahade village said even if the port was located offshore, the roads to the highway would require land to be acquired. Even though the authorities had assured residents that they would get jobs on these projects, Shinde was sceptical.

The only jobs available for residents here, most of whom are not educated, would be as sweepers, he remarked.

“Why doesn’t the government take the project to the north?” he said. “That is where people migrate from isn’t it and look for jobs in Palghar. We don’t want this new city also because we won’t have a place in it and we don’t want this port which will destroy our land and livelihoods.”

Jyoti Meher, secretary of the Maharashtra Macchimar Kruti Samiti, one of the organisers of the demonstration, explained what was at stake. “We are fighting for our existence and rights over natural resources,” she said.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and researcher.

On January 19, Sumona Rahman Choudhury and 14 other booth level officers in Assam’s Sribhumi district were called for a training session as part of the ongoing “special revision” of electoral rolls ahead of the Assembly elections this year.

The first draft of the state’s voter roll was published on December 27, after a door-to-door verification by booth level officers led to 10 lakh voter names being marked out for deletion. As is the norm, the Election Commission then invited claims and objections to further vet the draft roll for accuracy.

Any voter can file an objection if he believes someone has been wrongly included in the constituency’s electoral roll, using Form 7.

When Choudhary turned up for the session, she said that district officials handed her several objection forms, challenging the inclusion of 133 voters in her booth in Srimanta Kanishail village in Karimganj North assembly segment. The forms were “half-printed and half-handwritten”, she said.

All the objections had been filed by one person, who claimed that the 133 voters, all of them Muslims, had either permanently shifted from the village or were being enrolled twice.

But Choudhary, a teacher at the village government school, knew that to be false. “During the house-to-house enumeration, I found them at their residence and collected their signatures,” she said. “They have not shifted. They are genuine voters. The document of the Election commission that they signed is proof.”

Choudhary added: “Among the names was the headmaster of my school. Some of them are parents of my students. How could I ask them to come to a hearing to prove they are genuine voters?”

Who filed the objections?

Even more curiously, the list of 133 names included the complainant, Salim Ahmed, and his relatives. “This means Salim had filed an objection against his own inclusion,” Choudhary said.

She then called Ahmed to ask him if he had indeed filed the objections. “He denied it altogether,” she said. “He said he was not insane to have complained against himself, his brother and sister-in-law. ”

When Scroll contacted Ahmed, he had reached the Sribhumi district election office to file a complaint against the misuse of his name and voter identity card. “I have not filed any objections,” he said. “Do you think I will file a complaint seeking deletion of my own name?”

The Election Commission decided to exempt Assam, for now, from the controversial Special Intensive Revision that is being carried out in several states. But the ongoing special revision, which involves door-to-door verification of voters, has also led to widespread fears of disenfranchisement of minority voters – especially during the claims and objections process.

In several Muslim-majority districts and areas of Assam, bulk objections have been filed against voters, seeking to strike their names off the electoral roll. Thousands of voters are being called to hearings to prove that they are not dead or “permanently shifted” as the objections claim, triggering panic and anxiety among Bengal-origin Muslims.

As Choudhary discovered, the process is open to manipulation.

Scroll found six other instances in addition to Ahmed where people said their names, voter identity cards and phone numbers had been used without their consent or knowledge to file objections against hundreds of electors in several constituencies.

Complaints have been filed in several districts, alleging that voters were sought to be deleted in bulk in order to influence the electoral process. In Nagaon district, the hearing process has been suspended in three Assembly constituencies after complaints of fake Form 7 applications.

Any voter of an Assembly constituency can fill out a Form 7, seeking the deletion of names of other voters from the same constituency or raise an objection to their inclusion in the electoral rolls if they have died or if they have shifted out.

Videos have also emerged of Hindu voters, declaring that their names have been wrongfully used to seek deletion of other voters. The Lakhimpur and Morigaon district administrations have put out public notices, warning people from filing such dubious complaints.

Opposition parties and minority leaders have accused the BJP of pressuring the Election Commission officials to delete voters, especially Muslims. They pointed to recent statements by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma calling for “illegal Miyas” to be deleted from the voter list.

Miya Muslims is a pejorative term used for Bengal-origin Muslims in Assam, who are often vilified as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite having roots in Assam that go back before Independence.

Similar allegations had surfaced in Karnataka’s Aland assembly constituency last year, where the names of 5,994 voters were sought to be deleted ahead of the 2023 state election through fake objection forms.

An FIR was registered on the alleged voter fraud based on a complaint filed by the Returning Officer. The police investigation revealed that a former Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Subhash Guttedar from Aland and his son Harshananda Guttedar allegedly hired a private firm to target voters and delete their names through forged Form 7s.

Scroll contacted the Election Commission, asking about allegations that there was a conspiracy to delete voters in bulk, and if forged Form 7 applications were being used for the purpose. The story will be updated if they respond.

‘One person filed over 100 objections’

A senior Election Commission official in Guwahati told Scroll that a voter can submit any number of such objections. “However, to prevent misuse of the process, if a person files more than five objections, an electoral registration officer will review the complaints individually,” the official said.

Once the Form 7 objections are filed, they are sent to BLOs for an on-ground verification, after which they are processed. However, in most cases, BLOs blindly accept the applications without verification and summon the voters for hearing, local political leaders told Scroll.

In Sribhumi, however, Choudhary and the other BLOs objected to the instructions from the district officials and the bulk objections. “In several cases, one person had filed over 100 forms,” Choudhary said.

She added: “We asked how we could initiate Form 7 against genuine voters. But the officials reiterated that we should go ahead.”

However, Choudhary stuck to her stance and returned the forms to the district election office.

Sribhumi district commissioner Pradeep Kumar Dwivedi, however, told Scroll that district officials were only following the procedure.

“It is the job of the BLO to verify whether an objection form is genuine or the objector authentic,” he said. “Based on that, they can summon people for hearing. Based on the outcome of the hearing, the ERO takes the decision. No name is deleted by bypassing the procedure. The process is being followed."

He added that even if a complaint has been filed with malafide intentions against legitimate voters, a hearing is necessary to establish the truth.

The scale of objections and summons has led several observers to draw parallels with the re-verification process during the process to update the National Register of Citizens in 2019, in which people were given – like with the special revision process – 24 hours to attend the hearings.

A senior Election Commission official quoted above told Scroll that about 56,000 objections have been rejected as of January 19. The claims and objections process had begun on December 27.

Advocate Masud Zaman claimed that election officials had told him that over 26,000 objections had been filed in five constituencies of Dhubri district, which is a Muslim-majority area.

The number was confirmed by Dhubri election officer Sugata Siddhartha Goswami. “Before calling people for a hearing, we will verify whether the forms are genuine or not,” Goswami said. “Both the objector and the person against whom the complaint has been filed will be called for hearing.”

Zaman pointed out that even if the complainants do not turn up or turn out to be fake, there is little redress for the voters being harassed. “I asked the election officials if legal action could be taken against those complainants who do not turn up. They had no reply.”

The Commission for Air Quality Management on Thursday revoked Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan in Delhi and the National Capital Region after air quality improved.

Stage 3 restrictions had been imposed on January 16 after air quality slipped into the “very poor” category. A day later, Stage 4 measures were enforced when air quality deteriorated further into the “severe” category. The Stage 4 restrictions were revoked on Tuesday following an improvement in air quality.

The commission said on Thursday that Delhi’s air quality had improved due to favourable meteorological conditions.

It added that the average Air Quality Index in the national capital stood at 322 on Tuesday, which is in the “very poor” category.

The commission also said that air quality forecasts provided by the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras suggest that in coming days, the AQI may remain in the “moderate” to “poor” category.

Noting that Stage 3 restrictions under the GRAP were being revoked, the statement added that anti-pollution measures under Stage 1 and Stage 2 will continue to be implemented.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region. The commission is a statutory body formed in 2020 to address pollution in the NCR and adjoining areas.

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

As of 7.07 pm on Thursday, the average AQI in Delhi was 330, which is in the “very poor” category, according to data from the Sameer application. In 29 of the 38 monitoring stations, it was in the “very poor” category, showed the application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

On Wednesday, Delhi’s average AQI was 322, also in the “very poor” category.

An index value between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air. Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution. An AQI in the “severe” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

The cities adjoining the capital also reported hazardous air quality levels. While Noida recorded an AQI of 342, Greater Noida 311, Ghaziabad 377 and Gurugram 374 – all in the “very poor” category.

SC asks NCR states to act on CAQM recommendations

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Delhi government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and agencies of the National Capital Region states to submit action taken reports on the Commission for Air Quality Management’s recommendations for long-term measures to tackle air pollution in the region, Live Law reported.

Appearing for the commission, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati told the court that vehicular pollution was the single largest contributor to air pollution in Delhi-NCR.

She said that the commission had recommended 15 long-term measures, such as phasing out polluting vehicles, strengthening the pollution-under-control regime, expanding rail and metro networks, revising electric vehicle policies and offering higher incentives for scrapping old vehicles.

On Wednesday, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi said that it would not entertain objections to the commission’s recommendations.

Meanwhile, advocate Apprajita Singh, the amicus curiae in the matter, urged the court to have concrete timelines fixed for the proposed recommendations, Live Law reported.

Also read:

• Delhi’s failure to act against the biggest source of its air pollution – vehicles
• India’s car-first cities should prioritise walking to help tackle smog

Protests erupted in the Karnataka Assembly after Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot only read out two lines from his customary address to the joint session of the state legislature. Gehlot objected to 11 paragraphs in the speech prepared by the Congress government in the state.

The speech contained criticism of the Union government, including its introduction of the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act that replaced the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

Citing the Constitution, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that the governor is “bound to read the address prepared by the Council of Ministers and has no authority to substitute it with a speech of his own”.

This was the third such controversy in three days involving governors in Opposition-ruled states. The previous two instances took place in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Read on.

Members of the Great Nicobar Tribal Council alleged that in a January 7 meeting with the district administration, they were asked to sign “surrender certificates” as a way to hand over their ancestral lands for the Great Nicobar Project. They said that the administration made the request verbally.

The project includes the construction of a new township, a power plant, a greenfield international airport and a transhipment port. It is expected to use 166 sq km of the island, which also includes about 27 coastal villages that the Nicobarese tribal communities had lived in for generations and depended on for livelihoods.

In a press conference, the tribal chiefs said that the officials from the district commissioner’s office and a tribal welfare body, the Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti, were present at the meeting. They said that they did not sign the certificate, saying that they needed time to deliberate on the matter. Read on.

A 29-year-old man was on Wednesday abducted and shot dead in Manipur’s Churachandpur district by unidentified assailants, who recorded a video of the killing and circulated it, an Assam Rifles official told Scroll. A purported video of the killing showed the man, Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh, sitting on the ground in darkness and pleading to persons not visible in the video, after which two shots were fired at him.

Singh was a member of the Meitei community from Kakching town. For the past month, he had been staying in Churachandpur with his wife Chingnu Haokip, who belongs to the Kuki-Zo community. Read on.

The Supreme Court allowed Hindu prayers from sunrise to sunset during the Basant Panchami festival on Friday at the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district. The bench also permitted Muslims to offer namaz between 1 pm and 3 pm on the day.

It directed that a list of persons coming to offer namaz be submitted to the district administration.

The 11th-century structure, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India, is claimed by Hindus and Muslims. While the Hindus believe that the Bhojshala is a temple dedicated to the deity Vagdevi, or Saraswati, the building is a mosque for the Muslim community. Read on.

A Delhi court acquitted former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in a case related to inciting violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas in the national capital during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The court said that there was “no evidence of instigating any such mob” and “of conspiracy”.

However, Kumar will remain in jail because of his convictions in other cases.

In the present matter, a case was filed against Kumar in February 2015 linking him to the violence in Janakpuri, where two men were killed on November 1, 1984. He was also booked for the killing of a man named Gurcharan Singh, who was allegedly set ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri. Read on.

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Members of the Great Nicobar Tribal Council on Thursday alleged that in a January 7 meeting with the district administration, they were asked to sign “surrender certificates” as a way to hand over their ancestral lands to the government.

In a virtual press conference on Thursday, the tribal chiefs alleged that the administration made the demand to develop the Great Nicobar Project, which includes construction of a new township, a power plant, a greenfield international airport and a transshipment port.

The project is expected to use 166 sq km of the island, which also includes around 27 coastal villages that the Nicobarese tribal communities had lived in for generations and depended on for livelihoods.

“We are against this,” a council member, who did not want to be identified, said about the certificates. “This would mean that we have given the land directly in the administration’s hands forever. It is important for our children’s future security.”

The tribal chiefs said that the administration made the request to them verbally during the meeting held in Great Nicobar’s Campbell Bay village. Officials from the district commissioner’s office and the Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti were present in the meeting.

The Samiti is an autonomous body that works for the welfare and protection of vulnerable tribal groups.

The tribal members did not sign the certificate, saying that they needed time to deliberate on the matter.

Nicobar’s assistant commissioner declined to comment stating that he was not authorised to speak on the matter. Scroll also reached out to Andaman and Nicobar’s chief secretary’s office. This report will be updated if they respond.

The Nicobarese have been demanding that the administration let them return to their ancestral villages.

After the tsunami in 2004, the district administration had relocated the survivors in two settlements in Campbell Bay – New Chingenh and Rajiv Nagar – where they were provided wooden houses on stilts with tin roofs and plywood flooring.

“Before settling us, they told us that this is a temporary measure,” said another member. “Our population is slowly increasing, and we cannot expand our houses here. There is no space for cultivating anything.”

On their ancestral lands along the western coast of the island, the communities grew and tended coconut plantations, pandanus trees, and depended on the sea for fishing. Several members of the community continue to go to these villages for short periods to tend to their coconut trees.

“It’s been 21 years since we were relocated,” said a member. “We have even written letters demanding to return, but we have gotten no response from the administration. We are very uncomfortable here.”

In August, the tribal council had written to the Union tribal affairs minister saying that through a 2022 certificate, the island administration had made an allegedly false representation to the Centre suggesting that all rights under the 2006 Forest Rights Act had been identified and settled before diverting the required forest land for the Great Nicobar Project.

“If the administration is claiming that they have settled these rights under FRA, then what is the need for such surrender certificates?” asked a tribal chief.

“All we are demanding is that if they want to do the project, they should do it on the non-tribal lands,” he added.

Also watch: True Story: How we investigated the disappearing corals of Great Nicobar

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Hindu prayers from sunrise to sunset during Basant Panchami on Friday at the disputed Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district, PTI reported.

Basant Panchami is a Hindu festival that marks the arrival of spring and is dedicated to the deity Saraswati.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi also permitted Muslims to offer namaz between 1 pm and 3 pm on the day. It directed that a list of persons coming to offer namaz be submitted to the district administration.

The 11th-century structure, protected by the Archaeological Survey of India, is claimed by both Hindus and Muslims. While the Hindus believe that the Bhojshala is a temple dedicated to the deity Vagdevi, or Saraswati, the building is a mosque for the Muslim community.

Under an arrangement made by the Archaeological Survey of India in April 2003, Hindus perform prayers on the premises on Tuesdays and Muslims offer namaz in the complex on Fridays.

Hindu and Muslim groups had sought permission to conduct religious activities at the complex on Basant Panchami, which is on Friday.

On Thursday, the bench also ordered the district administration to ensure that law and order arrangements were in place at the site for offering prayers, the news agency reported.

“We appeal both sides to observe mutual respect and trust towards each other,” Bar and Bench quoted the Supreme Court as saying.

In May 2022, the Hindu Front for Justice filed a public interest litigation against the Archaeological Survey of India’s 2003 arrangement. The group has argued that the Kamal Maula mosque was constructed during the reign of Alauddin Khilji between the 13th century and 14th century by “destroying and dismantling ancient structures of previously constructed Hindu temples”.

In March 2024, the Madhya Pradesh High Court said that a “complete scientific investigation, survey and excavation, through the adoption of latest methods, techniques and modes of ground penetrating radar and global positioning system survey” should be carried out at the site.

It had, at the time, directed the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a survey at the site to identify the “true character” of the complex.

Following which a special leave petition was filed in the Supreme Court by the Maulana Kamaluddin Welfare Society in Dhar challenging the High Court’s interim order on conducting a survey.

In April 2024, the Supreme Court passed an interim order allowing the survey to continue, but without any physical excavation. The bench also restrained any action on the outcome of the survey without its permission.

In July 2024, the Archaeological Survey of India claimed that the existing mosque structure at the Bhojshala-Kamal Maula mosque complex was constructed using parts from earlier temples at the site.

In the report submitted to the High Court, the agency said that the archaeological remains recovered during its scientific survey reveal that the pre-existing structure “can be dated to the Paramara [dynasty] period”.

“From art and architecture of decorated pillars and pilasters, it can be said that they were part of earlier temples and were reused while making colonnades of the mosque over the high platform of basalt,” the report had stated.

Protests erupted in the Karnataka Assembly on Thursday after Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot only read out two lines from his customary address to the joint session of the state legislature, The Hindu reported.

Gehlot objected to 11 paragraphs in the speech prepared by the Congress government in Karnataka, which contained sharp criticism of the Union government for introducing the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the newspaper reported.

The speech also contained criticism of the Union government’s policy on devolving funds to state governments, PTI reported.

A governor is required to address the first session of the Assembly held in a year. As per convention, the governor reads a speech written by the state government.

This was the third such controversy in three days involving governors in Opposition-ruled states. The previous two instances took place in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Gehlot on Thursday began his speech with a customary greeting and then read out from his speech: “My government is committed to doubling the speed of economic and social progress in the state. Jai Hind, Jai Karnataka.”

He then concluded his address and left the House, The Hindu reported.

Congress MLAs protested against Gehlot for curtailing his speech and shouted “Shame, Shame!” on the floor of the House.

Citing the Constitution, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that the governor is “bound to read the address prepared by the Council of Ministers and has no authority to substitute it with a speech of his own”.

The Congress leader said that the speech contained criticism of the VB-G Ram G Act for giving the Union government greater control on the allocation of work as part of the employment guarantee scheme, The Hindu reported.

The speech also included a demand from the state government to bring back the MGNREGA, the newspaper reported.

“The governor has chosen to justify this new law and act as though he lacks independence, aligning himself with the Union government’s position,” Siddaramaiah said on social media. “As the elected government, we oppose this legislation, and these objections were therefore included in the Cabinet-approved address.”

By refusing to read the speech prepared by the Cabinet, the governor has violated constitutional provisions and insulted the legislature, the chief minister said.

“Our party and government, along with MLAs and MLCs, are protesting this across the state,” Siddaramaiah said.

He added that the state government will consider moving the Supreme Court in the matter.

Standoffs this week

Two days before the row in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi had also walked out of the Assembly on Tuesday without delivering his customary address to the Assembly. This was the fourth consecutive year that Ravi has walked out of the House during the opening ceremony.

The Tamil Nadu governor alleged that the Assembly had disrespected the national anthem and that his mic was switched off during the proceedings.

On the same day, the Kerala government claimed that Governor Rajendra Arlekar omitted some portions of the speech the Cabinet had prepared for him. The governor’s office claimed that its suggestions had been kept out of the original draft.

Tamil Nadu’s ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Thursday said that a judge’s personal beliefs or ideology should not influence court rulings, calling a recent Madras High Court observation that described Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on Sanatana Dharma as hate speech “wrong”.

In a social media post, DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai said: “[The judgement] does not adhere to a cardinal principle in jurisprudence…nobody should be condemned unheard.”

On Tuesday, the Madurai bench of the High Court quashed a 2023 case against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Malviya for allegedly distorting the comments made by Stalin about “eradicating” Sanatana Dharma.

Justice S Srimathy had observed that Stalin’s statement amounted to hate speech.

That Judgment is wrong.
It does not adhere to a cardinal principle in jurisprudence.
Audi Alteram Partem
Nobody should be condemned unheard.

The personal belief or ideology of the judge should not find a place in the Judgment.

The most erroneous part is that DK and DMK had… https://t.co/zJbkDL8UEb

— Saravanan Annadurai (@saravofcl) January 21, 2026

In September 2023, Stalin, at a press conference, said that Sanatana Dharma must be eradicated, and not merely opposed.

“We can’t oppose dengue, mosquitoes, malaria or corona [Covid-19], we have to eradicate them,” the DMK leader had said. “In the same way, we have to eradicate Sanatana [Dharma], rather than opposing it.”

Udhayanidhi Stalin was a state minister at the time and became the deputy chief minister in September 2024.

While some understand the term Sanatana Dharma to mean Hinduism as a whole, others interpret it as a reference to the varna system and the propagation of caste supremacy.

Shortly after Stalin made the remarks, Malviya had alleged that he was calling for a “genocide” of Hindus. The Tiruchi city police in Tamil Nadu had filed a case against the BJP leader for alleged hate speech.

Srimathy, however, said on Tuesday that when the Tamil Nadu minister had engaged in “hate speech”, the person opposing it could not be said to have committed a crime.

On Thursday, responding to a social media post by Union minister Piyush Goyal who said that the High Court’s ruling was a “strong rebuke to the DMK’s narrow, anti-Hindu mindset”, Annadurai said that Tamil Nadu’s ruling party has not acted “against Hinduism”.

Goyal is in charge of the BJP’s election campaign in Tamil Nadu.

“DMK is the party which ensured 69% reservation for the Hindus,” the DMK leader said. “How can this be against Hinduism? This can be viewed as against Hinduism only if you oppose reservation. And you cannot oppose reservation, as it’s guaranteed by the Constitution.”

Ten soldiers of the Indian Army on Thursday died in a road accident in Jammu and Kashmir’s Doda district, the lieutenant governor’s office said.

Several others who were injured had been airlifted to hospital, it added.

The accident took place at Khani Top on the Bhaderwah-Chamba road, the chief minister’s office said.

The Army’s XVI Corps said on social media that the “vehicle carrying troops for an operation, slipped off the road while navigating treacherous terrain in bad weather”.

Videos widely shared on social media showed the vehicle having fallen in a gorge.

#WATCH | Doda, J&K | Rescue efforts underway after an army vehicle meets with an accident at Khani Top area of Bhaderwah, resulting in injuries to Army personnel.

The injured personnel were provided first aid at the site and were later airlifted to Udhampur for specialised… https://t.co/9xdUAss5st pic.twitter.com/ALWHb3Ar2j

— ANI (@ANI) January 22, 2026

The Jammu and Kashmir Board of Professional Entrance Examinations on Thursday announced that it would call students of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence for counselling on Friday for allotment of colleges, The Indian Express reported.

This came a day after the board said it could not conduct fresh counselling for the 2025-’26 MBBS session and had asked the Jammu and Kashmir government to admit the students to other institutions on its own.

On January 6, the National Medical Commission withdrew the permission for the institute to conduct an MBBS course for the academic year 2025-’26. While the commission cited infrastructural deficiencies and faculty shortages, the decision came against the backdrop of protests by Hindutva groups questioning why 44 of the 50 students were Muslims.

The decision left the 50 MBBS students who had been admitted to the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence without a college.

According to the fresh notification issued by the board, the students will be accommodated in seven government medical colleges of the Union Territory. Of the 50 students, 22 will be adjusted in three colleges in the Kashmir region and 28 in four colleges in the Jammu region, The Indian Express reported.

The National Medical Commission, while withdrawing the nod for the MBBS course, had asked the Jammu and Kashmir government to accommodate these students in supernumerary seats in other colleges in the Union Territory. Supernumerary seats are additional seats in educational institutes beyond their normal intake.

However, the Jammu and Kashmir Board of Professional Entrance Examinations stated on Wednesday that creating supernumerary seats does not fall within its purview, reported The Indian Express.

It urged the Jammu and Kashmir government to allocate fresh seats for students from the college “at its own level in consultation with National Medical Commission [NMC] and the respective medical colleges in J&K”.

The board of examination had said that it could not conduct fresh counselling for the academic year 2025-’26 as it did not have the mandate to go beyond the schedule issued by the Medical Counselling Committee under the Union health ministry, PTI reported.

“Moreover, as per directions of the MCC, the data of 1,410 MBBS candidates, including 50 candidates of SMVDIME under question, has also been updated on their portal on the last date of joining, i.e. 31st of December 2025,” the board said.

On January 8, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that the Union Territory government would accommodate the students in medical colleges near their homes so that their education would not be affected.

“But we need to think about the injustice done to the students by closing this medical college,” he had said. “People all over the country are struggling to get into medical colleges. Ours is the only place where a fully functional medical college has been shut down...”

Protests questioning the religious composition of students in the college were led by the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Sangharsh Samiti, with members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva groups also participating.

The protesters had demanded that preference be given to Hindu students, as the institute was set up through donations to the Vaishno Devi shrine. However, the college was not classified as a minority institution, due to which religion could not be considered as a factor for admissions.

A Delhi court on Thursday acquitted former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar in a case related to inciting violence in the Janakpuri and Vikaspuri areas of Delhi during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, PTI reported.

Kumar will remain in jail due to his convictions in other cases.

In the present case, Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh of the Rouse Avenue Courts said that there was “no evidence of instigating any such mob” and “of conspiracy”, The Indian Express reported.

“Unfortunately, most of the witnesses examined by the prosecution in this case are hearsay, and/or those witnesses who failed to name the accused for three long decades,” the newspaper quoted Singh as saying.

Relying on the identification of the “accused by such persons would be risky and may lead to a travesty”, he added.

Large-scale riots had broken out in Delhi on October 31, 1984, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was then the prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards. Mobs, allegedly helped by some Congress leaders, had attacked Sikhs and torched their homes.

Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone. To date, only 28 cases have ended in convictions out of the 587 first information reports filed in the national capital. Thirteen of these convictions have been in murder cases.

In February 2015, Kumar was booked in two cases based on complaints of violence in Janakpuri and Vikaspuri during the riots, PTI reported.

The first FIR was linked to the violence in Janakpuri, where two men – Sohan Singh and his son-in-law Avtar – were killed on November 1, 1984. The second one pertained to the killing of a man named Gurcharan Singh, who was allegedly set ablaze on November 2, 1984, in Vikaspuri.

On August 23, a court in the national capital had charged Kumar with rioting and promoting enmity in the case, while discharging him of the offences of murder and criminal conspiracy.

On Thursday, Singh said: “This court has no hesitation in holding that the prosecution has not met the standard of proof required in a criminal trial to prove the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Eighteen witnesses, which included nine alleged eyewitnesses, had been examined by the prosecution in the case.

“A man may be convicted of 100 crimes, but to be held guilty of the 101st crime, proof beyond a reasonable doubt in that crime is required,” The Indian Express quoted the judge as saying. “One cannot be found guilty merely because in the past he was involved in similar offences.”

The order added: “Past criminal background or the commission of other offences are separate and can have some value in sentencing a person, but they cannot be considered by a court of law in holding a person guilty of another crime.”

In February 2025, the Rouse Avenue Courts sentenced Kumar to life imprisonment for the murder of two other men during the riots.

In this case, the family members of those who died – Jaswant Singh and his son Tarun Deep Singh – had alleged that a mob led by him burnt the two men alive on November 1, 1984, in the Saraswati Vihar area in the national capital.

They also alleged that Kumar, who was then the Congress MP in Outer Delhi, “instigated and abetted the unruly mob” which set their house on fire.

This was Kumar’s second conviction linked to the 1984 riots.

In December 2018, the Delhi High Court held him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups and defiling public property. Kumar resigned from the Congress after his first conviction.

Also read:

1984 anti-Sikh violence: As it convicts Sajjan Kumar, court sees pattern in attacks on minorities

A 29-year-old man was abducted and shot dead on Wednesday in Manipur’s Churachandpur district by unidentified assailants, who recorded a video of the killing and circulated it, an Assam Rifles official told Scroll.

The man was identified as Mayanglambam Rishikant Singh, a member of the Meitei community from Kakching town. For the past month, he had been staying in the Churachandpur district with his wife Chingnu Haokip, who belongs to the Kuki-Zo community, The Hindu reported.

A purported video of the killing, which surfaced on Wednesday night, showed the man sitting on the ground in darkness, The Indian Express reported. The man could be seen pleading with folded hands to persons not seen in the video, after which two shots were fired at him.

The video carried the text “No peace no popular government”, in a reference to attempts to restore an elected government in Manipur.

Manipur has been under President’s Rule since February 2025, when Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh resigned as the chief minister.

At least 260 persons have been killed and more than 59,000 persons displaced in the state since the ethnic clashes broke out between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities in May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024 and 2025.

While efforts have been underway in recent days to restore an elected government in the state, Kuki militant groups and MLAs have said they will participate in the process only after getting a political commitment for a Union Territory in the Kuki-Zo-majority areas of the state.

Churachandpur Superintendent of Police Gaurav Dogra said that Singh was killed around 7 to 7.30 pm at a village named Nathjang, The Indian Express reported.

Earlier, unidentified persons had reportedly arrived at the couple’s home and taken them away. While Haokip was released, the assailants took Singh a little further and killed him.

Dogra said that Singh did not live in Manipur but stayed and worked in Nepal, according to The Indian Express. He was said to have been living in Churachandpur since December 19.

“Then yesterday, some armed miscreants arrived at the village and killed him,” the newspaper quoted the superintendent of police as saying. “We have not been able to pinpoint those responsible yet and no one has taken responsibility for it, either. The investigation is ongoing.”

The video of Singh’s killing was initially shared on WhatsApp from an IP address based in Guwahati, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Haokip reportedly told the police that four masked men had arrived at her home in an SUV to look for her husband. However, she has not yet been able to identify the assailants, the official said.

She also told the police that no one except the village chief knew that her husband had arrived in the village, The Hindu reported.

The Kuki National Organisation, an umbrella group of Kuki militant outfits, denied allegations that it had given Singh “permission to visit” the area. It claimed that it neither knew about his visit nor was it involved in the killing.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday observed that the power of the Election Commission to conduct a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is “unique” but “not unlimited”, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi added that the exercise of the power must be transparent and conform to the principles of natural justice. The bench made the remarks after advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the poll panel, underlined its power to carry out the exercise.

The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories.

The court has been hearing petitions against the validity of the exercise.

On Wednesday, Dwivedi referred to Section 21 of the 1950 Representation of the People Act, which pertains to the preparation and revision of electoral rolls. He said that Clause 3 of the Act allowed the poll panel to deviate from the 1960 Registration of Electors Rules, if required, The Indian Express reported.

Clause 3 states that the Election Commission may, at any time, for reasons to be recorded, direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in such manner as it may think fit.

“I am seeking an approval from the court that we have authority to deviate from the [Registration of Electors] rules,” the advocate told the court. “If the deviation is completely throwing out the rules, it is a different thing.”

However, Bagchi noted that Clause 1 and Clause 2 under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act spoke of preparing and revising the rolls “in the prescribed manner”, and asked if this was not a leash on the Election Commission’s powers.

Clause 1 mandates that the electoral roll for each constituency shall be prepared in the prescribed manner by reference to the qualifying date and shall come into force immediately upon its final publication in accordance with the rules made under this Act.

Clause 2 provides the Election Commission with the authority to hold a revision of the electoral roll before an election.

The judge added that the only questionthe Election Commission had to answer was if the court held that the poll panel had jurisdiction, “would we hold that it’s completely untrammelled, or unregulated”, The Indian Express reported.

“You [Election Commission] have the authority to deviate, but not by throwing out the [Registration of Electors] rules,” The Hindu quoted Bagchi as saying. “Form 6 [Application for inclusion of name in electoral roll] has six notified documents, your SIR has 11 documents.”

He added: “We would call upon you to answer if you can increase or eliminate documents which are already prescribed?”

Bagchi said that there can be no debate that it is not untrammelled.

“The manner (of the SIR) will be as you may deem it appropriate,” he added. “Therefore, when an action is likely to have an effect on the civil rights of people, why should we not expect of you that the procedure which you will ultimately contemplate and follow will be not less transparent than (when it is done) under Clause 2.”

In response, Dwivedi said that the Election Commission’s deviations from procedure must embrace the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law, equal protection of the laws enshrined in Article 14, constitutional norms of transparency and ease of voting, The Hindu reported.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly elections 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.

United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed on Wednesday that India has stopped buying Russian oil after US President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs of 25% for its trade ties with Moscow amid the Ukraine war.

In an interview to Fox Business, Bessent said: “India started buying Russian oil after the [Ukraine] conflict began, but President Trump put a 25% tariff on them, and India has geared down and has stopped buying Russian oil.”

Indian goods are facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including the punitive levy imposed in August.

New Delhi is yet to comment on Bessent’s claim.

On January 8, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said that Trump had approved a bill proposing tariffs of up to 500% on the secondary purchase and reselling of Russian oil.

Commenting on the bill, Bessent told Fox Business: “We will see whether that passes. We don't believe that President Trump needs that authority, that he can do it under IEEPA [the US’ International Emergency Economic Powers Act], but that the Senate wants to give him that authority.”

The US treasury secretary also accused Europe of buying Russian oil and said that they were “financing the war against themselves” by doing so.

Trump has repeatedly alleged that the import of discounted Russian oil by countries, including India, was fuelling Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

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.

In our era of fragmented identities and manufactured cultural tension, we are often told that deep, religious, and ethnic harmony is a naive dream, perpetually undermined by the “real” forces of history – conflict, empire and political manipulation.

To live in the Kerala coastal city of Kozhikode, however, is to inhabit a quiet, persistent rebuttal. This is not a city frozen in a utopian past, but a vibrant, living archive where a millennia-old politics of fraternity continues to shape its streets, its flavours, and its very soul.

Long before the term “globalisation” was coined, Kozhikode was its thriving epicentre. For nearly 2,000 years, ships from the Mediterranean, Arabia, Persia, Africa, and China docked here, drawn by pepper and cardamom, but sustained by a uniquely cultivated trust.

The Hindu Zamorin rulers established a radical precedent: granting land and protection to early Christian traders, offering royal patronage to Muslim merchants for their mosques, and welcoming Jewish, Jain, Buddhist and Parsi communities. The visit of the Chinese admiral Zheng He’s treasure fleet in the 15th century was a spectacle of this conscious openness. Fraternity here was not a philosophical abstract; it was the practical engine of commerce and civic life, built on face-to-face familiarity.

The arrival of Vasco da Gama at Kappad Beach in 1498 introduced a different politics – one of crusading ideology and monopolistic conquest. Yet, even subsequent colonial encounters left traces of complex cultural and intellectual exchange. In the 17th century, the Dutch commissioned the monumental Hortus Malabaricus, a botanical compendium that systematically documented the region’s plant wisdom.

A century later, in 1774, the French staged a brief political intervention, signing a treaty with the local Zamorin ruler and raising their flag in a fleeting attempt to gain a foothold, only to be swiftly displaced by the advancing forces of Hyder Ali of Mysore. Later, the British colonial administration imposed foreign systems – from land revenue laws to English education – leaving behind both bureaucratic frameworks and physical landmarks like the serene St Mary’s English Church.

Throughout this period, the city’s innate character persisted. This was exemplified in the 19th century by the German missionary-scholar Hermann Gundert, who immersed himself in Malayalam to create its first dictionary, and by the Basel Mission, which contributed through education and landmark industries like the famous weaving mills and tile works. Each, in their own way, became a thread in the city’s plural mosaic.

The architecture of coexistence

Nowhere is Kozhikode’s living legacy more palpable than at its beach, where the city’s mercantile soul is written in architecture and community life. Extending into the sea are two historic piers – the older an iron screw-pile structure from 1871 stretching 400 feet. Once a hive of activity where cranes loaded spices, timber, and textiles onto global vessels, they stand as skeletal reminders of that exchange.

Lining the shore, the sturdy facades of old warehouses, known locally as pandika saala, silently guard the past. These storerooms of Arab, Gujarati, and European trading agencies, with thick laterite walls and steep, narrow wooden stairs, built for bales of goods, have been adaptively reused in a seamless transition from colonial trade depot to contemporary social hub.

They now house boutiques, art galleries, and beloved restaurants serving Malabar cuisine. This is Kozhikode’s philosophy in action: the past is not abandoned but woven into the daily fabric of community life – a truth felt as crowds gather for sunsets and literary festivals, sharing the same breeze.

This same spirit of shared space finds its most profound architectural expression a short distance inland, in the ancient Kuttichira neighborhood. Within a stunning radius of a few hundred meters, one encounters a silent, powerful dialogue of spires and roof-lines. Here stands the 14th-century Mishkal Mosque, a multi-storied wooden structure with a distinctive Kerala-style tiered roof, built by an Arab trader. A short walk away is the Mother of God Cathedral, a site of worship dating back to Portuguese contact.

They are neighbored by centuries-old Hindu temples and a historic Jain temple. This remarkable cluster is not a curated museum exhibit but a lived, everyday reality. For generations, the call to prayer, temple bells, and church chimes have woven together into a singular soundscape of belonging, a physical manifestation of a community where sacred spaces were built side-by-side, not in opposition.

The city’s famed culinary palette is its most delicious testament to this heritage. At the iconic Paragon Restaurant, founded in 1939, you do not just eat Malabar biryani; you taste the layered history of Arab spice routes and local genius. In the now-pedestrianised Sweet Meat Street, the halwa and crispy banana chips are the direct inheritance of a mercantile culture that blended techniques and tastes across communities.

From historic curry houses to modern multi-cuisine cafés, eating here remains a daily act of communion and shared heritage, continuing the ancient tradition of trade as a social bond.

Legacy in idea and action

This enduring spirit of exchange and shared space fuels the city’s intellectual life. Kozhikode’s identity as a Unesco City of Literature – with its over 500 libraries and thriving publishing houses – is a natural outgrowth of this deep-rooted culture, a tradition reflected in its sons and daughters who have shaped contemporary Malayalam literature, film, and music.

It culminates in events like the Kerala Literature Festival, where thousands gather on the very beach that saw historic arrivals to debate ideas in a cacophony of languages. Here, the legacy of literary and artistic giants finds its living, democratic echo in the public square. This vibrant, civil culture of debate in tea shops and public squares is the democratic echo of the old trading port’s negotiation tables, now channeled through prose, poetry, and public discourse.

This is where Kozhikode’s story challenges our contemporary majoritarian political despair. It demonstrates that the constitutional ideal of fraternity enshrined in India’s Preamble as the assurance of dignity and unity is not a top-down legal construct but a bottom-up, lived reality built on shared space, mutual interest, and daily encounter. Unity here was forged not through assimilation, but through the dignity of working, trading, worshipping, and creating alongside one another.

In a polarised world quick to weaponise difference, Kozhikode offers a different manifesto. It proves that pluralism can be robust, not fragile; that diversity, when woven into the urban fabric, the culinary palette, and the literary imagination, becomes a source of immense resilience and joy. The city does not ask us to merely tolerate one another. It invites us to build together – be it a new business in an old warehouse, a new understanding in a shared neighborhood or a new story in a common language.

Kozhikode’s mandate is clear: fraternity is a habit cultivated in the mundane architecture of everyday life. It is the politics of the shared street, the common meal, the neighboring house of worship and the collective story. In preserving this, the city is not just gazing at its past; it is actively writing, page by page, stone by stone, a vital chapter for our fractured future.

John Kurien, a reflective development practitioner, who has found in Kozhikode the perfect harbour for his sunset years.

Indian Muslims are often told that their survival depends on being exceptional. Not exceptional in achievement or contribution, but exceptional in political quietude. Exceptional in studied moderation. Exceptional in silence. Exceptional in proving, again and again, that they are unlike Muslims elsewhere – less demanding, less visible and less assertive in their claims on the state.

Since Independence, Indian Muslims have enthusiastically participated in democratic life, electoral politics, and constitutional processes. But a subtle and corrosive process has been unfolding: the steady narrowing of legitimate political expression. To belong securely, Muslims are expected not merely to obey the law, but to mute their political voice.

This idea – it could be called Indian Muslim exceptionalism – has quietly shaped public discourse for decades. It once framed Indian Muslims as culturally refined but politically suspect; spiritually rich but civically conditional. With the rise of aggressive majoritarian politics, even this limited and conditional acceptance has begun to collapse.

What remains is the expectation of political compliance without the assurance of cultural tolerance or civic equality.

A historical inheritance

The roots of Indian Muslim Exceptionalism lie in the aftermath of Partition. The violence of 1947 did not merely redraw borders – it hardened expectations. Muslims who remained in India were subtly positioned as those who had chosen India and therefore owed it perpetual proof of loyalty.

This post-Partition framing has been well documented by historians such as Mushirul Hasan, who showed how Indian Muslims were morally distinguished from those who migrated – not simply as citizens, but as subjects whose belonging was tied to conduct rather than rights. The Constitution promised equality, but social and political life imposed an additional burden: reassurance.

Over time, a parallel narrative took hold. The “good Muslim” was urbane, syncretic, nostalgic – more a custodian of Indo-Persian heritage than a political subject with claims on the state. Muslim culture could once be selectively tolerated, even aestheticised, while Muslim political agency was consistently constrained. Belonging became conditional on non-assertion.

As political theorist Mahmood Mamdani has argued in Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, modern power often sorts Muslims into those deemed acceptable because they are non-political and those rendered suspect because they speak and act with agency.

From citizens to problems

This condition was not accidental. Political theorist Hilal Ahmed has shown how Muslims in India are routinely framed not as ordinary democratic actors, but as a problem category – a population to be managed rather than represented. Muslim politics is treated less as interest-based participation and more as an anomaly requiring explanation.

The effect of this framing is cumulative. When Muslims organise collectively, their actions are rarely evaluated on constitutional grounds. Instead, they are filtered through questions of intent, loyalty, and consequence. Routine democratic actions – petitioning, protesting, mobilising – acquire a different meaning when Muslims perform it.

Equality is thus recast as tolerance. Citizenship becomes provisional.

Media policing

Exceptionalism is not enforced only through law or policy; it is normalised through language – especially in the media.

When Muslims are victims, they are often described as “minorities”. When they organise, they are labeled “communal”. When they protest, they are framed as “angry”, “radicalised” or “provocative”. When they remain silent, they are praised as “moderate”, “reasonable” or “integrated.”

Hindi scholar Apoorvanand has argued that contemporary nationalism demands moral performance from Muslims, rewarding quiet conformity while casting political speech as disruption. Language here does not merely describe reality – it disciplines it.

By constantly signaling that Muslim visibility invites suspicion, public discourse teaches Muslims that silence is safer than speech. Self-censorship is reframed as civic virtue.

Why comparison matters

Exceptionalism is not unique to Muslims but it operates differently for them.

Dalit political assertion, as analysed by writer Anand Teltumbde and others, is widely recognised as a struggle against a historically documented system of caste oppression. Dalit mobilisation is contested, resisted and often repressed but it is still understood as structurally grounded.

Sikh political claims, examined by scholars such as Gurharpal Singh, are typically negotiated within the constitutional language of federalism, regional autonomy, and religious rights. Even at moments of tension, Sikh politics is discussed as a question of power and representation.

Muslim political claims, by contrast, are rarely granted this legitimacy. They are evaluated as tests of loyalty rather than as rights-based demands. Where Dalits are seen as victims of hierarchy and Sikhs as stakeholders in federal balance, Muslims are framed as a demographic or ideological problem.

This is the core injustice of Indian Muslim Exceptionalism: Muslims are denied the normalcy of political grievance.

Exceptionalism now

Today, this framework is no longer subtle. It is increasingly institutional.

Debates around personal law, citizenship, places of worship, religious education and charitable endowments are framed as neutral reforms. Muslim objections – even when legal and constitutional – are dismissed as emotional, regressive or obstructionist. Muslims are encouraged to accept reforms quietly, challenge them cautiously and never protest them.

Exceptionalism promises safety in exchange for silence but withdraws that promise the moment silence ends.

Recent bail decisions in the Delhi riots cases – where bail was denied to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam while granted to other co-accused – underscore how Muslim political agency itself is differentially assessed. While all the accused are Muslim, the distinction appears to rest not necessarily on religious identity alone but on the perceived threat posed by articulate, oppositional, and influential political speech.

Internalising the frame

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Indian Muslim Exceptionalism is how deeply it has been internalised by sections of the community itself.

Many Muslim professionals, leaders, and institutions now pre-emptively dilute their language, avoid religious or constitutional vocabulary, or distance themselves from collective Muslim concerns, believing this will ensure acceptance. The hope is that political quietude will be read as responsibility, and patience as maturity.

It is not.

For decades, Muslims have met suspicion with disciplined silence and exclusion with endurance – not because they lacked pride, but because they believed in the promise of the republic. The Republic may be misinterpreting endurance as acceptance and patience as consent.

As writer Arundhati Roy has observed, India once accommodated selective expressions of Muslim culture even as it constrained Muslim politics; today, both cultural presence and political agency are increasingly contested. History shows that conditional belonging is never permanent. Each concession merely raises the bar for the next one.

Beyond Exceptionalism

Indian Muslims do not need to be exceptional to deserve justice. They need only what is inherent to human dignity and constitutionally promised: equality before the law, freedom of conscience and the right to dissent.

Until Indian Muslims speak and act with complete political agency – free from the fear of being labeled as threats – and confront the reality that political quietude is interpreted as weakness and silence as consent, Indian society will continue to praise Muslim compliance while denying Muslims the ordinary exercise of rights enjoyed by other citizens.

The challenge before India is not to manage Muslim difference, but to normalise Muslim citizenship. For some Indian Muslims, exceptionalism may feel like protection. In reality, it is only a slow, quiet form of erasure.

Rasheed Ahmed is the executive director of the Indian American Muslim Council.