The Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Uttar Pradesh’s Malihabad has alleged that she was discriminated against based on her caste at a land-worship ritual before the renovation of a temple in Kakori, The Hindu reported on Friday.

Jai Devi Kaushal is a member of the Pasi community, which is recognised as a Scheduled Caste under the constitutional system of affirmative action.

The incident took place on Wednesday at the Sheetla Temple, reported The Print. The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has sanctioned approximately Rs 78 lakh for renovating the temple.

“They did not allow me to touch even a flower or be part of the bhoomi pujan because I am from the Pasi community,” the news outlet quoted Jai Devi Kaushal as alleging.

A group named Hindu Jan Seva Samiti, which is involved in temple welfare activities in the area, denied her allegations.

Prajwal Gupta, the president of the group, told The Print that the organisers had asked Jai Devi Kaushal to break a coconut as part of the ritual and had arranged garlands to honour her, “but she declined them and left”.

Jai Devi Kaushal has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to take note of the incident, The Hindu reported.

“We have fought a long battle against caste discrimination,” The Print quoted her as saying. “And it still happened with me. We will address this in front of every minister.”

She said that when she arrived at the temple to lay the foundation stone on Wednesday, the priest had already started the ritual. She alleged that neither she nor her team was asked to join the ceremony.

The legislator claimed that she had approached government offices about the temple’s condition and helped secure funding for its renovation.

Her husband, Mohan Lal Kaushal, alleged that the temple had been at the centre of a caste-related controversy in 2025 as well, when a man from the Pasi community was allegedly accused of “defiling” the premises, The Print reported.

He said he and his wife had complained about the incident and a case was filed. “Now, people are taking revenge on us by preventing the MLA from participating in the bhoomi pujan and insulting her,” he added.

Edited by Sneha.

On June 6, I wrote in this newsletter that many were watching the advent of the Cockroach Janta Party with caution even as it rapidly garnered a massive social media following – mostly comprising the young. The scepticism was based on the political campaign’s amorphous positions on the key problems India faces and a concern that the youth movement could get co-opted by forces beyond its control.

I did not imagine then that the movement would, in a matter of weeks, force Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sack Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and take responsibility for the alleged irregularities in competitive examinations under his watch.

Through June, the Cockroach Janta Party had held events in cities across India to demand the resignation of Pradhan. It made few headlines. But that changed on July 18 when the police forced activist Sonam Wangchuk into hospital, three weeks into his hunger strike in support of the students’ demands.

The movement got turbocharged.

On July 20, as protesters gathered to march to Parliament, security personnel fired tear gas and lathi-charged them in central Delhi. Several were injured. The police also used dangerous pellet guns against the demonstrators. Four people were hit. One may lose an eye.

The action of the police, which reports to the Narendra Modi government, was widely condemned. Support for the protesters from the Opposition parties was ramped up.

A day later, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lent his voice to the agitation by holding a surprise sit-in outside the prime minister’s residence, demanding that Pradhan be sacked. He and several Opposition politicians were briefly detained by the police.

Images of Gandhi being dragged away made the front pages of newspapers and got visibility on news channels that otherwise gave the Opposition little airtime.

The factors that led me and others to feel sceptical about the Cockroach Janta Party seven weeks ago remain. But they are no longer relevant.

The undercurrent of anger among India’s youth that brought the Cockroach Janta Party to life evidently transcended the movement’s leadership. The anger went from memes and reels to the street.

The demonstrations by young people across India over the past week have been less about fixing accountability for paper leaks and more about challenging what the protesters view as the Modi government’s arrogance in dealing with problems.

The youth protests channelised the broad discontent against the Modi government that has long been stifled, often brutally. The anger against the prime minister cuts across class and religious backgrounds, my colleagues Anant Gupta and Ayush Tiwari wrote this week.

No matter what happens to the Cockroach Janta Party – whether it grows or fizzles out – it has helped prepare a critical mass of youth for something bigger in the times to come. The movement is the little boy from The Emperor’s New Clothes who yelled out what his elders had feared to.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the youth protests here.

A version of this newsletter was sent out to Scroll’s members before Pradhan resigned on Saturday afternoon.

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

Assam floods. The toll in flood-related incidents this week in Assam crossed 40. More than 6.4 lakh persons in over 900 villages, spread across 11 districts, were affected by the floods. Sivasagar was the worst-affected district, with 328 villages inundated by Thursday.

Sikkim tunnel deaths. Twenty-five workers were killed following a blast in a tunnel that was being constructed in Sikkim’s Namchi district. The four-day search and recovery operation concluded on Thursday. Twenty-seven persons were trapped inside the tunnel after the blast on Monday.

BJP’s UCC push. The Madhya Pradesh Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code Bill to ban polygamy and introduce strict conditions for live-in relationships. Adivasi communities have been exempted from the bill to safeguard their customs and traditions.

With this, Madhya Pradesh became the fourth Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state to pass a Uniform Civil Code bill. Congress MLAs opposed the legislation and demanded that it be sent to a select committee for review.

During the discussion on the bill, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said that the Opposition party was trying to appease the Muslim community and accused its legislators of being “anti-tribal”.

Also on Scroll last week

• Delhi hospital reports show pellet wounds on journalist covering students’ protests
• How Mumbai Police is using surveillance to stop youth from protesting
• ‘People’s sympathy is now with the youth’: BJP workers worry about crackdown on protests
• Watch: What next as youth storm Delhi
• Why tree cutting on Dehradun highway could upend the life of a community
• Gandhi to Wangchuk, what history says about the success of hunger strikes in India
• Delhi protests: Constitution demands that India’s judiciary check police excess
• India’s soaring concrete skyline is a carbon emissions blindspot
• ‘Jana Nayagan’ review: Vijay’s new film is extremely lazy and incredibly tacky
• ‘Aga Aai Aaho Aai’ review: A warm and witty look at competing mothers

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

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

The Supreme Court on Thursday held that uttering casteist slurs in private does not meet the statutory requirement of being considered an offence under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, reported Live Law.

With this view, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta set aside an Allahabad High Court order that had refused to quash proceedings under the Act against a school manager.

The complainant had said in the first information report that he had gone to meet the school manager on January 24, 2020, after his son was injured in a quarrel with other students. He alleged that the school manager, along with other staff, assaulted him with lathis and shouted casteist slurs at him, reported Live Law.

The FIR in the matter was registered on the next day on charges of rioting, causing hurt, wrongful confinement and intentional insult, along with Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s).

Section 3(1)(r) of the Act makes it a crime for a person who is not from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe to intentionally insult or humiliate a member of the communities in a place within public view.

Section 3(1)(s) makes it a punishable offence for a person who is not from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe to abuse a member of the communities by their caste name in any place within public view.

The school manager had challenged the proceedings before the Allahabad High Court, arguing that the alleged incident took place inside room “A” in the school. He said that the room was enclosed, had no window and was not open to the public, Live Law reported.

He also argued that the witnesses had not said they were inside the room when the alleged casteist remarks were made. Their statements only showed that a quarrel had taken place, he added.

In April 2023, the High Court refused to interfere with the case, prompting the manager to approach the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, referring to its previous judgements, the Supreme Court said a place can be considered “within public view” when members of the public can see or hear the alleged casteist remarks.

“If the alleged offence takes place within the four corners of the wall where members of the public are not present, then it cannot be said that it has taken place at a place within public view,” the court said.

The bench also noted that the FIR did not specifically attribute any caste-based slurs to the school manager.

The teachers who gave statements spoke about an “altercation and scuffle”, but none said they were present when the alleged caste-based remarks were made or that they heard them, the court noted.

“Their mere presence in the school premises, therefore, does not establish that the alleged utterance was made within public view,” the bench said.

The court quashed the proceedings against the school manager under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, but clarified that the case relating to the other alleged offences would continue.

Edited by Sneha.

On August 8, a packed auditorium in Pune rose to applaud Tukaram Mundhe. Some took videos of the bureaucrat walking up to the stage. Others shouted out compliments. The event itself was titled “Unstoppable Tukaram”.

Rarely has any bureaucrat appointed Maharashtra’s food and drug administration commissioner met with such public adulation.

Since Mundhe took over in May, his crackdown on unhygienic practices in the food industry in the state has won him truckloads of admirers – and inspired social media memes.

“He is going viral on social media,” said B Shami, who owns Crown Bakery in Mumbai. “And it has caused panic in our industry.”

Under the bureaucrat’s instructions, food inspectors have scaled up surprise inspections. Not just that, they are handing out immediate suspension notices for serious violations, a departure from previous practices, officials told Scroll. “He is not afraid to go after big influential players,” said Omprakash Sadhwani, a retired joint commissioner of drugs in the food and drug administration.

In the last three months, Domino’s and Pizza Hut outlets have been temporarily shut down after inspectors found cockroaches and expired products in their kitchens. Many of Mumbai’s legacy food businesses, from the K Rustom ice-cream parlour to Parsi Dairy and restaurants like Shalimar and Rehmania had their licences suspended for a few days for a range of violations – fungal growth on walls, presence of rats and cockroaches, food not covered by insect-proof meshes and failure to test drinking water for pathogens.

All four businesses had their licences restored after they met hygiene standards.

The FDA, under Mundhe, has not shied away from turning the scrutiny on dark stores of quick commerce giants like Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart. Several were suspended after lizards, cockroaches and expired products were found on their racks.

The series of crackdowns have made Mundhe a household name, so much so that actor Paresh Rawal took to social media platform X to urge Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to ensure that the bureaucrat is not shunted out of his department.

The 2005-batch IAS officer has a reputation for being an honest bureaucrat, unafraid to ruffle feathers. He has been transferred 25 times in over two decades. In some posts, he has spent only a few months.

The Maharashtra FDA’s drive appears to have prodded similar action in neighbouring Karnataka, where inspection of five-star hotel kitchens and high-end restaurants also revealed shocking sanitary standards.

While Mundhe has found a huge fan following, the food industry is unnerved. Several business owners have approached courts asking for relief. Many say that by handing out immediate suspension notices, he is skipping standard procedures.

On August 18, the Bombay High Court said the food and drug administration was going “overboard” and directed it to pay Rs 5 lakh fine to a Pune sweet shop for not reinstating its licence despite a 98% adherence to hygiene.

But former joint commissioner for food in Maharashtra, CB Pawar, told Scroll that the slew of strict measures were “not harsh”.

Pawar added, defending Mundhe’s style of functioning, “The provisions under the Act allow FDA to suspend outlets. If a restaurant is unhygienic and not shut down, who will be responsible if people get food poisoning?”

In the Pune outlet particularly, a complaint of food poisoning had been filed with the FDA and its food samples were found unsafe.

At a press conference on Thursday, Mundhe said, “If there are observations made by the HC, we take it seriously. At the same time we make sure to follow the law. We are not exceeding our jurisdiction, we are following due process.”

From people buying breakfast on the street to those ordering groceries on quick commerce apps, consumers are cheering Mundhe.

In Sion, Vilas Singh, aged 24, first read about Mundhe on Instagram when the bureaucrat began suspending a few famous restaurants. Over the last few weeks, he has begun to see changes in local food stalls.

“I usually have breakfast outside,” Singh said. “Earlier I would get vada pav or idli in a newspaper. Sometimes the newspaper ink would stain the food if it was too hot. Now they wrap it in butter paper.”

‘No hesitation’

Mundhe began his career in 2005 as an assistant collector in Solapur, and was later posted as the collector of the district in 2014. He is remembered for initiating multiple water conservation projects in Solapur to remove the dependence of several villages on water tankers.

In 2016, Mundhe was given charge of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, where he cracked down on illegal construction and unauthorised hawkers. While his work was appreciated by local residents, several politicians campaigned for his transfer and a no-confidence motion was passed by corporators against him. He was eventually moved out in less than a year without being assigned another posting.

In 2020, the Uddhav Thackeray-led government posted Mundhe as Nagpur commissioner, where he cancelled several major tenders awarded by the previous commissioner. His method of working irked union minister Nitin Gadkari who complained to the Prime Minister’s Office against him.

In an interview to The Hindu, Mundhe maintained that he followed three principles before he took any action – legality, public interest and whether his decision is morally correct. “If any two conditions are met – including legality – I act. There is no hesitation, no gradual approach, no negotiation with what is wrong simply because it is powerful,” he said.

A new regime

The food industry in Maharashtra has been taken aback by the new-found aggression in the food and drug administration’s methods.

A food inspector told Scroll that before Mundhe took over, inspections were less frequent due to staff shortage. “We are working overtime now,” he said.

The official said that Mundhe has instructed them to adhere to “zero-tolerance” for unsanitary conditions.

On June 29, a food inspector conducted a surprise inspection in Pawan Bar and Restaurant in Navi Mumbai.

According to the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, earlier food inspectors would “usually notify a restaurant before an inspection”. Now, most inspections are conducted without intimation.

The inspection in Pawan Bar and Restaurant found hygiene-related lapses. The restaurant had a63% compliance with requirements under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. The next day the FDA issued a suspension notice to the restaurant.

Two weeks later, in a re-inspection the restaurant had 100% compliance with all requirements. Even then, the FDA did not revoke its suspension.

The restaurant finally approached the Bombay High Court, which revoked the suspension. The hotel’s kitchen remained shut for over 25 days. The lawyer representing the restaurant owner, Sagar Shetty, told Scroll that their main grievance was that the officials did not issue an improvement notice. Instead, they chose to immediately suspend the license.

Under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, a food inspector can inspect a food outlet and issue an ‘improvement notice’. The notice points out violations and gives a period of two weeks to comply. In cases where a food operator fails to comply, the inspector can suspend their license after a showcause notice.

The Act also gives the FDA power to immediately suspend a licence “in the interest of public health”.

It is this provision that Mundhe’s team has opted for in several cases.

Across Maharashtra, the licences of at least 10 hotels have been suspended in the last three months immediately after inspection, said Vijay Shetty, president of Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, or AHAR.

Ashwini Ranjane, assistant commissioner for food, said it was well within the rights of the food inspector to suspend licences. “A food inspector can immediately make out if a place is unsanitary by just looking at a restaurant’s kitchen,” she said.

Ranjane added that the FDA gives improvement notices in 70% to 80% cases of minor violations – if record keeping is poor, if employees’ medical records are not maintained, or if minor hygiene lapses are seen.

“Immediate suspension is issued when during our visits, we see dirt everywhere,” she said. “If there are major issues and multiple violations that the operator needs to work on and that is not possible to achieve in a few days, we have to suspend them.”

In July, food inspectors found expired flavouring agents and essence, rats and houseflies in K Rustom’s ice-cream parlour. In the century-old Parsi Dairy, fungus was found on the walls and raw materials found lying on the floor. Despite the presence of rats and flies, the food was left uncovered.

The licences of both outlets were suspended temporarily. Parsi Dairy was able to reopen after about 10 days after a re-inspection was undertaken. K Rustom decided to renovate its over 70-year-old store. An FDA officer said their licence has also been reinstated.

“If the food can directly harm the health of customers, then we can suspend the licence immediately,” a retired joint commissioner of food from Maharashtra told Scroll.

Several bakery owners protested against a blanket suspension of licence following “minor violations” during inspections. In July, the FDA issued stop-business notices to four bakeries after finding “hygiene related lapses”, expired raw materials and unsanitary cooking conditions. In videos that FDA shared, the New Maharashtra bakery in Chembur had fungus on baking trays and its walls.

An owner of a well-known brand of bread in Mumbai told Scroll that several small players use artificial flavours in khari, or do not label their loaves with an expiry date or display the nutritional content. “We welcome action in such cases,” he said, requesting anonymity.

“But the problem is pests,” he said. “It is difficult to totally prevent it.”

B Shami, who owns Crown Bakery, agreed. “Mumbai city’s hygiene levels are questionable,” he said. “We have open drains that allow rats everywhere. No baker wants to have a filthy kitchen.”

Responding to the allegation that FDA has gone overboard, Mundhe said that when FDA suspends any licence, “it is after multiple violations”.

He added, “In some cases, improvement notices and enough time was given. If these outlets have grievance they can appeal to me.”

Dark stores

Maharashtra has amongst the highest number of so-called dark stores run by quick commerce services, with Mumbai and Pune leading the list. For a city starved for time, the delivery services have become a lifeline for many users.

But Mundhe’s drive has made consumers think twice.

On August 14, the FDA released details of a month-long inspection of 86 dark stores. According to Ranjane, assistant food commissioner, they found minor to major violations in almost all stores.

The FDA issued improvement notices to 60 stores and suspended 14 others, including five operated by Blinkit, five by Zepto and two by Swiggy Instamart.

In the video shared by FDA, cockroaches could be seen moving amongst packaged items in a Bandra West store of Instamart. The same store had rodent droppings and lizard infestation. In another video, chocolate was infested by worms, and stale lettuce was stored in a Blinkit store in Ghatkopar. Both these outlets’ licences were suspended.

“On our visits, we found racks full of cockroaches,” Ranjane said, pointing out that faulty cold storage and hygiene lapses in dark stores were rampant.

‘Good practices’

Food business owners, too, admit that Mundhe has forced the industry to shape up.

“Hygiene is important, and he is bringing in good practices,” Shami added.

An employee from a Chembur-based self-help group, which sells chapatis and vegetarian dishes, said small outlets like theirs have switched from wrapping chapatis in newspapers to food-grade butter paper after the FDA began to inspect the area. “That has slightly increased our cost, but food operators are willing to comply,” the employee said. “Otherwise we will have to shut too.”

Ordinary customers are even more grateful. Ganesh Sonawale, who drives an autorickshaw, eats his lunch outside every day. “Roadside dhabas have become cleaner,” he said. “Food is now wrapped in brown paper. These two changes I am seeing everywhere.”

Sonawale said he hoped the drives would not stop in a few months. “It feels nice to eat food in a clean place now,” he added.

The Supreme Court on Thursday formed an enquiry committee to investigate the alleged police excesses during last month’s youth protests and violence against security forces.

The five-member panel will be headed by Justice R Subhash Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge. The other members are former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, former Delhi High Court Justice Shalinder Kaur, former Central Bureau of Investigation Director Rishi Kumar Shukla and retired Meghalaya police chief LR Bishnoi.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana passed the order on Tuesday while hearing petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20. The order was published on the court’s website on Thursday.

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

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

In its order, the court said that the committee will examine the suggestions made by the petitioners as well as the respondents, which includes the Union government.

The petitioners have suggested that the panel should examine the use of allegedly “excessive and disproportionate” force by the police, including the use of lathi-charge and tear gas against the protesters, use of pellet guns, electric batons and the “monitoring and surveillance” of demonstrators.

The petitioners also urged the committee to look into alleged cases of “targeted violence, harassment and molestation” of female protesters.

They further called for the panel to look into aspects such as ensuring that the police and security personnel wear proper uniforms and visible nameplates while carrying out arrests or while using force, and preventing the routine use of prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to stop peaceful protests.

The court said that the allegations of targeted violence and sexual harassment against women protesters should be taken on priority.

Meanwhile, the respondents submitted that the committee should examine the alleged use of force and violence by protesters against the police and damage to public property allegedly caused during the demonstrations.

The respondents also said that the injuries suffered by police personnel on duty, along with the “mental and emotional trauma” faced by their families “deserved recognition and consideration” on par with the grievances raised by the petitioners.

The bench asked the committee to submit its interim findings periodically to enable the court to “take appropriate measures and issue such directions” as needed.

It also ordered that security camera recordings of the protests and body-camera footage of the police and security personnel, which had earlier been ordered to be preserved, be handed over to the committee.

The court clarified that setting up the panel would not prevent the police or the authorities from taking administrative or disciplinary action against officers found to have violated service rules.

The bench urged the committee to submit its first interim report at the earliest. The matter will be heard next on September 10.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

In Arunachal Pradesh, conversations in mithun-rearing communities often find their way to the animal. For outsiders, one question almost inevitably follows: “How many mithuns do you own?”

When John Pei Cander was asked the same question, the enthusiasm with which he had been talking moments earlier suddenly faded. He paused before replying quietly, almost apologetically. “Now, I have just four,” he said. “During my father’s time, our family had around 30.”

John runs a successful business, owns agricultural land, and has built a concrete two-storied house, drives an SUV. His children are studying in private schools. Yet it was not these achievements that defined his pride. It was the shrinking number of mithuns his family owned. He is not alone.

Many with government jobs, thriving farms or successful businesses hesitate before revealing a single-digit number when asked about their mithuns. Their responses carried a sense of shame. Owning fewer mithuns, several people suggested, is not merely an economic reality; it was a loss of status and inheritance.

For generations, the mithun (Bos frontalis) has occupied a unique place amongst many Indigenous societies of northeast India. Neither fully domesticated nor truly wild, the semi-free-ranging bovine represents symbols of wealth, prestige and social standing, woven deeply into customary practices and family life.

According to the 20th Livestock Census published in 2019, India is home to nearly 384,000 individuals. Arunachal Pradesh supports close to 70% of the country’s mithun population, making the state’s breeding practices central to the species’ future. The remaining animals are distributed across Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.

Yet remarkably little has been known about the mithun’s genetic health. While earlier genetic studies have offered insights into the species’ ancestry and diversity, they examined only small portions of the genome, leaving scientists without a comprehensive understanding of how genetically healthy today’s mithun populations are or how they have changed over time.

Identifying the Siangmi breed

India’s first population-level whole-genome analysis of the Arunachali mithun, published earlier this year in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, attempts to fill that gap. By analysing the complete genomes, the study provides the first comprehensive assessment of its genetic diversity, inbreeding and demographic history, establishing a genomic baseline that could guide future conservation and breeding efforts.

“Our mandate is the conservation and characterisation of different mithun germplasm. Last year, we registered the world’s first recognised mithun breed, the Nagami mithun,” said Girish Patil S, Director of the ICAR–National Research Centre on Mithun and a co-author of the genome analysis study. “Simultaneously, we are characterising other mithun populations because unless a population is recognised as a breed, farmers cannot effectively avail the benefits of many Central Sector schemes, like the National Livestock Mission and the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, that are specified only for recognised breeds,” added Patil, who leads Project Siangmi.

“There are about three to four distinct mithun populations in Arunachal Pradesh. We have successfully characterised one from the Siang region, covering Siang, East Siang, Lower Siang, Upper Siang, Lepa Rada and Shi Yomi districts. We found this to be a distinct population, which we now call the Siangmi,” he explained. Based on the 20th Livestock Census, they estimate over 20,000 individuals of this breed. “Although it is yet to be formally registered, it is expected to become the world’s second recognised mithun breed,” Patil added.

Harshit Kumar, a scientist (Animal Genetics and Breeding) at NCR-Mithun and another co-author, said that the whole-genome study was undertaken on this distinct breed to establish whether it constituted a genetically homogeneous population. As the population is yet to be officially recognised as a breed, the study does not refer to it as the Siangmi. Instead, it describes the sampled animals as the “Arunachali mithun population”.

The analyses found little evidence of genetic sub-structure, indicating that the sampled animals largely belong to a single, homogeneous population. Along with distinct phenotypic characteristics, including a convex forehead and shorter, smoother horns, he said these findings strengthen the case for recognising the Siangmi as a separate breed.

Tadang Tamut, chairman of the Jomlo Mongku Mithun Farmers’ Federation, Siang, told Mongabay-India, “We, the Adi and Galo tribes of the Siang region, have been rearing mithuns for generations. Yet we never knew that these were a different breed. According to the scientists, this is probably the oldest mithun breed in the world.”

What the mithun genome reveals

“Arunachali mithuns are reared under a unique semi-free-ranging system, where animals roam within village territories mating naturally, and there is limited exchange between herds. With the absence of pedigree records and the repeated use of a few breeding bulls, these husbandry practices can gradually increase mating between related animals without it being noticed. Over time, this can erode the population’s genetic diversity,” said Kumar.

“Genetic diversity forms the foundation of a population’s long-term survival. Populations with greater diversity are generally better equipped to adapt to changing environments, resist emerging diseases and avoid the harmful effects of inbreeding. Once diversity is lost, recovering it becomes increasingly difficult,” he explained.

To build the baseline, blood samples were collected from 11 unrelated mithuns maintained under semi-intensive production systems across five villages in East Siang and Lepa Rada districts. High-throughput whole-genome sequencing generated around 30 gigabases of DNA sequence from each animal. After quality filtering, the analysis identified nearly five million high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)- small genetic variations that collectively provide a detailed picture of diversity across the genome.

Across four independent genomic analyses, the sampled mithuns consistently showed moderate levels of genomic inbreeding.

The researchers classified ROHs into four length categories, ranging from 100 kilobases to more than one megabase. More than 93% of the 24,937 ROHs identified across the sampled mithuns measured between 100 and 250 kilobases, while none exceeded one megabase. This pattern suggests that historical demographic events, rather than recent intensive inbreeding, have largely shaped the genomes of the sampled animals.

Further estimates of nucleotide diversity and heterozygosity indicated that the sampled mithuns continue to maintain moderate levels of genetic variation. The authors, however, cautioned that genetic diversity alone does not provide a complete picture of population health. While the sampled mithuns retained moderate genetic variation, other genomic indicators, including inbreeding and effective population size, point to aspects of the population’s genetic health that require continued monitoring.

The researchers then examined whether the sampled mithuns belonged to distinct genetic groups or a largely connected population. Using two complementary genomic analyses, they found little evidence of strong genetic subdivision, suggesting that the sampled herds continue to exchange genes and largely belong to a single, connected population.

According to Kumar, the absence of strong genetic substructure suggests that the population remains genetically well connected. This gives the population considerable potential to improve further, not only in numbers, but also in traits such as body weight, fertility and overall viability.

“Although the sampled mithuns appeared genetically well connected overall, we also found that closely related animals can occur within village herds,” he added. “This highlights the importance of understanding relatedness when making future breeding decisions so that mating between close relatives can be avoided.”

A shrinking breeding population

The study reconstructed the demographic history of the sampled population and estimated its recent effective population size (Ne). Unlike the census population, effective population size is a genetic measure of the number of individuals effectively contributing genes to the next generation. In most species, this number is considerably smaller than the total population because not every individual contributes equally to breeding.

They found evidence of a long-term decline, with the recent effective breeding population estimated at around 160 individuals. “Considering the estimated Siangmi population of around 20,000 animals, this Ne size suggests the population has not yet reached a stage of irreversible genetic erosion, but it is at a point where timely interventions are needed to maintain its genetic diversity and prevent further decline,” Kumar said.

“From a conservation perspective, Ne is one of the strongest indicators of a population’s long-term evolutionary potential. As fewer animals contribute genetically over successive generations, rare genetic variants are gradually lost, reducing the population’s ability to respond to future environmental or disease-related challenges,” he added.

Though the estimate itself should be interpreted cautiously. “Effective population size is influenced by sample size, and our analysis is based on genomes from only 11 animals. While the results clearly indicate a declining trend, broader sampling across the mithun’s distribution will be necessary to refine these estimates and determine whether similar patterns occur in other populations.”

Evidence-based mithun conservation

The findings suggest that conserving mithuns must move beyond population counts and observational management towards evidence-based genetic management. Importantly, the researchers do not advocate replacing the traditional free-ranging husbandry systems.

Three major gaps have been identified in the current management of Arunachali mithuns. First, village herds lack a system of individual animal identification, making it difficult to track animals over time or across herds, with the authors proposing ear-tagging or biometric identification as a prerequisite for any structured breeding programme.

Second, as parentage verification remains largely absent, genomic tools developed from the present study could cost-effectively confirm parentage and identify closely related animals before they are bred, reducing the risk of inadvertent inbreeding.

Third, systematic performance records are lacking, with information on traits such as body weight, growth rate and disease resistance not linked to individual animals. The authors suggest combining such phenotypic records with genomic data would allow future studies to identify the genetic basis of economically important traits and support breeding programmes that improve productivity while conserving genetic diversity.

Tamut said the federation had signed a memorandum of understanding with NRC-Mithun. “Over the past two years, we have ear-tagged and vaccinated more than 16,000 Siangmis, and we are working to document every single animal.”

He added they have been conducting awareness programmes about the breed. “Our goal is to reach every farmer and ensure that the benefits reach even the remotest villages. Once the breed is officially recognised, we can also apply for a GI tag”. The mithun breeders hope that with the GI tag, they can preserve the uniqueness of the Siangmi breed and save it from crossbreeding.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Jharkhand High Court on Thursday stayed the state government’s decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Civil Services examinations, ANI reported.

The court also directed candidates selected through the examinations to resume their duties immediately, The New Indian Express reported. The matter will be heard next on August 25.

The Jharkhand government cancelled 44 examinations conducted since 2014 by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission and the Jharkhand Public Service Commission through testing firm TSR Data Processing Private Limited, following student protests alleging irregularities in government recruitment exams.

The student protests, which had been ongoing in the state since July 25, were called off after Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced the cancellation of the examinations.

Later, candidates who had cleared some of the examinations approached the Jharkhand High Court, challenging the state government’s decision.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Union government told the Supreme Court that it is reconsidering the regulations issued by the University Grants Commission in January to address caste-based discrimination in colleges and universities. The court had stayed the rules in January observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”.

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

Journalist Tarun Tejpal moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision to convict him of raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. His petition against his 10-year sentence is likely to be mentioned for an urgent hearing as he has been directed to surrender to the authorities in the first week of September.

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

On August 6, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court overturned a 2021 sessions court verdict acquitting Tejpal. Read on.

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in two cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, died at a Delhi hospital. He was 80. The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Kumar was serving life imprisonment in Tihar jail. He was convicted by the Delhi High Court in December 2018 in a case involving the murder five members of a Sikh family in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar area on November 1, 1984. The court found him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property. Read on.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was depicted as a Hindu deity at an event organised by a group of transgender community members at the Press Club of India in Delhi. They recited some verses, which they described as the “Modi Chalisa”, according to videos posted on social media. A chalisa is a Hindu hymn to a deity.

The group also shouted “Jai Jai Modi”, or hail Modi, and “Har Har Modi”, or victory to Modi.

The Press Club of India said that it stopped the event because the organisers violated the terms of renting the venue. The event was criticised on social media, with users saying that it hurt their religious sentiments. Read on.

A clash broke out between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student groups at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University during a meeting of a students’ union on Wednesday. The clash continued into the early hours of Thursday.

Several students were injured and taken to a hospital. The two sides blamed each other for the violence and accused the other of bringing people from outside the university onto the campus.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Read on.

Pakistan has announced that it will confer its highest civilian honour posthumously on two Mumbai-based Parsi doctors for not revealing that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s first president, had a terminal illness in the years before Partition.

Jinnah’s physician Jal Ratanji Patel and radiologist Jal Daeboo will receive the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, said the Pakistan Cabinet’s official awards list. Some members of the community believe that Daeboo is a misspelling of the Parsi name Deboo.

Jinnah had been suffering from tuberculosis at the time of Partition. He died in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan was created.

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins have claimed in their 1975 popular history Freedom at Midnight that if British India’s last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, had known that Jinnah was suffering from a terminal illness, he might have delayed the transfer of power from British India to independent India and the creation of Pakistan. Read on.

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

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was depicted as a Hindu deity in an event organised by a group of transgender community members at the Press Club of India in Delhi on Thursday.

They recited some verses, which they described as the “Modi Chalisa”, showed videos posted on social media. A chalisa is a Hindu hymn to a deity.

The group also shouted “Jai Jai Modi”, or hail Modi, and “Har Har Modi”, or victory to Modi.

After videos of the event were shared widely on social media, the Press Club of India clarified that it had not organised the event. The club said that it stopped the event because the organisers violated the terms under which the hall had been rented.

The venue had been rented for a press conference, it said.

The event was criticised on social media, with users saying that it hurt their religious sentiments.

Today: Modi Chalisa, Press Club, Delhi. pic.twitter.com/FkDIZRmBn0

— Shyam Meera Singh (@ShyamMeeraSingh) August 20, 2026

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it is reconsidering the regulations issued by the University Grants Commission in January to address caste-based discrimination in colleges and universities, Live Law reported.

The 2026 University Grants Commission Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations were stayed by the Supreme Court on January 29, observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”.

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

The court had asked the Union government to redraft the regulations and added that until then, their operation will remain suspended.

On Thursday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana that the regulations were being reviewed, the legal news outlet reported. He asked the bench to defer deciding the questions to be examined in the case until the review was completed.

Advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for the petitioners, urged the court to fix a timeline for the Union government’s decision, Live Law reported.

However, the bench said that it was not hearing arguments on the matter and adjourned the case for four weeks.

The regulations by the University Grants Commission were introduced in response to a public interest litigation filed in 2019 before the Supreme Court by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, two students from marginalised communities who died by suicide after facing caste-based harassment. The petition had sought measures to prevent and address caste-based discrimination in educational institutions.

What the rules mandated

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

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

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

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

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union home ministry on Wednesday notified rules empowering district collectors in eight states and Union Territories to process pending applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act instead of empowered committees.

The order covers Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam (except tribal areas), Tripura (except tribal areas), Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Earlier, empowered committees comprising central government officials, including those from the Census, Intelligence Bureau and postal departments, would process applications in the areas.

The Citizenship Amendment Act aims to provide a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and have entered the country by December 31, 2014. The Union government notified the rules under the Act in March 2024.

The notification published on Wednesday means that all applications pending before empowered committees in the eight states and Union Territories will be transferred to collectors.

Ahead of the West Bengal elections in April, the Union government had created four empowered committees in the state to clear citizenship applications, The Hindu reported. Through this, the Union home ministry was able to bypass the role of the state government, where the Trinamool Congress was in power at the time, in processing citizenship applications.

While citizenship comes under the Union List according to the Constitution, the state government has a role to play in logistical matters such as office space and the verification of applicants by the police, the newspaper reported.

In May, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in West Bengal after defeating the TMC in the state polls.

As per the amended rules, the collector has to verify documents submitted by an applicant, conduct inquiries if necessary, determine eligibility and then administer the oath of allegiance.

An application can be rejected if the individual fails to appear personally before the authorities or does not take the oath of allegiance despite reasonable opportunities.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in two cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, died at a Delhi hospital on Thursday, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying. He was 80.

The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Kumar was serving life imprisonment in Tihar jail. He was convicted by the Delhi High Court in December 2018 in a case involving the murder five members of a Sikh family in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar area on November 1, 1984.

The court found him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property.

Large-scale violence 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.

Kumar was a three-time Lok Sabha MP from the Outer Delhi seat, and was representing the constituency during the anti-Sikh massacre. He resigned from the Congress after the 2018 conviction.

He was convicted a second time in February 2025 by a Delhi court and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two men during the violence.

The family members of the victims had alleged that a mob led by Kumar 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.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Pakistan has announced that it will confer its highest civilian honour on two Mumbai-based Parsi doctors for not revealing that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s first president, had a terminal illness in the years before Partition.

Jal Ratanji Patel, Jinnah’s physician, and Jal Daeboo, a radiologist, will receive the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, said the Pakistan Cabinet’s official awards list. Some members of the community believe that Daeboo is a misspelling of the Parsi name Deboo.

They will be given the award posthumously.

Jinnah had been suffering from tuberculosis at the time of Partition. The disease had severely affected his lungs. He died on September 11, 1948, just over a year after Pakistan was created.

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins have claimed in their 1975 popular history Freedom at Midnight that if British India’s last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, had known that Jinnah was suffering from a terminal illness, he might have delayed the transfer of power from British India to independent India and the creation of Pakistan.

“Lord Mountbatten later acknowledged that, had he known how seriously ill Jinnah was, he might have delayed Partition – potentially altering the course of history and perhaps even jeopardising the creation of Pakistan,” wrote Pakistan Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal in a social media post.

He added: “By maintaining absolute professional confidentiality at such a critical moment, these doctors performed a quiet but extraordinary service. Their fidelity to their professional oath inadvertently became a significant contribution to the circumstances that made the creation of Pakistan possible.”

In 1946, Patel diagnosed Jinnah with chronic tuberculosis, Lapierre and Collins write. They do not mention Deboo. He is thought to have examined Jinnah’s X-rays.

Patel told Jinnah that unless he “severely reduced his work load, rested much more frequently, gave up cigarettes and alcohol, and eased the pressures on his system, he did not have more than one or two years to live”, Lapierre and Collins write.

They add that Jinnah told Patel that there was no question of him doing that. “Fortified every two weeks by injections given him in secret by Dr Patel, Jinnah returned to work. He made no effort whatsoever to follow his doctor’s advice,” they write.

Partition had triggered one of history’s largest mass migrations. Lakhs of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs crossed the newly created borders between India and Pakistan. The communal violence that accompanied this killed between two lakh and 10 lakh persons.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision to convict him of raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013, Bar and Bench reported.

Tejpal’s petition against his 10-year sentence is likely to be mentioned for an urgent hearing as the journalist has been directed to surrender to the authorities in the first week of September.

Separately, the Goa government has also moved the Supreme Court seeking life imprisonment for Tejpal instead of the 10-year sentence.

On August 6, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court overturned a 2021 sessions court verdict acquitting Tejpal.

The High Court convicted the journalist under provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her.

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

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

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

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

The counsel representing Tejpal had argued that the complainant’s account was inconsistent with evidence such as the security camera footage and how the elevator worked.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: After Tejpal: A letter to progressive men from a feminist

A United States panel on religious freedom on Wednesday called for sanctions against members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and said its leaders should not be given high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies, ahead of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s planned visit to the US.

US Commission on International Religious Freedom chair Asif Mahmood said Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member of the RSS. Mahmood described the RSS as an umbrella organisation “whose sub-groups have perpetrated attacks on religious minorities, including Christians and Muslims”.

The RSS, a Hindutva organisation, is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Commissioner Gene Mills said RSS leaders “should not be honored with high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies” and instead asked Washington to consider sanctions against members found responsible for religious freedom violations.

The remarks came ahead of Bhagwat’s planned visit to New York on August 29 to participate in the Universal Oneness Celebrations organised by American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue, PTI reported.

In March, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom had recommended in its annual report that the US government designate India as a “country of particular concern” over alleged systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.

This was the seventh time that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom had made this recommendation.

The March report also recommended targeted sanctions against individuals and entities, including the RSS and India’s Research and Analysis Wing, including by freezing their assets or barring them from entering the US. The Research and Analysis Wing is the country’s foreign intelligence agency.

The commission is an independent American government agency that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion and makes policy suggestions to the White House. These suggestions are not binding.

In an India-specific issue update released in November, the commission had noted that the “interconnected relationship between the RSS and BJP allows for the creation and enforcement of several discriminatory pieces of legislation, including citizenship, anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws”.

India rejected the report in March, describing it as a “distorted and selective” picture of the country based on “questionable sources and ideological narratives”.

Objections have also been raised in Canada over Bhagwat’s planned visit.

On August 7, two Canadian MPs urged Ottawa to ban the RSS and prevent Bhagwat from entering the country, citing his “history of hate speech” and advocacy of violence against religious minorities.

They said his visit could “lead to social disorder”.

After visiting the US, Bhagwat is scheduled to travel to Canada from August 31 to September 1 as part of a global outreach tour.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The administration of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has withdrawn its call for proposals from the private sector to set up a “green” artificial intelligence data centre.

The invitation for expression of interest “stands withdrawn with immediate effect due to administrative reasons”, said a notice issued on August 14 by the officer on special duty for information technology.

On August 10, the island administration called for expressions of interest from private sector entities to explore the feasibility of developing a “Green AI/Data Centre Vertical” in the Great Nicobar or Little Andaman regions.

The administration had said that the proposed data centre could include graphics processing units and high-performance computing infrastructure. Its operations could be powered by renewable energy, and it may have seawater-based or other cooling systems and freshwater-free cooling solutions, among other operations.

The call for proposals had come even as local tribal communities and experts have expressed concerns about a proposed Rs 91,000-crore infrastructure project on the Great Nicobar Island. The local administration has been holding meetings with tribal communities to finalise the draft master plan for the project.

The sea areas earmarked for the data centre project were along bays that had been marked for a wildlife corridor, agriculture and biodiversity tourism, coastal and business tourism activities, residential areas and administrative buildings in the draft master plan, The Hindu reported.

These included areas such as Gandhi Nagar Bay, Anderson Bay, Vijay Nagar Bay and Campbell Bay.

Great Nicobar project

The Great Nicobar Project includes the construction of new townships, a power plant, a greenfield international airport and a transshipment port.

It is expected to use 166 sq km of the Great Nicobar island, which is part of the Nicobar Islands. The island falls within the Sundaland Biodiversity Hotspot, spanning the western half of the Indonesian archipelago.

Concerns have been raised about the impact of large infrastructure projects on the Shompen, a vulnerable tribal group, and the Nicobarese community. The project has also faced criticism for its potential impact on the island’s biodiversity, rainforests and endemic species.

A batch of petitions challenging key approvals to the project is pending before a circuit bench of the Calcutta High Court at Port Blair.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

‘Not to be conquered but preserved’: Profound lessons against ‘development’ on the Nicobar Islands

India has replaced Indonesia as Asia’s least-preferred stock market, Bloomberg quoted a Bank of America survey of fund managers as showing. The Indian stock market has been one of the world’s worst performers this year.

The survey of panellists managing $272 billion in assets between them found that 32% were allocating a smaller share of their portfolios to Indian stocks.

Their biggest concern was that there are not enough listed Indian companies with a strong presence in the artificial intelligence sector. Weak economic growth was the second-biggest concern, followed by the lack of policy reforms to improve the business environment in the country and high valuations of the stocks. Read on.

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav was detained during a protest against the Bihar Police firing an AK-47 rifle on youth demonstrating last month against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations.

His sister, party MP Misa Bharti, was also detained while participating in a march to the governor’s residence.

On August 11, the government told the Supreme Court that a constable in Siwan district had on July 25 fired four shots in the air from his AK-47 rifle after getting “trapped” among the protesters. It claimed that no one had been injured by the bullets. Read on.

The Tamil Nadu government withdrew an order directing the authorities to prevent students and youth from participating in protests organised by Left parties and the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign in the state.

Two Left parties – the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – support the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam-led state government.

The directive was issued on Friday and withdrawn on Monday following a backlash. The Cockroach Janta Party had described the order as “unconstitutional” and “irrational”. Read on.

Jammu and Kashmir is an “important part of India” and the United States will consider revising its travel warning for the region, US Ambassador Sergio Gor said. Washington would re-evaluate the safety advisory as the Union government and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had taken steps to make the region safer, he told reporters during a visit to Srinagar.

The US currently advises its citizens against travelling to Jammu and Kashmir citing “terrorism and civil unrest”.

Gor’s remark that the region is an “important part of India” assumes significance as Washington’s long-standing position has been that Kashmir’s status should be settled through negotiations between New Delhi and Islamabad “while taking into consideration the wishes of the Kashmiri people”. Read on.

The Supreme Court gave the Odisha government a final opportunity to decide on the premature release of Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. It verbally stated that if the Odisha Sentence Review Board did not decide on the matter by the next hearing, the court would take the decision.

During the previous hearing on July 14, the court had asked the Odisha government to decide on Singh’s remission plea by August 19. However, a bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi was told on Wednesday that no decision has been taken yet. Read on.

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A clash broke out between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-leaning student groups at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University during a general meeting of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students’ Union on Wednesday, continuing into the early hours of Thursday, The Telegraph reported.

Several students were injured and taken to a hospital, The New Indian Express reported.

The two sides blamed each other for the violence and accused the other of bringing people from outside the university onto the campus.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Jadavpur University witnessed a late-night clash between ABVP and Left student groups over a general body meeting, with BJP and CPI(M) leaders trading allegations.#JadavpurUniversity #ABVP #SFI #Kolkata #WestBengal #BJP #CPIM pic.twitter.com/8DP4RcfbQS

— India Blooms (@indiablooms) August 20, 2026

The ABVP alleged that members of Left-affiliated student organisations, including the Students’ Federation of India and Democratic Students Organisation-Democratic Students’ Federation, had started the confrontation under the cover of the meeting, The Telegraph reported.

However, the Left-affiliated groups accused the ABVP of bringing outsiders to the campus and indulging in vandalism.

Jadavpur University’s administrative building, Aurobindo Bhavan, was locked due to the escalating tensions, while groups of students gathered outside, PTI reported.

Unidentified persons in the university told the news agency that fires were allegedly lit at several places on the campus.

The ABVP announced a protest on the university campus on Thursday. The Students’ Federation of India also announced a protest rally near the university.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A researcher has moved the Bombay High Court seeking that the defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against Hindutva ideologue be stayed, Live Law reported.

The petitioner, Pankaj Phadnis, has contended that the Pune court hearing the case was exceeding its jurisdiction by “trying to determine whether Savarkar was brave or coward”.

Phadnis argued that the court was indulging in “judicial indiscipline and passing perverse orders”, Live Law reported.

The petitioner, who claims to have “expert knowledge” of VD Savarkar’s life, filed an interim application in the Bombay High Court on Wednesday in a public interest litigation he initiated in 2024 to raise awareness about the Hindutva ideologue.

He approached the High Court after the Special MP/MLA Court in Pune rejected his plea to intervene in the ongoing criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi.

The Pune court had imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on Phadnis, saying his application had wasted judicial time, The Hindu reported.

The main case stems from a complaint filed by VD Savarkar’s grandnephew Satyaki Savarkar in April 2023 against Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of making false and malicious remarks about his uncle during an event in London in March 2023.

Phadnis has asked the High Court to stay the proceedings and appoint an amicus curiae to examine whether the evidence being recorded by the special court is relevant to the original complaint filed by Satyaki Savarkar.

“An individual’s contribution to freedom struggle and whether he was brave or not cannot be subject matter of judicial determination,” Live Law quoted the plea as saying. “That lies in the domain of the Parliament, which has already spoken on the subject by displaying his portrait in the Parliament by unanimous consent.”

Phadnis said the Pune court should limit its consideration to whether VD Savarkar had written about beating up a Muslim man as claimed by Rahul Gandhi and should not examine wider questions of political history.

Phadnis said he decided to intervene after reading reports of testimonies given by Satyaki Savarkar during cross-examination.

On June 15, Satyaki Savarkar had told the Pune court that VD Savarkar wrote 10 mercy petitions to the British.

Phadnis’ plea also refers to VD Savarkar’s views on secularism, including his belief that different religions add “beauty” to Indian society, like different colours make a rainbow beautiful, Live Law reported.

It also states that some of VD Savarkar’s followers had done a “disservice” to him, naming Nathuram Godse and those who consider minorities “second-class citizens”, The Hindu reported. Godse had assassinated MK Gandhi in 1948.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Protesting students have sat at the entrance gates to schools and on roads, locked up staff members, and marched to the local authorities’ offices to present their demands. Their demonstrations have prompted the Cockroach Janata Party to launch the School Thik Karo, or Fix the Schools, campaign.

Students and Cockroach Janata Party activists have uploaded videos to social media, showing dilapidated classrooms, some with plaster crumbling from the roofs, missing benches and desks, clogged toilets and discoloured drinking water.

The picture emerging from the protests is in stark contrast with India’s official data which states that 99% of government schools in the country have toilet facilities and 99.6% have drinking water facilities.

The data is hosted on the Unified District Information System for Education, also known as UDISE Plus.

It includes details for each school, such as the number of students enrolled, the number of teachers on staff, the number and status of classrooms, toilets, libraries and laboratories, and information about drinking water facilities.

But activists and experts say there is a reason why UDISE data does not always correspond to ground realities: the platform collects data from school principals. “The staff feels the need to paint a bright picture of the state of the school because they feel that their jobs would be at risk if they admit to failures in the school,” said Aektha Chanda, an activist from Rajasthan.

The mismatch in UDISE data and the ground reality becomes more evident when seen at the level of individual schools.

Scroll examined data from the platform pertaining to five of the schools whose students have been protesting, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. While UDISE data presented a robust picture of the schools, video evidence and testimonies from the protests showed that the situation on the ground was far from satisfactory.

Scroll sent queries to the relevant district education officers and other officials, seeking their responses to these discrepancies. This story will be updated if they respond.

Alwar, Rajasthan

The data that the Government UPS Jodhawas school, in Alwar, Rajasthan, submitted to the official portal in 2025-’26 indicated the school had six classrooms, out of which only one needed minor repairs.

The school administration also claimed that the school had two toilets and that both were functional. The data also indicated that the school had a functional drinking water system.

But protesting students have claimed otherwise.

They began a sit-in protest after a slab of a roof in one unused classroom collapsed in early August. According to news reports, 174 students had to share three classrooms because the rest of the building was dilapidated. The students demanded that repairs be carried out to the classrooms and toilets, that a water filter be installed, and that more teachers be deployed at the school.

The protests received a filip after Ashutosh Ranka, a spokesperson of the Cockroach Janata Party, visited the school to support the students. The visit drew particular attention after he got into a heated argument with Bharatiya Janata Party workers, who allegedly tried to bar him from entering. After the protests and Ranka’s visit, authorities promised to carry out the necessary repairs.

A Class 10 student from the school, who spoke to Scroll on the condition of anonymity, said that students had suffered considerably in recent years as a result of the poor infrastructure and facilities. "Every time it rained, the classroom roof leaked and only three rooms were usable, forcing us to cram in there," she said. She added that the school only received electricity for two hours a day, rendering the fans useless most of the time. Further, the school's toilets were unhygienic, and students and teachers had to clean them.

The student noted that repairs had begun now, but for the moment, they had to use the same classrooms. "If they don't keep their promise, we will protest again," she said. "We fought for the right reasons so there is no fear, so we will do it again if necessary."

Jaipur, Rajasthan

The data filed by the administration of the Government Seth Anandilal Poddar Badhir Senior Secondary School, for speech and hearing impaired students, indicated that the school had 28 classrooms for 599 students, and that the classrooms did not need any repairs, major or minor. Further, according to the data, all of the eight toilets in the school were in a functional condition, as was its drinking water facility. The data also showed that the school had 50 teachers.

But the school’s protesting student contradicted some of these claims.

According to news reports, earlier this month, one of the students had been injured after ceiling plaster had fallen on them. The videos that students posted on social media captured other problems, such as crumbling, dilapidated buildings, and unhygienic and non-functional toilets. According to reports, they also decried drinking water shortages, as well as a shortage of teachers.

Kishunpur, Uttar Pradesh

In the data submitted to the government portal, the administration of Sarvodaya Inter School in Kishunpur had declared that it had 19 classrooms for a school strength of 1,883 students, of which only six needed minor repairs. Further, according to the data, all of the five toilets in the school were functional. The school also declared it had electricity available on campus, as well as a library.

But the school’s students went on a protest about the dire infrastructure at the institution. In one news report, the district inspector of schools lists some of the students’ complaints, including that the school had broken benches and chairs, leaking roofs, a shortage of drinking water, poor sanitation, a lack of fans and erratic electricity. The students also stated that the school did not have a library. The inspector stated that steps were being taken to address the problems raised by the students.

Another school in the state, the Gangwa Ka Dera Primary School, claimed that the school was approachable by all-weather road. The school’s students, however, walked a five-kilometre stretch to the district magistrate’s office to demand a road to their school.

Gaya, Bihar

According to the data submitted by the Simuara Middle School, in Gaya, the school had 11 classrooms, out of which four needed major repairs. The administration claimed that both the school’s toilets were functional and that drinking water facilities were also functional.

But students of the school marched four kilometres to the sub-divisional office and demanded that authorities fix the school’s problems – they said these included dysfunctional toilets, poor electricity supply, missing fans, poor water quality and the poor quality of their midday meals.

Students in other schools, such as in Kishunpur, had also talked about the problem of the lack of fans, which left them in immense discomfort, particularly through hot summer months. However, the government portal does not include any information on the availability of fans in schools.

Chhatarpur, Madhya Pradesh

In the data it submitted to the portal, the administration of the HSS Tatam School in Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh stated that the school was approachable by an all-weather road.

Students, however, conducted a 18-hour long agitation and walked 40 km towards the district headquarters to demand a road to their school. The students claimed that the road was severely neglected, and became particularly unusable during the monsoons.

Unreliable data

In the past, allegations have emerged about schools being pressured to submit favourable data. In 2023, for instance, news was reported that education officials were allegedly instructing schools in Maharashtra to submit false data on the portal.

Jean Dreze, an economist who has surveyed schools in Jharkhand, said that data collection on schools was essential, but argued that certain data points on the portal were difficult to believe, such as the 2025-’26 figure of 99% for government schools with toilet facilities. “In Jharkhand too, 99% of schools supposedly have toilets,” he said. “It’s bogus. When you pay a visit to the schools, you can clearly see that that isn’t the truth.”

Anil Roy, an education activist from Bihar, echoed these concerns. “If you go check the schools, the toilets are lying unused because there is no one to clean them and they have stopped being functional,” he said.

In Rajasthan, a state seeing some of the most intense protests, crumbling school infrastructure has been a major concern.

Last year, in July, a part of a classroom roof collapsed in a school in Jhalawar district, killing seven students and injuring 27 other students. According to news reports, students noticed debris begin to fall and warned teachers about it, but were told to remain quiet. At around 8 am, the roof gave way, burying 35 students.

The problem with the self-reporting data system is glaringly apparent in the case of this school.

In its 2024-’25 and 2023-’24 data, the school had stated that it had four classrooms, of which only two needed minor repairs. The school’s current data on the government portal indicates that all the four classrooms are in good condition.

Chanda said that after the July 2025 incident, the Rajasthan government compiled a list of schools that had unsafe buildings, then decided to demolish 2,699 schools and make repairs to around2,000 schools. “After the incident, the government demolished many schools, but not all schools were repaired,” Chanda said. “Some schools temporarily moved to other spots, but other than that, not much was done.”

Chanda said that she had observed that government-designated “model schools”, tended to have good infrastructure. “But you go one kilometre away and you will find a school that is almost falling apart,” she said.

The absence of water and sanitation facilities had emerged as a key problem in her surveys of schools, particularly for female students. She explained that many mothers said that they wanted to send their daughters to school but that the lack of toilets was a major obstacle. “They tell me the conditions are not good. Students are having to go home to use the toilet or to drink water,’ she said.

Activists are hopeful about the protests. “I’ve always been of the belief that the improvement of schools can only happen once it becomes a people’s movement,” Chanda said. “I think that time has finally arrived.”

Keralam Leader of Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said it was “deeply troubling” that the Census 2027 exercise reportedly asks respondents about their religion and the place of birth of both parents.

Criticising the Union government, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader said that the Census must not “become a backdoor” for the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens.

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

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

Vijayan said on Wednesday in a social media post that citizenship could not be tied to religion, and that the Census should not be used to divide people. “The Union Government must immediately drop such divisive questions,” he demanded. “Secular forces must stand united against this dangerous move.”

The reported inclusion of questions about parents’ place of birth and religion in the upcoming Census is deeply troubling. The Census must not become a backdoor for the NPR and, eventually, the NRC. Citizenship cannot be tied to religion, and no census should be used to divide…

— Pinarayi Vijayan (@pinarayivijayan) August 19, 2026

The former chief minister noted that a report of the Union home ministry from 2018-’19 had made it clear that the NRC is prepared by filtering data from the NPR. The population register is a preparatory step for the NRC, it had noted.

Vijayan asked the Centre to remove such “sinister queries” from the Census questionnaire.

It was a matter of concern that Keralam’s United Democratic Front government led by Congress leader VD Satheesan was silent on the subject, he added.

Vijayan said that his government had in 2019 decided the NPR would not be implemented in the state and had reaffirmed this stance ahead of the 2027 Census.

“The Congress cannot wash its hands of the NPR, having implemented it in 2010,” he said. “Will the UDF Government stand up against this divisive agenda, or allow the Union Government’s political agenda to move forward?”

During Vijayan’s tenure, the state government had reiterated in a February 4 gazette notification that “all activities connected with the updation of National Population Register in the state stand suspended” with effect from December 20, 2019.

The notification had come three days after the Union government in its Budget on February 1 proposed to allocate Rs 6,000 crore for “Census, Survey and Statistics/Registrar General of India”.

Edited by Sneha.

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

The resolution had adopted the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram as the national song and omitted the remaining four as they invoked Hindu goddesses Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati.

There was “no confusion” about the Congress’ position, said party leader KC Venugopal at a press conference after a meeting of the working committee on Wednesday.

The party will “abide by the decisions” taken by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rabindranath Tagore, Subhas Chandra Bose and Sardar Patel to limit the rendition of Vande Mataram to the first two stanzas.

A row had broken out after the Bharatiya Janata Party alleged that Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi disrupted the singing of Vande Mataram at the party’s Independence Day event in Delhi.

A video from the function showed Sonia Gandhi gesturing and speaking to a party worker while the full version of Vande Mataram was being played. It was not clear what she was saying.

On Monday, the Delhi Police said that it was looking into a complaint alleging that the two Congress leaders intentionally obstructed the singing of the national song.

This came days after the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Amendment Act, which criminalises insults to the national song, came into effect.

On Wednesday, Venugopal accused the BJP of treating matters related to Vande Mataram and the national anthem as “political issues”.

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

Only the first two stanzas of the national song had been played at official functions earlier.

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

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

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: Does ‘Vande Mataram’ need the threat of criminal law to be honoured?

A West Bengal court on Wednesday ordered that an arrest warrant be issued against Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra for failing to appear before it in a case about purportedly provocative remarks she made in June, PTI reported.

A day earlier, the Krishnanagar court had directed Moitra to appear before it on Wednesday. But she was not present in the court.

The case pertains to a complaint filed in June by a Bharatiya Janata Party leader about remarks made by Moitra on social media. The complainant alleged that the remarks were capable of hurting religious sentiments and disturbing communal harmony.

The purportedly provocative remarks were made in two posts by Moitra after women BJP supporters allegedly gathered outside the Krishnanagar court carrying eggs and tomatoes, to be thrown at her when she arrived there in connection with an old case.

In one post, Moitra had said that she would file a police complaint against the women. In a video, she said that those wanting to throw eggs at her “should wear a burqa” if they wish to stay hidden.

On Wednesday, the judge said that the “series of disobedience” of the repeated summonses showed the “lackadaisical approach” of Moitra to comply with the court order, PTI reported. The court said that it had been “left with no other option” but to issue a warrant of arrest against her.

The court also directed the authorities to submit a report on the execution of the warrant by August 28.

The lawyer appearing for Moitra said that the MP feared being heckled in the court premises.

On July 1, vegetables and eggs were thrown at a TMC office in Krishnanagar while Moitra was inside. She alleged that “goons” from the BJP were responsible.

On August 7, the Supreme Court had refused to entertain Moitra’s petition that she be allowed to appear virtually before the police.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Jammu and Kashmir is an important part of India and the United States will consider revising its travel warning for the region, ANI quoted US Ambassador Sergio Gor as saying on Wednesday.

He said that Washington would re-evaluate the safety advisory as the Union government and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had taken steps to make the region safer.

#WATCH | Srinagar, J&K | After meeting with CM Omar Abdullah, US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gor says, "The United States puts out travel warnings and every so often we re-evaluate those travel warnings. I cannot make any big announcements here today but it is something that we… pic.twitter.com/0HYGGQUXqw

— ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2026

The US advisory has consistently urged its citizens travelling to India to exercise “increased caution” due to incidents of terrorism and crime, adding that certain parts of the country have heightened risks. It advises against travelling to Jammu and Kashmir, except for the eastern Ladakh region and its capital Leh, citing “terrorism and civil unrest”.

“Violence happens sporadically in this area and is common along the Line of Control [LoC] between India and Pakistan,” the current advisory states. “Violence also occurs in tourist spots in the Kashmir Valley: Srinagar, Gulmarg and Pahalgam.”

Gor’s remarks came after he met Abdullah in Srinagar during a visit to Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. He is scheduled to travel to Leh on Thursday.

The US’ long-standing position on Kashmir has been that the territory’s status should be settled through negotiations between India and Pakistan “while taking into consideration the wishes of the Kashmiri people”.

Speaking with reporters alongside Gor, Abdullah said that they discussed matters concerning Jammu and Kashmir, including what the US could do for the region, PTI reported.

VIDEO | Srinagar: On his Jammu and Kashmir visit, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor says, "It's a pleasure to be here... This (J&K) is an important part of India and I'm here visiting for the first time. It's an incredibly beautiful place, and I'm thrilled to be here. I'm… pic.twitter.com/8BzNijGAAB

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) August 19, 2026

“This is a conversation that will take place both with Ambassador Gor and Washington and with me and the Government of India in Delhi,” the news agency quoted the chief minister as saying.

“We are very hopeful and optimistic that the engagement between the United States of America and Jammu and Kashmir will both widen and deepen in the years ahead,” he added.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav was detained on Wednesday during a protest against the Bihar Police firing an AK-47 rifle while dispersing youth demonstrating over the alleged irregularities in competitive examinations last month, PTI reported.

His sister, RJD MP Misa Bharti, was also detained later while participating in the party’s march to the governor’s residence, ANI reported.

VIDEO | Bihar: RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) was detained during their march to Lok Bhavan in Patna.

He says, "This government, which uses AK-47, students are going to throw it away. They are playing with the students' future, paper leaks are happening, Bihar is… pic.twitter.com/qz2qavWCZc

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) August 19, 2026

On July 25, three persons were injured when the police opened fire during a demonstration in Siwan district after protesters allegedly threw stones at them.

The police had also opened fire during violent protests in Jehanabad on July 23.

The demonstrations were held in solidarity with a youth agitation in Delhi to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time. Pradhan resigned on July 25.

The Bihar government told the Supreme Court that a constable had fired four shots in the air from his AK-47 rifle after getting “trapped” in a crowd protesting against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations on July 25 in Siwan district.

No one was injured by the bullets fired from the AK-47, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government said in an affidavit filed on August 11 in response to petitions alleging excessive use of force against protesters.

While being detained on Wednesday, Yadav said that Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary was being unjust to students and accused him of “committing scam after scam”, PTI reported.

“He is using AK-47s against those raising their voices against wrongdoing,” he said.

Yadav also accused the BJP-led government in the state of turning Bihar into a centre of unemployment and paper leaks and said it was “playing with the future of the students”.

Students are “going to throw it away” the government that uses an AK-47, PTI quoted him as saying.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Tamil Nadu government has withdrawn an order directing the authorities to prevent students and youth from participating in protests organised by Left parties and the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign in the state, ANI reported on Wednesday.

The ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam had in May formed the government with the support of two Left parties – the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – along with the Congress, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

The directive was issued on Friday and withdrawn on Monday following a backlash.

Saurav Das, the spokesperson for the Cockroach Janta Party, had described the order as “unconstitutional” and “irrational”, The Pioneer reported.

However, BJP leader Vinoj P Selvam supported the directive, describing the Left parties and the Cockroach Janta Party’s Tamil Nadu unit as “agents of chaos” and accusing their leaders of misleading students.

The Department of Collegiate Education has withdrawn its earlier directive seeking coordinated action to prevent students of government arts and science colleges and youth from participating in protests and agitations.

In an order issued on Tuesday, Joint Director of Collegiate… https://t.co/ISiT0SjN9M pic.twitter.com/hokeN53RUx

— ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2026

The order also came against the backdrop of protests in Tamil Nadu over alleged irregularities in the conduct of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for medical education.

It had directed the School Education Department, Higher Education Department, the police and district administrations to take “appropriate, coordinated action” to discourage students from participating in the protests. They had also been asked to submit reports about the action taken.

On Wednesday, Joint Director of Collegiate Education Cynthia Selvi P said the communication had been withdrawn.

The protests in Tamil Nadu came amid youth demonstrations across the country against the alleged irregularities in the education system. In Delhi, youth protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party over alleged irregularities in competitive examinations ended with Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dharmendra Pradhan resigning as the Union education minister.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the Odisha government a final opportunity to decide on the premature release of Bajrang Dal member Dara Singh, who is serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, Live Law reported.

It verbally stated that if the Odisha Sentence Review Board did not decide on the matter by the next hearing, the court would take the decision.

During the previous hearing on July 14, the court had asked the Odisha government to decide on Singh’s remission plea by August 19. However, a bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi was told on Wednesday that no decision has been taken yet, Live Law reported.

Staines and his minor sons were burnt to death by a mob led by Singh in Odisha in January 1999 when they were sleeping in a jeep. The attackers had accused the missionary of illegal religious conversion.

Singh was among the 14 persons convicted in 2003 by a special Central Bureau of Investigation court. He was sentenced to death by the CBI court, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2005 by the Orissa High Court.

The Supreme Court had upheld Singh’s conviction in 2011.

During the hearing on Wednesday, the lawyer for the Odisha government said that as per the police chief, information about Singh’s antecedents has been sought from Uttar Pradesh, where he was a resident.

Justice Misra verbally remarked that the court would not allow indecisiveness, and said that the court would decide on the remission plea if the state did not do so by September 2. “We are not concerned how you are communicating; just take a decision,” the judge was quoted as saying by Live Law.

In his remission plea, the Bajrang Dal member argued that he should be considered for early release as he is above the age of 60 and has been in jail for more than 24 years. Singh told the court that he regretted his actions, which the petition described as having been in the context of “protecting the nation”.

He also told the court that he had never been granted parole.

In April 2025, Mahendra Hembram, another person convicted in the case, was released from a jail in Odisha on the grounds of “good behaviour”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Nine persons, including two women and a child, were killed after a fire broke out at a hotel on Mirza Ghalib Street in central Kolkata early on Wednesday, ANI reported.

At least three Bangladeshi citizens were among those who died, The Indian Express quoted an unidentified police official as saying. The others were from Meghalaya and Alipurduar in West Bengal, according to the newspaper.

The fire was reported at around 2 am and was brought under control by 4.30 am, ANI quoted the Kolkata Police as saying.

Sixty persons were rescued, the news agency quoted the police as saying.

A guest from Bangladesh told The Indian Express that the hotel had no firefighting system. “We woke up struggling to breathe in the smoke,” he said. “We somehow managed to escape.”

#WATCH | Nine people have died and several have suffered injuries in a fire that broke out in a hotel in Kolkata's Mirza Ghalib Street around 2 am today

Teams of Police and Civil Defence are present at the accident site pic.twitter.com/P6Q8kcImzI

— ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2026

A police officer said that the dense smoke made it difficult for firefighters to climb the staircase and reach the upper floors, reported PTI.

The fire broke out in a congested area near New Market, which has several hotels that are popular with visitors from Bangladesh seeking medical treatment.

Police said the exact cause of the blaze was yet to be established.

The incident came two days after a fire in Tarapith town of Birbhum district killed eight persons. At least 15 hotels in the area were sealed and asked to stop operations afterwards, reported The Hindu.

Edited by Sneha.

The police conducting searches at the home of journalist Ravi Nair and seizing electronic devices in connection with a first information report relating to social media posts about an article he had written in The Washington Post on the Life Insurance Corporation’s investments in the Adani Group “paint a sorry picture of press freedom in India”, press bodies have said.

On Tuesday, the Gujarat Police searched Nair’s Delhi and Kerala homes under a warrant issued by an Ahmedabad court and seized some electronic devices.

The Press Club of India said that the seizure of the devices, including those belonging to Nair’s son and his colleague Sachi Hegde, was “extremely disturbing”, The Hindu reported. It said Nair’s son and Hegde “had nothing to do with the case or the social media post it was based on” and that “it is unacceptable that their devices were also taken away”.

The press body also noted that the FIR names only Nair and not his co-author or the international publication. “This hounding of an independent journalist is unacceptable,” the newspaper quoted the organisation as saying.

It also described the police action as a “clampdown on information”, saying that the journalists doing their jobs were “having to pay a heavy price”. It urged the police and government agencies to “stop behaving in ways that undermine the very principles independent India was built on”.

Digipub News India Foundation, an association of independent digital news organisations and journalists of which Scroll is a member, said the seizure of devices belonging to people who were not accused raised “serious questions about the legal basis, necessity and proportionality of such action”.

“An authorisation to search for evidence relevant to an alleged offence should not, by itself, be treated as a blanket justification for the seizure of private digital devices belonging to unrelated or non-accused persons,” it said.

DIGIPUB News India foundation strongly condemns the manner in which searches were conducted at the Delhi and Kerala residences of journalist Ravi Nair on 17 August 2026 by the Gujarat Police, and the seizure of digital devices. pic.twitter.com/HfVYKTglWo

— DIGIPUB News India Foundation (@DigipubIndia) August 18, 2026

The organisation also criticised the reported failure to provide hash values for the seized devices, saying that such safeguards were necessary to preserve the “integrity, authenticity and forensic reliability” of digital evidence and “must be scrupulously followed”.

A hash value is a unique digital fingerprint of a file, storage drive or an electronic device. The value changes if the device is tampered with after it is seized, making it useful to check if the gadget has been manipulated.

It added that the focus on Nair over an article published by an international organisation also raised concerns about “selective enforcement and the possibility that he is being targeted”.

The FIR against Nair

An employee had filed an FIR on behalf of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited alleging that Nair “wrote and posted false and fabricated information” that “attempted to tarnish the image and reputation of the Adani Group of Companies”.

The FIR alleges that the statements in the report and the documents and information relied on to support them were false and fabricated.

The FIR against Nair lists the sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to cheating and dishonestly, forgery committed with the intent to harm the reputation of any party and using fake or forged paper or digital file as real.

The devices were seized six days after the Gujarat High Court on August 11 refused to quash the FIR against Nair.

The Washington Post report alleged that the LIC, a public sector company, had made investments of $3.9 billion in industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Group following directions from the Union government at a time when the conglomerate was facing financial and legal challenges.

The LIC had at the time rejected the report, describing the allegations “that the investment decisions of LIC are influenced by external factors are false, baseless and far from truth”.

The Adani Group had also categorically denied involvement in “any alleged government plans” to direct LIC India funds, according to the newspaper.

The first information report against Nair is based on his social media posts relating to the report, not the article itself.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh said on Tuesday that differences between New Delhi and Dhaka can be resolved through engagement and dialogue once the prime ministers of the two countries meet, Bangladeshi news agency UNB reported.

High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi made the remarks at an event in Dhaka two days after a Bangladesh foreign ministry official said that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman would not visit India until New Delhi extradited Sheikh Hasina.

The two countries have had strained relations since Hasina, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, fled to India after massive student-led protests in July 2024 against a controversial quota scheme for government jobs. The demonstration later snowballed into a broader agitation against her government.

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

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

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

On Tuesday, Trivedi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told him during a meeting in Delhi that the two prime ministers needed to meet.

“After meeting the prime minister here, I went straight to Delhi and had a great meeting with our prime minister,” UNB quoted him as saying. “[Modi] just mentioned one thing: we need to meet.”

He quoted Modi as saying: “You can tell them on my behalf that you have the prime minister of India’s assurance that when the prime minister of Bangladesh visits India, he will have such an honourable reception as he deserves.”

Earlier, there had been media reports that Rahman would visit India in August.

But on Sunday, Bangladesh foreign ministry official AKM Shahidul Karim said that “a propitious environment needs to be created for the visit”.

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

On Tuesday, Trivedi also said that “mutual and unconditional trust” was the foundation of any long-lasting relationship, UNB reported.

“Friends really understand each other’s issues, and we are not friends if we don’t understand,” he was quoted as saying.

He also called for the two countries to “move on” and not “get stagnant”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Two years after the July Uprising, Bangladesh’s only political consensus may be distrust of India

Thirty-four students of a government school in Bihar’s Nalanda district fell sick on Tuesday after eating a midday meal in which detergent powder was said to have been mistakenly added instead of salt, The Indian Express reported.

The students at the Middle School, Parasi, in the district’s Noorsarai block had complained of a burning sensation in their throats and stomach pain after eating the midday meal, The Hindu reported.

Nalanda Civil Surgeon Jai Prakash Singh said that they had suffered from food poisoning. Their health condition was stable, he added.

The headmaster of the school, Shailendra Kumar Singh, told reporters that the meal was supplied by a local non-governmental organisation, reported The Indian Express. It comprised rice and soyabean-potato curry as per the prescribed menu.

The school serves the midday meal in multiple sittings, Singh said. “During the second sitting, a student, identified as the granddaughter of a school cook, reportedly asked for additional salt,” the headmaster was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “The cook allegedly picked up detergent powder instead of salt by mistake and added it to the girl’s food.”

Singh said that subsequently, other students also asked for extra salt and were given detergent powder. “Soon, some students started complaining about pain in the throat and stomach after which we found out about the issue,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

A parent who went to the hospital to see his daughter was quoted as saying by The Hindu: “I got the information about the children being hospitalised after eating a mid-day meal. When I reached the hospital, I saw children were vomiting; many even fell.”

District Education Officer Hemchandra said that the actual cause for the children falling ill will be clear only when the medical report from the hospital is received. He said that strict legal and departmental action would be taken against those found guilty.

Edited by Sneha.

The Tamil Nadu government on Tuesday said it will increase the maternity leave for its employees having their third child to 365 days from 12 weeks, the Deccan Herald reported.

The state initially had 90 days of maternity leave for women government employees. This duration was later increased to six months in 2011, nine months in 2016, and one year in 2021 by successive governments led by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

In March, the state government restricted maternity leave to 12 weeks for government employees with two or more surviving children by amending a provision in the state’s Fundamental Rules, which regulate working conditions, The New Indian Express. The decision was taken following a Supreme Court order.

In June, the Madras High Court upheld the provision while hearing the case of a government employee who had asked for 365 days of leave after she had her third child.

The announcement made by State Minister for Human Resources Management D Sarathkumar on Tuesday reverses this position.

The development comes days after state Health Minister KG Arunraj indicated that Tamil Nadu could consider giving couples incentives to have more children, keeping in mind the state’s falling fertility rate and ageing population, The New Indian Express reported.

The minister said that Tamil Nadu’s total fertility rate had fallen below 1.4 against the replacement rate of 2.1, while close to 16% of its population is above 60 years of age. The replacement level refers to the fertility rate that is necessary for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next.

Edited by Sneha.

This story was produced by The Xylom, a nonprofit news outlet covering global health and environmental disparities, and co-published by Scroll.in,

Nestled in the valleys of Kashmir, Anchar Lake looks vast and picturesque. Frequently celebrated on tourism websites, its dark waters mirror rain-bearing clouds drifting over the mountains. But as we approach the banks, the pungent smell of sewage hangs in the air, the water is thick with sludge, and just beyond the shoreline rises Kashmir’s largest dumping site – painting a completely different picture from the once-romanticised lake.

Every morning, 30-year-old cattle rearer Kulsuma Jan sits outside her home in Soura wearing an abaya and wraps a black scarf across her face, leaving only her striking blue eyes visible. The scarf does little to keep out the stench drifting from Anchar Lake as she leads her cow and calf to graze along its banks.

In 2024, after washing her clothes in the lake, Jan developed an itchy rash and stomach problems. “Doctors examined me and advised me not to come into contact with the lake water again,” she said. “I spent nearly two weeks on medication.”

There are multiple causes behind Anchar’s decline. Jan blames unchecked dumping of waste and construction along the banks.

“As a result, the lake is shrinking year after year,” Jan said. “At the same time, waste from nearby settlements flows into the water, and during hot weather, a terrible smell spreads across the area.”

Anchar Lake lies in the Kashmir Valley, tucked into the western Himalayas. The valley’s capital, Srinagar, is built around an intricate network of lakes, wetlands, and rivers that have sustained its people for centuries. These bodies of water play a critical role in regulating floods, supporting biodiversity, and providing livelihoods for the community.

In the 1890s, Anchar Lake sat at around 20 square kilometres. In 2026, only around four square kilometres of open water remain.

Death of an ecosystem

The ecological decline is no longer only an environmental concern. Anchar and the nearby Dal Lake, in the heart of Srinagar, have been steadily shrinking under the pressure of unchecked encroachment, rapid urbanisation, untreated sewage and pollution.

As these precious ecosystems disappear, the remaining polluted water has become a growing public health concern for communities that still depend on the lakes for washing, cleaning and livestock.

Contaminated water exposes communities to diseases such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery. Ajaz Nabi Kaul, a Srinagar-based physician, says he treats up to 20 patients with waterborne illnesses every month.

“Anchar Lake is the most polluted water body in Kashmir,” Kaul said. “Children bathe there, and women wash clothes and utensils along its banks, often unaware of the risk of infection.”

Unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene services contributed to an estimated 1.4 million preventable deaths worldwide in 2019, according to the World Health Organization. According to the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, almost 6,000 cases of waterborne diseases were recorded between June 2025 and June 2026 in Srinagar.

“There is barely any lake left,” Ghulam Mohammad, a 70-year-old resident of Anchar who has been fishing in the lake for nearly 40 years, said. “The water is shrinking, pollution is increasing, and the ecosystem is dying before our eyes.”

For generations, the lake has supported farmers, fishers, and livestock rearers. Jan has a piped water connection at home, but it is insufficient to bathe and water her livestock. The family owns a cow and a calf and earns around Rs 15,000 a month by selling about 12 litres of milk each day.

Anchar is not the only water body facing this crisis. Dal Lake has also shrunk by 85%, with almost 60% of its area having been encroached upon by human activities. A 2018 evaluation deemed the remaining water unsafe for drinking. The contamination arose from coliform bacteria, originating from fecal pollution due to untreated sewage from nearby communities and settlements; although there is a filtration plant, the water remains heavily polluted.

“Officials tell us the water is safe, but the reality on the ground is different,” said Abdul Hameed Dar, a vegetable seller from Srinagar who lives on the bank of Dal Lake's floating market. “We are exposed to this water every day. We drink it, wash our clothes in it, and our children bathe in it. There is no escaping it.”

A civilisation built around water

According to historian Zareef Ahmad Zareef, Kashmir’s history is inseparable from its bodies of water. During the pre-Islamic period, which spanned nearly four millennia, people gathered along the riverbanks for music, dance and poetry, and even presented their grievances before rulers from boats.

Before roads connected much of the valley, water bodies served as Kashmir's principal transport network, carrying people, goods and trade across the region.

The lake has also shaped unique fishing traditions. As documented in the GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment’s Newsletter, fishers in Anchar Lake use a traditional method known as Tchaai Gaad, or shadow fishing. The technique involves hiding beneath a heavy blanket in a wooden boat so that the boat's shadow attracts fish, which are then caught with a long, slender harpoon.

Over time, Kashmir’s relationship with its lakes began to change. These water bodies were later converted into settlements and agricultural land.

“Today, when these areas experience waterlogging, we often describe it as flooding,” Mehraj-ud-Din Dar, a historian at the University of Kashmir, said. “In reality, water is simply returning to spaces that historically belonged to it.”

Changing rainfall patterns in several regions of Kashmir have also played a role in shrinking lakes and wetlands, as reduced and more erratic rainfall, combined with warmer temperatures, lowers water levels and slows circulation. When water circulation stalls, plant and animal matter accumulate, leading to water quality deterioration. Left like this, untreated sewage can further increase the risk of waterborne diseases.

Samiullah Bhat, a water science researcher at the University of Kashmir, explained that it is difficult to contextualise the exact extent to which Kashmir’s lakes are shrinking. The absence of clearly demarcated boundaries has long complicated efforts to assess water body loss in Kashmir. Even for major lakes such as Dal and Anchar, historical boundaries have not always been consistently defined, making management difficult.

Why is conservation falling short?

Local lake management authorities say they are carrying out manual and mechanised de-weeding, dredging, and lake-cleaning operations aimed at improving water quality and restoring open water areas.

However, according to Bhat, the challenge in improving water quality lies in enforcement rather than policy.

“We do not lack laws or management plans,” he said. “The real issue is implementation.” While conservation projects, dredging, weed removal, and lake restoration programs have been undertaken over the years, he said encroachment, untreated sewage, and unregulated urban expansion continue to undermine these efforts.

“Unless conservation measures are implemented consistently and backed by scientific monitoring, the ecological decline of Kashmir's water bodies will continue,” he added.

Dar, the historian, stressed that conservation efforts must go beyond engineering solutions and include local community-led efforts to reduce pollution, as well as the revival of traditional Kashmiri water practices like sustainable fishing and water management systems.

While the crisis is unfolding in Kashmir, its implications extend far beyond the Himalayas. Across the world, wetlands are disappearing because of urbanisation, pollution, and climate-related pressures. The loss of these ecosystems is increasingly linked to declining water quality, reduced water security, and heightened public health risks. Kashmir’s experience demonstrates how environmental degradation can translate into everyday health challenges, offering a warning for climate-vulnerable regions seeking to protect both ecosystems and communities.

Two decades ago, Mohammed would catch five kilograms of fish in a single day from Anchar Lake. “The income was enough to support my family, pay my children’s school fees, cover electricity bills and live with dignity,” he said.

Today, he considers himself lucky if he catches even one kilogram, and the income is barely enough to provide two meals a day.

Jan still walks to the same lake every morning. Now she wears gloves, a mask, and a black scarf before touching the water – a routine born not of tradition, but of fear. Across Kashmir, tourists continue to admire the valley’s mountains. But the lakes that once sustained its people are slowly disappearing from the public memory.

Four tourists, including a woman, were allegedly assaulted at Sinhagad Fort near Pune by members of a Hindutva group who objected to them wearing shorts and sleeveless clothes, The Indian Express quoted the Pune Rural Police as saying on Tuesday.

Members of the Samast Hindu Bandhav Army allegedly assaulted visitors from four separate groups between 2 pm and 5 pm on Sunday.

The police have registered a case against eight members of the outfit, including three women, on charges including voluntarily causing hurt, unlawful assembly, rioting and criminal intimidation, The Indian Express reported.

The first information report was filed by a 39-year-old senior manager from Dhayari, who visited the fort with his family and friends, the newspaper reported.

According to the complainant, the group was returning after visiting the memorial of Tanaji Malusare, a military commander of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, when they were confronted over their clothing.

The complainant alleged that the group asked why they were wearing shorts and told them to leave the fort. Three men from the group allegedly slapped him, while a woman dragged his wife.

He alleged that they kept shouting: “Don’t you understand Hindu culture?”

सिंहगडावर पर्यटकांमध्ये राडा बरमुडा - शॉर्ट्सवरून वाद#Sinhagad #SinhagadFort #SinhagadFight pic.twitter.com/VuIh08mniV

— BBC News Marathi (@bbcnewsmarathi) August 17, 2026

After leaving the fort, the complainant informed police and was sent to Haveli police station, where he learned that tourists from three other groups had also reported being assaulted.

The eight people named by police are Sanket Sanjay Patil, Ashish Dilip Apar, Revan Narayan Kokte, Sayali Sujit Chavan, Ketaki Suraj Jadhav, Amar Ramchandra Shirke, Kunal Kisan Nalawade and Arya Praveen Kawade.

“We have launched a search to apprehend the eight accused,” Inspector Rajesh Ramaghare told The Times of India.

In July, a poster at the entrance to Sinhagad Fort stating that the fort belonged to Hindus and that Muslims were not allowed was removed by the forest department, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Goa government has filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking that the sentence given to journalist Tarun Tejpal for raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague be increased from ten years to life imprisonment, Bar and Bench reported on Tuesday.

The government clarified that it does not wish to reopen or challenge the findings recorded by the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court. Instead, relying upon these findings, it pointed out “that the sentence imposed is manifestly inadequate”.

On August 6, the High Court set aside the 2021 sessions court verdict that had acquitted Tejpal. It held him guilty under the Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to rape by a person holding trust or authority, rape by a person who is in a position of control or dominance over a woman, sexual harassment and criminal force against a woman with an intent to disrobe her.

The court had asked him to surrender within two weeks.

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

After Tejpal’s conviction, his lawyer urged the High Court to show leniency in sentencing, saying the offence was committed 13 years ago.

The journalist had also addressed the court and sought a lighter sentence. He was quoted as saying by The Indian Express: “I am 62 and I believe I am a victim. I have a wife. There’s not much else to say.”

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the state, opposed Tejpal’s plea for leniency, saying that “a precedent must be set”. The court “must give out a clear message to society that when a girl says no, it means no”, Mehta had said.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

After Tejpal: A letter to progressive men from a feminist

Aam Aadmi Party leader Satyendar Jain and former Delhi Jal Board Chief Executive Officer Udit Prakash Rai were among the six persons arrested by the Anti-Corruption Branch on Tuesday in connection with alleged irregularities in the tendering process for sewage treatment plant projects in the national capital, The Indian Express reported.

The case was registered on May 11, 2024, based on a complaint by the Directorate of Vigilance, reported PTI.

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

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

These irregularities resulted in “significant financial implications” for the government exchequer, PTI quoted the Anti-Corruption Branch as saying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Jain’s arrest, former Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the action was taken at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s behest.

“The previous case was fabricated too, and this case will also be proven to be fake,” he said on social media.

He was referring to the liquor policy case, in which Jain was granted bail in October 2024. In February, a trial court said that there was no overarching conspiracy or criminal intent in the excise policy.

सत्येन्द्र जैन जी को एक बार फिर बीजेपी ने गिरफ्तार करवा दिया है। अभी कुछ वक्त पहले इन लोगों ने जेल में डालकर उनकी जो दुर्दशा की थी, वह सबको याद है। पिछला केस भी फर्जी था और यह केस भी फर्जी साबित होगा। 

आखिर कब तक बीजेपी की ये तानाशाही चलती रहेगी? जिसे मन करता है, झूठे आरोप लगाकर… https://t.co/VpxyPLkdLW

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) August 18, 2026

AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh alleged that the BJP government was using investigative agencies to pressure governments that worked and disrupt elections.

He said AAP leaders, including Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Jain and himself, had been arrested before the Delhi election and alleged that similar tactics were now being used ahead of the Punjab elections.

Edited by Sneha.

On Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that while armed naxalism had largely been defeated, a different danger remained. He cautioned agains “dimagi naxals” – those who, he suggested, carry naxalite thinking in their minds. He said that they needed to be identified and isolated.

The political debate that followed has understandably focused on what exactly Modi meant and whom the phrase was intended to describe. But there is a more fundamental question worth asking: what happens when the state begins to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate ideas?

This is not simply a question about freedom of speech. It is also a question about competition, information and the possibility of institutional error.

Richard Posner, in Economic Analysis of Law, offers an unexpectedly useful way of thinking about this. In his discussion of the protection of free markets in ideas and religion, he approaches freedom of expression through an economic intuition: ideas, like goods, benefit from competition. The state should therefore be cautious about intervening in the marketplace in which ideas compete. The analogy deserves to be taken seriously.

#WATCH | Delhi: From the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "For years, individuals with a Maoist mindset had entrenched themselves within the corridors of power in the country. This Maoist ideology influenced policies, even through their roles as… pic.twitter.com/1vqeavpj0U

— ANI (@ANI) August 15, 2026

Economists generally distrust monopolies because a monopolist has little incentive to respond to consumers, improve its product or correct its mistakes. Competition forces producers to respond to information dispersed throughout society. No single producer knows everything. Markets aggregate information through the choices and judgments of millions of individuals.

There is something similar about a marketplace of ideas.

No government, however capable, possesses a monopoly on truth. If citizens are permitted to put competing ideas into circulation, those ideas can be challenged, tested, criticised, refined and sometimes discarded. The process will inevitably be messy. Some ideas will be foolish, others offensive and some potentially dangerous.

But the alternative is to give an institution – usually the state – the authority to determine in advance which ideas are sufficiently legitimate to enter the marketplace.

From an economic perspective, that should make us uncomfortable. The problem is not merely that a government might suppress a good idea. The deeper problem is that it might simply get the classification wrong.

Economics begins with the recognition that information is imperfect. Policymakers do not know everything about consumer preferences, technological developments or future economic conditions. The same informational problem exists in the world of ideas. A government may identify an idea as dangerous because of the people currently associated with it, only to discover later that the idea contained an important criticism of an existing policy.

What if all Dimagi Naxals come together? pic.twitter.com/PSLwrCD9OZ

— Dimagi Naxal Janta Party (@DNJP_India) August 16, 2026

History is full of such reversals. India’s own economic history provides a striking example. For decades after Independence, extensive state control, industrial licensing and restrictions on private enterprise were regarded as necessary instruments of development. Economic liberalisation in 1991 represented a profound change in that thinking.

What had once been regarded as necessary to protect economic sovereignty increasingly came to be seen as an impediment to growth, competition and innovation.

The law provides another striking example. For decades, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code criminalised consensual same-sex conduct. In Suresh Koushal v. Naz Foundation (2013), the Supreme Court upheld the provision insofar as it criminalised such conduct. Just five years later, in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018), the court decisively changed course. What the state had once regarded as sufficiently harmful to justify criminal sanction came to be understood as an unjustified intrusion into individual liberty.

Environmental policy offers a third example. For much of the twentieth century, environmental protection was frequently presented as a choice between economic growth and regulation. The development of environmental economics subsequently challenged that binary. Market-based mechanisms such as pollution taxes and emissions trading demonstrated that markets themselves could be used to address environmental externalities.

The lesson is not that every unpopular idea will eventually prove correct. Most bad ideas remain bad ideas. The lesson is more modest, but more important: we do not always know in advance which ideas are bad, which are valuable, and which may become valuable when circumstances change. That is precisely why competition in ideas matters.

The value of being wrong

This is where Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian becomes particularly relevant. Sen’s argument is not merely that Indians have historically enjoyed arguing. His larger point is that public reasoning and intellectual heterodoxy are deeply connected to democracy. India’s democratic tradition, he argues, cannot be understood simply as an institutional inheritance from the West: it also draws upon a much older tradition of public argument and tolerance of heterodox views. There is an important economic dimension to this.

Argument produces information. When citizens challenge governments, they provide information that governments may not otherwise possess. When journalists investigate, academics question policy, courts scrutinise executive action and citizens protest, they generate information about the consequences of public decisions. Some of that criticism will be wrong. But that does not make it useless.

Indeed, one of the great virtues of competition is that it creates mechanisms for discovering error. Joseph Stiglitz’s The Road to Freedom provides another useful perspective. Stiglitz asks us to be more careful about what we mean when we speak of freedom. Freedom cannot simply mean the absence of government intervention or the freedom of the strongest actor to do as it pleases. One person’s freedom can affect another’s, and institutions must therefore determine how competing freedoms coexist.

The same is true of expression. The question is not whether speech or expression can ever cause harm. Of course it can. Incitement to violence, threats and deliberate acts intended to facilitate violence are different from ordinary political disagreement. A constitutional democracy can legitimately distinguish between them. The difficult question begins before that point: what happens when the state moves from regulating harmful conduct to classifying harmful thought?

You think, therefore you are a... pic.twitter.com/gqLjCMw54R

— Ashish Bagchi (@BagchiAsh) August 17, 2026

There is an important economic distinction here. Regulating an act because it produces a demonstrable harm is one thing. Regulating an idea because the government believes that the idea might eventually produce harm is considerably more difficult. The first responds to an observable externality. The second requires the government to predict the future.

And governments, like markets, can fail. This is perhaps where Francis Fukuyama’s Liberalism and Its Discontents adds another layer to the argument. Fukuyama reminds us that democracy and liberalism are not identical. Democracy gives people the power to choose their government; liberalism places constraints on what that government can do. Elections determine who governs. They do not give the government unlimited authority over the citizen. That distinction matters enormously when the government itself is one of the most powerful participants in the marketplace of ideas.

It possesses institutional authority, access to public resources, visibility and the ability to shape public narratives. If, in addition to these advantages, it acquires the power to determine which competing ideas are legitimate, the marketplace becomes increasingly asymmetric. In economic language, the regulator becomes a participant with the power to exclude its competitors.

We instinctively understand the problem when this happens in an economic market. We worry about barriers to entry, exclusionary conduct and excessive concentration because concentrated power can distort competition. Why should ideas be different?

Keeping markets open

This is the central insight of Richard Posner’s marketplace metaphor. A marketplace of ideas does not require us to believe that all ideas are equally valuable. It requires something more modest: the state should not be the sole judge of their value.

Bad ideas can be defeated by better ideas. Dangerous arguments can be exposed. Historical falsehoods can be challenged with evidence. Economically disastrous proposals can be subjected to empirical scrutiny. Political rhetoric can be answered by political rhetoric. This is not an argument for anarchy in speech. It is an argument for competition.

Markets do not eliminate mistakes. They create mechanisms through which mistakes can be discovered and corrected. Firms that consistently produce what consumers do not want lose market share. Investors who repeatedly misread markets bear the consequences. Competition does not guarantee that the best product wins every time. It creates a process through which better products have an opportunity to displace worse ones. The marketplace of ideas works imperfectly in much the same way.

A society will inevitably produce bad ideas. The objective should not be to construct a society in which bad ideas never appear. That is impossible. The objective should be to construct institutions capable of defeating bad ideas without suppressing the process through which good ideas emerge. This is why the expression “dimagi naxal” deserves attention beyond the immediate political controversy surrounding it.

If the term is being used to describe individuals who genuinely advocate violence, the continuation of an armed insurgency or the overthrow of the constitutional order, then the relevant questions are evidence, law and due process.

But if the category begins to encompass people because they hold radical political views, criticise the government, challenge prevailing economic policies, defend unpopular causes or simply refuse to conform to the dominant political narrative, then something more consequential has happened – the marketplace of ideas has acquired an entry barrier. And once entry barriers become normal, competition begins to suffer.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Sen, Stiglitz, Fukuyama and Posner is not that governments should never regulate expression. It is that institutions must recognise the limits of their own knowledge and power.

Sen reminds us that argument is not a defect in Indian democracy: it is part of its intellectual inheritance. Stiglitz reminds us that freedom exists within a web of competing interests and unequal power. Fukuyama reminds us that democracy does not eliminate the need for constraints on government power. And Posner gives us the most useful metaphor of all: the marketplace of ideas.

The metaphor works because competition is valuable not because every competitor is good, but because no competitor – or regulator – can know with certainty which idea will ultimately prove valuable. India does not need a marketplace in which every idea is approved. It needs a marketplace in which ideas are allowed to compete, subject to the ordinary rules of law.

A country confident in its institutions does not need to fear every dissenting idea. It can allow the argument to take place and trust its citizens to judge. The strongest case against a bad idea is not that it should be silenced. It is that, when placed in a genuinely competitive marketplace, it can be defeated by a better one.

Freddy Thomas teaches economic analysis of law at the School of Law, Christ University, Bengaluru, and writes on the intersection of law, economics and public policy.

In February 2021, the nephew of the mayor of Ayodhya, Rishikesh Upadhyaya of the Bharatiya Janata Party, bought a plot of land in the town for Rs 20 lakh. Three months later, as I reported with another journalist, the nephew sold the plot to the Ram temple trust for Rs 2.5 crore – 12 times the original price.

Soon, other reports surfaced of similar land transactions in which relatives of politicians and officials had made windfall gains by buying land cheaply and selling it to the temple trust at significantly higher prices, often within days.

The reports prompted the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh to set up a one-man committee headed by the state revenue secretary to investigate the transactions. The committee’s findings are yet to be made public.

But an examination of land records of one village in Ayodhya shows the pattern remains intact – politically-influential people and individuals associated with them continue to buy land cheaply and sell it to the temple trust at higher prices.

All that has changed – perhaps because of the increased scrutiny – is that the transactions have slowed down. Instead of days or months, the gap between the original purchase and the resale has widened to a few years.

The village, Bagh Bijaisi, is about 3 km from the Ram temple. The trust bought land there to establish Teerth Kshetra Puram, a sprawling campus that hosts functionaries of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, as well as devotees visiting the temple during the festive season.

Among those who have profited from land deals with the temple trust is a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a ward candidate of the Samajwadi Party and associates of the former BJP mayor.

Samajwadi ward leader: 11 times the price

In January 2020, Vishwa Mohini Chaubey bought 621.66 square metres of land in Bagh Bijaisi village for Rs 9 lakh. The price was a fraction of the prevailing circle rate (the minimum price at which a property can be bought and sold), which was Rs 29.8 lakh.

Five years later, in April 2025, she sold the land to the Ram temple trust for Rs 98.2 lakh – nearly 11 times the original price.

Vishwa Mohini Chaubey is the wife of Pradeep Chaubey, who was the Samajwadi Party candidate from Ayodhya’s Devkali ward in the 2023 municipal elections.

In a phone conversation with Scroll, Pradeep Chaubey initially confirmed that he was associated with the Samajwadi Party, but when asked about the land deal in Bagh Bijaisi, he denied any link with the party.

Chaubey said he had bought the land in his wife’s name to pay lower stamp duty. Stamp duty is the tax levied on property transactions. In Uttar Pradesh, women pay lower stamp duty than men.

“I bought the land as an investment in my children’s future,” Chaubey said. “But when the [Ram temple] trust bought all the land surrounding my property, I decided to sell it out of devotion to Shri Ram.”

ABVP leader: Four times the price

In December 2021, Mantosh Maurya bought 277 square metres of land in Ayodhya’s Bagh Bijaisi village for Rs 13.3 lakh.

Four years later, in January 2025, Maurya sold the land to the Ram Mandir trust for Rs 50 lakh – four times the original price.

Maurya is the city president of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in Deoria, a town 180 km east of Ayodhya. The ABVP is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.

“I bought the land for my children,” Maurya told Scroll. “The trust was in a land acquisition drive in the area but I did not want to sell my land. After a point, I couldn’t access the property [because of the trust’s acquisition in the area]. I had to sell it to them after a year-and-a-half of struggle.”

Samajwadi leader’s nephew: Three times the price

In December 2021, Shikha Gupta bought 833 square metres of land in the village for Rs 40 lakh. Less than two years later, in November 2023, she sold 763.3 square metres of this land to the Ram temple trust for Rs 1.14 crore – about three times the price she had purchased it for.

Shikha Gupta is the wife of Amit Gupta, the nephew of Nand Kumar Gupta, a state secretary of the Samajwadi Party’s traders’ association in UP.

A phone call to Nand Kumar Gupta was answered by his wife, Aparna, who said that he was not available to comment due to cancer treatment.

Amit Gupta confirmed his relationship with Nand Kumar Gupta and told Scroll: “We had bought the land for residential purposes. When the trust began taking over properties in the village, they made us an offer. We decided to sell it to them.”

Associates of former BJP mayor – more than double the price

In March 2021, Harish and Kusum Pathak gave away 890 square metres of land in Bagh Bijaisi worth Rs 42.7 lakh to Ravindra Dube. Dube did not have to pay to acquire the land because it was a gift deed.

Two-and-a-half years later, in October 2023, Dube sold 510 square metres of this property to the Ram temple trust for Rs 54.9 lakh – more than double the land’s market value of Rs 24.5 lakh.

Dube is the brother-in-law of Ravi Mohan Tiwari who, along with the Pathaks, featured in one of the most controversial Ayodhya land deals reported in 2021. That year in March, the Pathaks had sold a land parcel in Bagh Bijaisi to Tiwari and one Sultan Ansari for Rs 2 crore. Minutes later, Tiwari and Ansari had sold it to the trust for Rs 18.5 crore – more than nine times the price.

Dube first confirmed to Scroll that he is Ravi Mohan Tiwari’s brother-in-law, but denied the relationship after he was asked about the land transactions.

“Yes, I have made money [in the transactions], but what does Ravi Mohan Tiwari have to do with it?” he said. “I am not his brother-in-law.”

Tiwari, on his part, is distantly related to Rishikesh Upadhyaya, the former BJP mayor of Ayodhya. Tiwari’s nephew is married to Upadhyaya’s niece.

Upadhyaya played down his family connection to Tiwari. “If you look that far, then the entire Ayodhya is related to me,” he said.

Scroll’s calls to Tiwari went unanswered. Questions sent to him by SMS did not go through. This report will be updated if he responds.

Tiwari’s associates are connected to another land deal in Bagh Bijaisi village.

On March 8, 2022, a man named Aatmaram sold 122.67 square metres of land in the village to Prabhakar Tiwari for Rs 23.8 lakh. He also sold 155.205 square metres of land to Vishwa Pratap Upadhyaya and Rajendra Prasad Yadav for Rs 7.45 lakh.

In November 2023, Tiwari, Upadhyaya and Yadav sold the combined land to the Ram temple trust for Rs 37.8 lakh.

Vishwa Pratap Upadhyaya is a relative of Ravi Tiwari. He told Scroll that he runs a real-estate business with Rajendra Prasad Yadav. “We sold the land to the trust because they had approached us,” he said.

Rajendra Prasad Yadav said he is Ravi Tiwari’s neighbour and their families know and visit each other. He said he had bought the land with Upadhayay to build a house there. “But we had to sell it because once the [Ram temple] trust began purchasing properties, we couldn’t access our land,” he said.

The Hind Rajab Foundation on Tuesday said that it has filed a criminal complaint in India against an Israeli soldier vacationing in the country.

The Belgium-based nonprofit organisation did not identify the soldier, but stated that he had documented his deployment in Gaza and his alleged “direct involvement in the unlawful destruction” of civilian property during Israeli operations in the Khan Younis governorate of the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The foundation said that the soldier “may have been involved” in war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.

The organisation pursues legal action against persons responsible for atrocities against Palestinians.

The pro-Palestine group’s complaint focuses on the “systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure” in the Abasan al-Saghira area of Khan Younis between March 2024 and April 2024. The foundation said that it had identified the suspect as “a member of the unit involved in these criminal acts”.

Satellite imagery and social media footage verified by the Hind Rajab Foundation, and open-source intelligence “confirm that extensive demolition occurred after Israeli forces had established operational control of the area, rather than because of active combat”, it alleged.

The Hind Rajab Foundation said that the acts constituted war crimes under Articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute.

The Geneva Conventions are a set of international treaties that form the core of global humanitarian law by establishing legal and ethical standards for the treatment of civilians and prisoners during wartime. India is a signatory to the conventions. The Rome Statute is an international treaty that set up the International Criminal Court to prosecute persons for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and acts of aggression.

First complaint in June

In June, the Hind Rajab Foundation had urged the authorities in India to arrest an Israeli reservist for his alleged role in the crimes committed by the military in Gaza.

In that complaint with the police, the Union home ministry and India’s immigration bureau, the nonprofit organisation had demanded that Eitan Gilboa be arrested immediately. He was vacationing in Himachal Pradesh, the foundation had said in a statement at the time.

The foundation had said that India, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, is obligated under the treaties to search for and prosecute persons alleged to have committed grave breaches, regardless of their citizenship.

The presence of Gilboa in India contradicted Article 51(c) of the Indian Constitution, which directs the state to foster respect for international law, the foundation had said. “India now holds both the suspect and the obligation to act,” it had added.

On Tuesday, Dyab Abou Jahjah, the general director of the Hind Rajab Foundation, said that the second complaint filed in India was part of the nonprofit organisation’s “commitment and duty to bring perpetrators before the courts” and that New Delhi must comply with its international obligations.

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on Gaza since then, leaving more than 73,300 persons dead.

In September 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry said that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

In June, commission said that the Israeli military had deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children to commit a genocide. The Israeli forces have killed more than 20,000 children and injured 44,000 since October 2023, the panel said.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Anamika Pathak.

Also read:

• How an Israeli soldier accused of war crimes in Gaza was tracked down in India
• Opinion: Could India be considered complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza?

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday issued an interim stay on a West Bengal government notification ordering the verification of caste certificates issued on the basis of voter identity cards since 2011, The Statesman reported.

A division bench of the High Court was hearing a plea challenging the government’s decision to undertake a “blanket” verification of caste certificates following the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, Live Law reported.

The May 14 notification said that caste certificates issued to persons belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes would be subject to verification, with those found to be fake being cancelled.

Lawyers appearing for the petitioner argued that the state lacks the authority to cancel caste certificates, The Statesman reported. They also said that persons who have appeals pending before the tribunals against their exclusion from the voter list would not be able to submit the documents required for the verification.

The advocate general, appearing for the state, submitted that the certificates issued on the basis of documents such as Permanent Account Number would not need to undergo verification.

He also told the court that the state government could cancel the certificates after verifying documents, including voter identity cards and Aadhaar cards, as well as caste and family certificates.

The court said that district officials could investigate specific complaints received by the state and take action.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The government issued nearly two lakh orders to social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and YouTube between March and July to take down content, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

This amounts to nearly 1,275 orders every day. Each blocking order may cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.

In comparison, 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through the Sahyog portal, which facilitates the sending of blocking notices, between October 2024 and October 2025, the newspaper quoted Right to Information records as having shown.

Of the three platforms, Instagram received the highest number of blocking orders, nearly 1 lakh. While Facebook received about 80,000 orders, YouTube got nearly 15,000.

The youth protests against the alleged mismanagement of competitive exams in the country took place during the five-month period between March and July. The protests began in Delhi on June 6, demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister and spread to other parts of the country. The agitation was called off on July 25 after Pradhan resigned.

The protest was largely driven by social media with Instagram playing a key role in mobilising youngsters.

An unidentified government official told The Indian Express that a “considerable share” of the blocking orders were issued during the protests.

Most of the blocking orders were issued by central and state agencies through the Union home ministry’s Sahyog portal, the newspaper reported.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has integrated its Application Programming Interface with the Sahyog portal to comply with the government orders, The Indian Express reported.

According to the amendments introduced to the 2021 Information Technology Rules in February, social media intermediaries must remove “unlawful content” within three hours of receiving directions from the appropriate government or a court.

The integration allows content flagged through government directions on the portal to be automatically removed from Meta’s platforms without a separate human review.

Calculated attack on democratic right, says Congress

The Opposition criticised the widespread use of blocking orders by the Union government.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Narendra Modi government “has launched its most brazen and calculated attack on the democratic right of every Indian to speak, to question and to dissent”.

Any creator, journalist or citizen who posts “something critical of this government today faces immediate takedowns, threatening FIR notices and coordinated intimidation”, he said on social media.

“Meanwhile, the ruling party’s Andhbhakts freely doxes women, issues rape threats and runs organised harassment campaigns online without a single legal consequence, because none less than the PM follows many such trolls!” Kharge added.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Scroll Instagram posts on Kashmir pellet victims withheld in India, fourth block since June
• Shifting viewership and Centre’s fresh attempt to control news online
• Sahyog portal case offers clear view of government’s expanding role in regulating online content
• Why the BJP is struggling to crack Gen Z’s reel-driven algorithm

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju has claimed that no one protesting against the alleged irregularities in competitive exams was seriously injured in the police action in Delhi on July 20, reported ANI.

In an interview aired on Tuesday, Rijiju claimed: “Not a single person was harmed, not a single person suffered a broken bone. Not even one protester is in the hospital with a serious injury.”

His claims came despite a Right to Information response stating that 10 persons were injured by pellets during the July 20 protest march to Parliament.

#WATCH | Delhi: On the Jantar Mantar protest, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju says, "...Not a single person was harmed; not a single person suffered a broken bone. Not even one protester is in the hospital with a serious injury. Consider the scale of this… pic.twitter.com/yD01FYWftx

— ANI (@ANI) August 18, 2026

A 19-year-old protester sustained multiple wounds and also lost vision in one eye after being hit by what doctors are reported to have confirmed were pellets.

Scroll found medical records from Safdarjung Hospital that showed that a journalist covering the protest had 26 small, round wounds that doctors described as “consistent with pellets striking” the right side of his body. The journalist told Scroll that he saw security personnel deploying pellet guns and was hit while trying to move away.

This was the first time that pellet guns had been used in Delhi against unarmed protesters.

Rijiju claimed in the interview to ANI that several criminals had infiltrated the protest “under the guise of students”. He also claimed that Opposition parties, including the Samajwadi Party and the Aam Aadmi Party, had tried to incite the protesters.

“Yet, not a single casualty occurred,” said the minister.

He added that the Delhi Police and the administration should be praised for “handling such a massive protest without allowing even a single serious injury”.

“During the protests, the Delhi administration did not use even one lathi,” claimed Rijiju. “It was only when they forcibly marched towards Parliament that they were stopped.”

However, several videos shared online after the July 20 crackdown on protesters had shown security personnel and persons wearing plain clothes assaulting students with lathis. Videos had also emerged of police officers slapping women, as well as hitting them on their private parts.

Dozens were injured in the police action.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi questioned Rijiju’s call to praise the Delhi Police.

In a social media post, Gandhi said that pellet guns were fired at peaceful protesters and lathis studded with nails were used, half a kilometre from Parliament. “A child lost his eyes, a girl’s ear was severed,” he wrote. “Should we praise this brutality?”

The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha said that he had met the injured students, and accused the government of lying.

He also said that while Union Home Minister Amit Shah was “running” from the Opposition during the Monsoon Session of Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to apologise to the students.

“The truth is that the biggest danger to this country comes from these empty-headed people who neither see their own mistakes, nor admit them even when they do,” he added.

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

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

The police action during the Parliament march turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Delhi hospital reports show pellet wounds on journalist covering students’ protests

The Bombay High Court granted bail and suspended the life sentence of a man convicted of murdering anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar. The prosecution said that Sachin Andure was one of those who shot Dabholkar dead in August 2013.

The order came more than three months after the High Court granted bail to Sharad Kalaskar, who has also been convicted in the case.

Andure had approached the court seeking that he be granted bail while his appeal against his conviction was pending. Dabholkar’s family had opposed bail, arguing that it would send the wrong message to society. Read on.

The Supreme Court said that it will set up a committee to look into the alleged excessive force used by the police during last month’s youth protests and violence against security forces. The panel will comprise a former judge of the Supreme Court, a former chief justice of a High Court and a senior retired police officer.

The bench said that it will pass the order on Wednesday, adding that it will consider using its extraordinary powers to quash first information reports against protesting students who do not have criminal antecedents. Read on.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered that jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan be moved to hospital for medical treatment, his political party said. The directive meets a longstanding demand by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and his family who have been raising concerns about his health and poor incarceration conditions.

The court ordered the authorities to take Khan to hospital within 48 hours, a party spokesperson said. He will remain in hospital till September 16.

The bench was hearing cases relating to Khan allegedly not being allowed to meet his sisters and personal physicians, and about his medical record. Read on.

The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund had a corpus of Rs 8,452 crore by the end of the financial year 2024-’25, showed audit statements. It reported an expenditure of Rs 87.8 lakh, mainly towards the PM Cares for Children Scheme. This meant that the fund had utilised only 0.01% of the corpus available in the financial year, social activist Anjali Bhardwaj noted.

During the fiscal year, the fund received more than Rs 1,270 crore in domestic and foreign donations, interest on deposits and refunds from implementing agencies. Nearly 93% of the funds available at the end of the financial year had been held as fixed deposits.

The fund was created in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic started with the objective of being a dedicated national corpus to deal with “any kind of emergency or distress situation”. But Opposition parties have raised questions about its transparency and the need to create the new reserve when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund already existed. Read on.

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking an alternative painless method of carrying out the death penalty instead of hanging. However, the bench said that the dismissal of the petition does not mean that future constitutional scrutiny of the matter has been closed.

The matter may be considered again if “compelling scientific, medical or empirical evidence” regarding alternative ways to carry out the death sentence is produced, it added.

The court also observed that its verdict does not prevent the Union government from reviewing the existing method of execution through an expert panel. Read on.

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The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund had a corpus of Rs 8,452 crore by the end of the financial year 2024-’25, showed audit statements published on Monday.

It reported an expenditure of Rs 87.8 lakh in the 2024-’25 financial year, mainly towards the PM Cares for Children Scheme. This, social activist Anjali Bhardwaj noted on Tuesday, amounted to only 0.01% of the corpus available.

The fund received more than Rs 1,270 crore in domestic and foreign donations, interest on deposits and refunds from implementing agencies during the financial year.

Nearly 93% of the funds available at the end of the fiscal year 2024-’25 had been held as fixed deposits.

The fund had a corpus of Rs 7,173 crore by the end of fiscal year 2023-’24.

The accounts for the fiscal years 2023-’24 and 2024-’25 were audited on August 6 and signed by the auditors on August 7, the documents showed.

The PM Cares Fund was established in March 2020 with the stated objective of being a dedicated national fund to deal with “any kind of emergency or distress situation” in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fund has been the subject of criticism from Opposition parties, who have raised questions about its transparency and have questioned the need to create the reserve when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund existed.

The prime minister’s relief fund was set up in 1948 to provide immediate relief to those affected by natural disasters, accidents or riots. It is entirely funded by voluntary contributions by individuals and organisations

‘Why is fund keeping large sums of money idle?’

After the documents were published, Bhardwaj asked why the PM Cares Fund was “keeping such large sums of money idle”.

“[Rs] 324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies – but no info on what these payments were for and why these were refunded?” she said on social media. “Which agency refunded? Were refunds done to evade accountability for faulty equipment?”

Bhardwaj also asked why the accompanying notes to the audit report had not been uploaded to the PM Cares Fund website.

She said that the fund that has accumulated “thousands of crores (including from foreign sources), is shrouded in secrecy” and that it continues to “evade public scrutiny by refusing to submit itself to the RTI Act”.

The Union government has on several occasions said that the PM Cares Fund does not come under the ambit of the Right to Information Act.

Finally the audit statement of PMCARES Fund for 2024-25 has been made public! Key highlights-
-Utilised only 0.01% of available ₹ 8,452 crore! Why is the PMCARES Fund keeping such large sums of money idle?
-324 crore was refunded by implementing agencies- but no info on what… pic.twitter.com/4wgrZc0c8r

— Anjali Bhardwaj (@AnjaliB_) August 18, 2026

In December 2020, the Union government said in a reply to an RTI query that the fund was “owned and established” by the government. However, it said that the fund does not come under the RTI Act because it receives funds from private sources.

In September 2021, the Union government told the Delhi High Court that the PM Cares Fund can neither be listed as “the state”, nor a “public authority” under the RTI Act.

In February, The Indian Express reported that the Prime Minister’s Office had told the Lok Sabha Secretariat that questions related to the PM Cares Fund are not permissible under rules related to the conduct of business in Parliament’s Lower House.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it will set up a committee to look into alleged police excesses during last month’s youth protests and violence against security forces, Bar and Bench reported.

The committee will comprise a former judge of the Supreme Court, a former chief justice of a High Court and a senior retired police officer.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said that it will pass the order on Wednesday once it receives suggestions from different parties on other members to be included in the panel, PTI reported.

The court said it will order that videos and security camera footage of the violence during the July 20 march to Parliament be handed over to the committee.

“Whosoever is responsible, there can be no excuse and no justification,” Kant was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench. “It must be taken seriously and taken to its logical conclusion.”

The bench said that the committee would also look into allegations that female protesters faced sexual assault and online harassment.

The Supreme Court also said that it will consider using its extraordinary powers to quash first information reports against protesting students, but clarified that cases involving persons with criminal antecedents could be dealt with separately.

The court was on Tuesday hearing a batch of petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20.

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

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

Delhi Police deny ‘mass surveillance’ allegations

The Delhi Police, in an affidavit before the Supreme Court, denied that it carried out mass surveillance with facial recognition technology at the Jantar Mantar protest site, The Indian Express reported.

The police maintained that their facial recognition system only captures individuals with prior criminal records and does not profile every person present at a gathering.

The affidavit was further quoted as saying by The Indian Express: “No actions are taken solely based upon the result of the facial recognition system, which is only the first step to identify a person in the crowd who has a criminal record.”

The police said that after facial recognition, field verification is conducted and action is taken if it is found that the individual was present at the protest site.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Union government, said that the police had identified more than 2,800 “anti-social elements” who had allegedly infiltrated the protests, PTI reported.

The Supreme Court had on July 28 directed that minors who had been detained during the agitation should be released and no coercive action should be taken against protesting students as long as they did not have any “criminal antecedents”. On August 3, it clarified that the term “criminal antecedents” in the order referred only to “grave and heinous offences”.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Congress on Tuesday alleged that the Narendra Modi government intends to “sabotage” the caste census, and questioned why the 2027 Census does not have a drop-down menu for selecting castes, even though the Centre had recommended it in 2021.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh alleged that on April 30, 2025, Modi “made a complete U-turn…and announced that a caste census – which he had earlier attacked as an ‘urban Naxal’ idea – would take place.”

Ramesh claimed that the government has reversed its stance and “buried the idea of a caste census” without explicitly saying so. “He [Modi] is a U-turn ustad [master],” the Congress leader remarked on social media.

The Union government had in September 2021 filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court rejecting the plea for a caste census, Ramesh noted.

However, he quoted the affidavit as saying: “There was no registry of caste prepared prior to the conduct of 2011 Census. It would have been ideal for the Registry of Castes that there should have been given a drop-down menu for selection of the castes which could have made some consistent data available which can be relied upon.”

On September 21, 2021, the Modi Govt had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court categorically rejecting the plea for a caste census.

However, Para 12 (d) in the affidavit says the following: “There was no registry of caste prepared prior to the conduct of 2011 Census. It would… pic.twitter.com/gHdPZSMiQw

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) August 18, 2026

Ramesh questioned why the 2027 Census does not have this drop-down menu, when the government itself had advocated for it in 2021.

“Such a menu had, in fact, been prepared prior to the caste surveys both in Bihar and Telangana,” he said. “Such a menu had also been suggested by the Congress president in his letter to the PM of May 5, 2025.”

Ramesh claimed that the absence of this option showed that the government did not want the caste census to achieve its objective.

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

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

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

The Opposition had in recent years been demanding a nationwide caste census. The proponents of such an exercise argue that it will help identify the true population of the country’s Other Backward Classes and other castes, in turn paving the way for policies such as expanded reservations in jobs and education.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read: Census 2027 will count caste – but the data it produces won’t be usable

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking an alternative painless method of carrying out the death penalty instead of hanging, Bar and Bench reported.

However, the court said that the dismissal of the petition does not mean that future constitutional scrutiny of the matter has been closed. The matter may be considered again if “compelling scientific, medical or empirical evidence” regarding alternative ways to carry out the death sentence is produced, it added.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta passed the judgement while hearing the plea filed by an advocate.

The court also observed that its verdict does not prevent the Union government from reviewing the existing method of execution through an expert panel, Bar and Bench reported. The panel could examine whether an alternative method of execution would better serve the “constitutional objective of minimising unnecessary pain while preserving the dignity of condemned prisoners”.

The petition filed in 2017 had challenged the constitutionality of Section 354(5) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which pertains to hanging till death, Live Law reported. The Code of Criminal Procedure was replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita in July 2024.

The petitioner had also sought to recognise the right to a dignified method of execution as a fundamental right.

The plea claimed that the execution process by hanging can take more than 40 minutes before the convict is declared dead, the legal news outlet reported. In comparison, execution by shooting takes only a few minutes and the process of using lethal injections can be completed within five minutes.

It further argued that death by hanging is not only barbaric, inhuman and cruel, but also against the United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution that categorically states that “where capital punishment occurs, it shall be carried out to inflict minimum possible suffering”.

In October, while hearing the petition, the Supreme Court had said that the government is “not ready to evolve” with changing times. It had also criticised the government for opposing the suggestion to give convicts facing the death penalty the option to choose a lethal injection as a mode to carry out their punishment.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail and suspended the life sentence of a man convicted for the murder of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, Live Law reported.

The prosecution said that Sachin Andure was one of those who shot Dabholkar dead in August 2013.

A copy of the detailed verdict by Justices Sarang Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Bhonsale is yet to be made available.

The order came more than three months after the High Court granted bail to Sharad Kalaskar, who has also been convicted in the case.

Dabholkar, who was the founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, was shot dead in Pune in August 2013. His murder was followed by the killing of other rationalists and thinkers in a similar manner, including Govind Pansare, Gauri Lankesh and MM Kalburgi between 2015 and 2017.

A sessions court had in May 2024 convicted Andure and Kalaskar for the murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment. However, the two were acquitted of charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Three others – Virendrasingh Tawade, Vikram Bhave and Sanjeev Punalekar – were acquitted.

Dabholkar’s daughter Mukta filed an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of Tawade, Bhave and Punalekar, and against Andure and Kalaskar being cleared of charges under the anti-terror law.

Both Andure and Kalaskar had approached the High Court seeking that they be granted bail while their appeals were pending.

Andure, in his bail petition, had argued that no test identification parade was conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation, Live Law reported. The CBI took over the case in 2014 after a High Court order.

Andure claimed that there were discrepancies in the statements of witnesses, with some of them claiming to have seen him shooting Dabholkar and others denying that they saw him at the spot.

Dabholkar’s family had opposed bail, arguing that it would send the wrong message to society, Live Law reported. They pointed out that Pansare, Lankesh and Kalburgi had been killed in a similar manner.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government told the Supreme Court on Monday that transgender identity cards issued before the 2026 amendments to the Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act will not be invalidated, reported Bar and Bench.

The submission came after a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana sought the Centre’s response on the status of trans persons who had obtained identity cards before the amendments.

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

The law makes medical evaluation and certification mandatory for legal gender recognition. It also vests the authority to certify legal gender recognition in medical professionals operating under a medical board.

On August 3, petitioners challenging the amendments, including trans persons and activists, said that the identity cards cannot be cancelled and sought status quo on their validity.

In an application filed in the case on August 10, petitioner Ankani Biswas said that they had been issued a transgender identity card under the 2019 Act on February 2, 2023, reported Bar and Bench.

Biswas alleged that when they checked the National Portal for Transgender Persons on July 16, they found that the card had been replaced with a new one containing several errors.

The new card did not carry an official signature or seal, and mentioned Biswas’ birth name instead of the one adopted subsequently, the application was quoted as saying by Bar and Bench. It also allegedly contained discrepancies in the date of application and date of birth.

The card was replaced without any notice, Biswas told the court and sought restoration of the previous one.

Issuing notice on Biswas’ application, the bench posted the matter for final hearing, reported Live Law.

During a hearing on August 3, the Supreme Court had said that the 2026 amendment cannot take away the rights of persons who have already been granted cards.

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

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

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: Why activists see the imprint of Hindutva in the new transgender law

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought responses from the Union government, all states and social media platforms X and Meta on a petition seeking directions to prevent the police from posting content that reveals the identities of accused persons or depicts them in dehumanising ways, PTI reported.

The public interest litigation, filed by a Gujarat resident, also sought directions to the police to remove existing posts of this nature from their social media handles.

Further, the petition urged the court to order state government to frame guidelines on the use of social media by the police authorities, PTI reported.

The public interest litigation sought directions to Meta and X to frame policies and guidelines preventing the disclosure of accused persons’ identities and the posting of content depicting them being treated in inhuman or derogatory ways, the news agency reported.

The petitioner referred to photographs and videos of individuals accused of crimes being handcuffed, tied with ropes, beaten with sticks and made to kneel.

The petitioner had earlier approached the Supreme Court with a plea challenging the police practice of uploading photos of accused persons on their social media handles, Live Law reported. At the time, the court had noted that directions passed in a separate case about media briefings by the police could cover social media posts as well.

In March, the Supreme Court allowed the petitioner to withdraw the plea while permitting him to approach the court with a broader petition, reported Live Law.

Edited by Sara Varghese.