Five Indians were injured after debris from intercepted ballistic missiles fell in Abu Dhabi, the city’s administration said. They sustained moderate to minor injuries.

The authorities in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city had earlier said that they were working to put out two fires caused by falling missile debris in the Khalifa Economic Zones, Al Jazeera reported.

On Thursday, an Indian citizen and a Pakistani citizen were killed in Abu Dhabi after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile fell on a street.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• US Vice President JD Vance on Saturday told American podcaster Benny Johnson that the country will get out of Iran “soon”. US President Donald Trump “is going to keep at it for a little while longer to ensure that once we leave, we don’t have to do this again for a very, very long time”, Vance said. The US vice president acknowledged that fuel prices have risen sharply because of the conflict, but added that they would come down soon. “This is a very, very temporary reaction to what is ultimately going to be a short-term conflict,” he added.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that he spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and discussed the conflict. Modi said that he reiterated India’s condemnation of attacks on energy infrastructure in the region. “We agreed on the need to ensure freedom of navigation and keeping shipping lines open and secure,” he said on social media.
• Twelve United States troops were injured, of whom two were seriously wounded, in an Iranian attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, The New York Times quoted two unidentified US officials as saying on Friday. The attack also caused significant damage to two KC-135 aerial refuelling planes, it added. The Iranian missile and drone attack was among the most serious breaches of US air defences since the war in West Asia began a month ago.
• Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen launched a ballistic missile towards southern Israel on Saturday, triggering sirens in areas including Beersheba, The Times of Israel reported. The Israeli military said it detected the launch from Yemen and was working to intercept it. This marks the group’s first such attack on Israel since the conflict started, Al Jazeera reported.
• The Houthis said on Saturday that they had targeted Israeli military installations and claimed that the attack was in response to strikes on infrastructure and civilian deaths in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Palestine, Al Jazeera reported. The group added that its strikes would continue until its stated objectives are achieved and “until the aggression against all resistance fronts ceases”.
• The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan will meet in Islamabad on Sunday and Monday to discuss ways to “de-escalate tensions” in West Asia.
• Operations at Oman’s Salalah port have been temporarily suspended after a drone attack, AFP quoted Danish shipping company Maersk said on Saturday. The attack had injured one worker and damaged a crane. Maersk, whose subsidiary runs the port, said that the operations could remain halted for 48 hours, the news agency reported.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Washington DC expects its operation in Iran to end “in a matter of weeks, not months”, and claimed that it is progressing “very well”. Speaking with reporters after meeting foreign ministers from the Group of Seven forum, he asserted: “When we are done with them here over the next couple of weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history.”
• Trump had claimed on Thursday that Iran was “begging” Washington to make a deal, even as Iran has reportedly dismissed a 15-point ceasefire plan proposed by the US. Trump on Thursday warned Tehran to “get serious” about negotiations, adding that if it becomes too late, “there is no turning back, and it won’t be pretty”.
• Nevertheless, Trump said on Friday that he wanted his legacy to be that of a “great peacemaker”. Addressing the Saudi-backed Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Miami, the US president claimed: “I settled eight wars. They were long-term wars and lots of people were being killed every year, so I’ve saved millions and millions of people.”
• Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said that his country will “exact [a] heavy price” for Israeli strikes, including attacks on “Iran’s largest steel factories, a power plant and civilian nuclear sites”. Noting Israel’s claim that it acted in coordination with the US, Araghchi said that the attacks contradicted Trump’s “extended deadline for diplomacy”.
• On Thursday, Trump said that he was once again postponing the deadline for Iran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. Citing ongoing talks with Tehran to end the conflict, the president said that he would hold off for 10 more days before targeting the plants. Iran has, however, repeatedly denied that any negotiations are taking place to end the conflict.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Saturday refuted a report by The New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk had joined a telephone call between United States President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, ANI reported.

“We have seen the story,” the news agency quoted the ministry spokesperson as having said. “The telephone conversation on March 24 was between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump only.”

The discussion provided an opportunity “for exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia, the ministry added.

On Friday, The New York Times reported, quoting two unidentified US officials, that it was unclear what why Musk had joined the call and if he had spoken. The US-based newspaper described Musk’s alleged participation as an “unusual appearance by a private citizen on a call between two heads of state during a wartime crisis”.

Musk is not known to be currently associated with the Trump administration.

In May, he had quit as a special government employee of the US Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration. The advisory body – run by Musk at the time – had been created through an executive order by Trump on his first day in office in January 2025. It aimed to “modernise federal technology and software to maximise governmental efficiency and productivity”.

Once strong allies, Musk and Trump had a public feud in July.

Musk’s companies have investments in West Asian countries, the newspaper reported. The billionaire’s auto manufacturer Tesla started selling its cars in India in July and his satellite internet venture Starlink has been cleared to operate in the country. Musk also owns social media platform X.

He has not yet commented on the newspaper report.

Asked about The New York Times’ report, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told PTI that Trump “has a great relationship with Prime Minister Modi, and this was a productive conversation”.

On Tuesday, New Delhi and Washington had confirmed the phone call between Modi and Trump, but had not mentioned Musk.

Claims pose ‘serious questions’, says Congress

The Congress had said on Saturday that The New York Times report about Musk having allegedly participated in the call poses “serious questions” and that the country “deserves clear answers”.

The Opposition party asked why a businessman was present when leaders of two countries were discussing a global crisis and what role Musk played in the conversation.

“Was this truly about the West Asia crisis, or was there another ‘business’ agenda?” the Congress had asked on social media before the external affairs ministry commented on the matter. “Why did the Modi government not disclose Musk’s presence? Why are we learning about this from another country instead of our own government?”

It added: “Trump spoke to leaders of different countries during the war, but no businessman was on any of those calls. Why did this happen only with Modi? The White House described the talks as productive. But productive for whom?”

The Congress alleged that Modi was “simply following Trump’s direction” and that “he’s more of a manager being controlled from behind the scenes than a leader”.

On Tuesday, Modi had said that he and Trump had a “useful exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia.

“India supports de-escalation and restoration of peace at the earliest,” Modi had said on social media. “Ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, secure and accessible is essential for the whole world. We agreed to stay in touch regarding efforts towards peace and stability.”

IT workers in India keep a lot of the world’s technology ticking over. They may be operating your company’s helpdesk, or responding to a query about your latest gadget.

They may also be working from home. And in India’s IT hubs, like Bangalore, Chennai or Hyderabad, this is likely to be from a cramped apartment filled with backup battery systems the workers have paid for themselves.

For despite often working for some of the biggest companies in the world, research I carried out with colleagues shows that working conditions for many of India’s IT workers are far from pleasant.

Ever since COVID, the pros and cons of remote working have been tested across the world. In some places, for some people, a switch to hybrid or fully remote working represents a degree of freedom and self-determination.

But not everywhere. So what does working from home actually look like for the 5 million Indian IT professionals who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running?

One of the biggest challenges is space. In India, more than half of the population live with members of their extended family. Many of the 51 workers we interviewed share their homes with children, parents, grandparents and in-laws – all squeezed into small apartments which now double up as offices.

For them, remote working means organising large family groups in small spaces so that one person can have a quiet corner in which to work.

A professional background for a video call required careful choreography in a crowded household with two rooms where babies might be crying next to elderly relatives with medical complaints.

For the workers we spoke to who had care responsibilities for various family members, the juggling required was extraordinary. We were told of profound knock-on effects for family life, with chaotic mealtimes and evenings hijacked by calls.

But perhaps the biggest challenge we learned about was to do with basic infrastructure. Power cuts are routine in many Indian cities. Internet bandwidth, shared among other family members working or studying from home, is often unreliable.

We met many IT professionals, doing identical work to their counterparts in London or San Francisco, who had spent their own money on domestic backup power systems so they could stay online.

During home visits, we saw battery units occupying valuable domestic space on balconies, in hallways and porches – equipment these homes were never designed to hold. A proper unit – the kind needed to run a laptop, router, and fan through India’s routine power cuts – costs up to £400, roughly equivalent to a month’s take-home pay for a junior IT worker.

Meanwhile, internet bandwidth had to be carefully rationed. Television schedules were reorganised around work calls. Most meetings defaulted to audio-only, with video reserved for special occasions.

Along with power supplies and other equipment, some said workplace surveillance had also moved into their homes. One 33-year-old male IT worker said his employer’s online system would “calculate how many hours you work, and which other websites you visit”. He added that lapses would “automatically trigger a [message to my] manager”.

The surveillance extended into absurd territory. When power cuts struck – a routine occurrence – some workers were expected to prove it. A 28-year-old male engineer told us: “The boss said ‘go out and take photos of your house and send it’. He needed proof.”

Working conditions

These frustrations are not going unheard. In 2025, hundreds of IT workers took to the streets in Bangalore carrying placards which read “We are not your slaves” and demanding a legal right to disconnect and the enforcement of limits on working hours.

When the state government proposed extending the maximum working day from ten to 12 hours, workers protested again. So far, India’s IT sector remains exempt from key labour protections, and no right to disconnect has been brought into law.

A key part of their protest was to do with workplace inequality – which had simply been relocated from the office into the home.

Organisations saved on office space, utilities and equipment. Those costs didn’t disappear – they were transferred to workers and their families.

In some countries that might mean buying a desk. To many of the Indian IT professionals we spoke to, who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running, it meant investing in domestic power backup systems, rationing internet bandwidth, rearranging entire households, and absorbing the emotional toll of work without boundaries – all while managing infrastructure failures.

A software developer in Bangalore with identical skills to one in Boston faces entirely different remote work realities. If remote work is to deliver on its promise, organisations and policymakers must recognise that “working from home” means fundamentally different things depending on where that home is – and who bears the hidden costs of making it work.

Vivek Soundararajan is Professor of Work and Equality, University of Bath.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Election Commission on Friday published the second supplementary voter list in West Bengal following adjudications as part of the special intensive revision exercise of the electoral rolls in the poll-bound state, The Hindu reported.

The first supplementary list, released on Monday, covered about 29 lakh cases, The Indian Express reported. An additional 8 lakh cases were reportedly resolved in the second list, taking the total to 37 lakh.

Of the 60 lakh cases, more than 23 lakh still need to be adjudicated by judicial officers deputed by the Supreme Court.

Booth-wise lists were made available on the poll panel’s website at 11.30 pm on Friday, but the pages showing details of deletions and inclusions were not accessible because of “technical glitches”, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

The poll panel did not disclose the number of inclusions or deletions in the second list.

State Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal had earlier said that persons whose names are excluded can challenge the decision before appellate tribunals to be set up by the Calcutta High Court, The Indian Express reported.

Notably, the names of former High Court judge Sahidullah Munshi and his family members have been included in the list released on Friday, Live Law reported. On Thursday, Munshi said that his name had been deleted from the voter list after adjudication, while those of his wife and elder son remained under review and his younger son had applied as a new voter.

He described the experience as “very humiliating and painful”.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining under adjudication based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had moved the Supreme Court against the exercise, raising concerns that voter roll revision poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible electors in the Assembly elections. She sought the court’s direction that the elections be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.

The state polls will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4, alongside those in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

The promotion of Hindi has not sufficiently encouraged the growth of other Indian languages, despite the constitutional commitment to linguistic diversity (“An English professor writes: Why Hindi is to blame for the decline of India’s other languages”).

The three-language policy across the country has also not been uniformly implemented. Students in South India are often required to learn three languages, but many regions in North India follow a bilingual approach.

A uniform bilingual policy may be considered across the country, wherein students learn their respective state language along with English. This will ensure fairness, reduce academic burden and promote effective communication. –ST Ramachandra

***

As members of the Singpho community in Assam, we communicate in Singpho. But we have also learnt to speak Assamese, Tai Khamti, Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, English and native tribal languages. This multilingualism is an advantage. Beyond our state, we can communicate in Hindi or English. But we are losing our indigenous languages, especially the younger generations. – Sonabor Duwania

***

This is a wrong narrative. English has sidelined local languages because it helps secure jobs and livelihood. Some states have replaced local languages with English or restricted the use of local languages within the premises. The decline in local languages is due to local governments and people themselves who have disregarded their own language and local culture. Hindi has remained in its place. – Satyanarayana JV

***

A national language was needed for ease in administration. But the imposition of Hindi was opposed by non-Hindi states for political reasons. Had they accepted Hindi in the 1950s as a second or third language in schools, everyone in India would have understood each other better.

Observations about local languages, such as Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj are immaterial when everyone is educated. Any child can learn three-four languages if taught in school. Every local language has its own charm and a common national language can never take it away.

We must encourage our children to learn English and Hindi along with regional languages taught in schools. The language debate will become defunct soon. Our smartphone will be the language of the future, not a language itself. – Girish Kanagotagi

‘Divisive’, ‘false narrative’

Recently Scroll published an article about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh advocating Hindu extremism across the world. But everyone knows Scroll is trying to sell this false narrative.

Now, using the cover of an English professor, you are peddling another damaging false narrative about Hindi, which is India’s national language. It is a shame that many Indians are proud of knowing English. In no other country is such self-deceit happening in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. – Giridhar.

***

India is not Europe where every state is divided to a country itself. Sentiments of “my language”, “my culture”, and “my history” will divide the country. A future is possible when a country is united on all aspects. Such divisive tactics, which your organisation is always trying to promote, will not work with this educated generation. – Rahul Tiwari

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday granted legal protection to a couple in a consensual live-in relationship, observing that a married man living with an adult woman does not constitute a criminal offence, The Hindu reported.

The case before the court was filed by the woman’s family, which objected to the relationship, arguing that the man’s marriage made it illegal.

A bench of Justices JJ Munir and Tarun Saxena rejected this contention, stating that there is no offence in a married man living with an adult in a consensual live-in relationship.

“Morality and law have to be kept apart,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “If there is no offence under the law made out, social opinions and morality will not guide the action of the court for protecting the rights of citizens.”

The court also noted that the woman had approached the Shahjahanpur superintendent of police, stating that she was living with her partner of her own free will and that her family had threatened her with death, the legal news outlet reported.

The court noted that no action had been taken on her complaint and underlined that it was the duty of the police to “protect two adults living together”.

The court directed that neither the woman nor her partner should be harmed or arrested. It also restrained her family from contacting them or entering their home, either directly or indirectly.

The court made the Shahjahanpur superintendent of police personally responsible for ensuring the couple’s safety and security, Live Law reported.

The bench has granted the state counsel two weeks to file a counter-affidavit.

A special court in Delhi on Friday granted the National Investigation Agency 10 days’ custody of seven foreign nationals accused of links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India, The Hindu reported.

The agency had sought 15 days’ custody of the accused persons.

Special Judge Prashant Sharma of the National Investigation Agency court cited the sensitive nature of the case and its potential international implications, and directed that the accused be produced again on April 6.

Of those arrested, one person – Matthew Aaron Van Dyke – is from the United States, while the other six – Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor – are Ukrainian citizens, according to The Hindu.

They were arrested earlier this month under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

According to the National Investigation Agency, the seven individuals were involved in supplying weapons and military equipment to ethnic armed groups operating in Myanmar, as well as providing them with training.

Investigators allege that the group had entered India on valid visas, but later travelled to Mizoram without the mandatory restricted area permit. They are further accused of entering Myanmar and meeting ethnic groups hostile to India.

Officials also alleged that the individuals received drone deliveries from Europe while in Mizoram.

They were reportedly arrested in Delhi, Kolkata and Lucknow while trying to leave India.

The accused on Friday moved a plea seeking that an independent translator be appointed to ensure fair proceedings, unidentified persons in the court told The Hindu.

In 1982, Rajesh Joshi wrote an evocative Hindi short story titled Somvar (Monday) capturing the changing dynamics of a middle-class household with the arrival of liquefied petroleum gas.

As if narrating our current predicament, the story depicts how an entire global regime of petroleum and rising oil prices subtly translates into mounting tensions in one home.

“The world was fighting over oil,” Joshi wrote. “The nation was watching the flow of oil. And our home was heating up from the gas that came from that flow of oil.”

Somvar is a reminder that crises around oil and gas are not new. What is different, though, is the manner in which the spectacle of crisis is circulating – as social media images, posts and reels.

The current anxiety around liquefied petroleum gas in India – rising prices, delayed cylinder deliveries – evokes a historical moment when energy shortages became prominent in public consciousness: the oil shocks of the 1970s.

The modern cultural script of energy scarcity was forged during the 1973 oil crisis, when an embargo by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries led to a significant reduction in oil supplies and caused prices to soar.

A second shock followed in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution. These crises were economic events, but they quickly became cultural ones.

The #LPGgasShortage bas become a meme fest. Half the country is standing in #LPG lines for refill, the other half is busy making funny reels trolling the Modi govt.#LPGcylinder nahi ho gaya, Shahrukh Khan ho gaya. #IranWar‌ #Lpgcrisis #LPG_gas #Gassupply pic.twitter.com/gtstX6OpGx

— Vinay Kumar Dokania (@VinayDokania) March 15, 2026

As is evident from Somvar, uneven access to public goods, like LPG, shaped the thematic preoccupations of the short story. Shortages and interruptions, long part of everyday experience, registered not as an absolute lack of energy but as waiting and jugaad – informal arrangements to sort out the problem.

These are not spectacular events but slow, familiar negotiations with scarcity.

This year’s LPG crisis in India is unfolding in a radically different media landscape from its previous iterations. Instead of in cinema and print fiction, much of the public conversation now takes place through social media platforms such as Instagram and short-form video formats like YouTube Shorts.

Memes and short reels dramatise everyday frustrations around LPG cylinder prices and availability. As visibility and irony shape the experience of shortages, queues have turned into content.

These videos often use a comic tone. Many reels depict exaggerated scenes of domestic improvisation, joking about returning to cooking with firewood or dramatising the moment when the cylinder is finally obtained by the household. The format is brief and performative. It translates economic strain into familiar domestic situations.

"Foreigner girl trolls Modi govt." 🔥

She made a reel on the viral Bhojpuri song "Dhokhebaaz Rajau" and highlighted how LPG prices are increasing in Indian market.

"Vishwa me Modi ji ka danka baj rha hai." pic.twitter.com/95J1uac21q

— Mission Ambedkar (@MissionAmbedkar) March 18, 2026

The authorities, however, are not amused. On March 14, a government school teacher in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district was suspended after a video surfaced of him making satirical remarks about LPG cylinder prices and mimicking Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There is a quiet irony in this story. The teacher was also tasked with running a local Anand Bhavan (Happiness Centre). While the state prescribes positivity, it is far less tolerant of humour that registers discomfort or dissent.

India’s energy narrative in the last two decades has been about self-reliance, progress, digital transparency and a clean energy transition. Though middle-class India bought this line, the crisis has underscored its weaknesses, making it evident that the nation still relies enormously on fossil fuels.

These LPG reels are circulating an image of the crisis – but they redistribute visibility without acknowledging the dominant experience. Though reels tend to focus on the discomfort of middle-class India, the burden of scarcity has fallen disproportionately on small entrepreneurs and workers.

If digital media has made the shortage visible, it has also made it strangely weightless – circulating inconvenience as comedy. Beneath the comedy lies the harsher truth that our reliance on fossil fuels will ensure that disruption keeps returning to Indian homes – much like in Joshi’s short story.

"Cylinder Maharaj ki jay ho." 🔥

Content creators are making reels showing how much struggle people face just to get a gas cylinder. It now feels less like a basic need and more like a blessing of God. pic.twitter.com/EFti8cIxvL

— Mission Ambedkar (@MissionAmbedkar) March 12, 2026

Joya John teaches literature at Krea University.

The war in West Asia has cast a spotlight on India’s interests in the region. While the disruption of energy supply and maritime trade have taken precedence, the fate of 10 million Indians who work in Gulf countries has found little mention in public discourse.

The reason for this is not hard to ascertain. The overwhelming majority of Indians in the Gulf are low-income, blue collar workers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Parliament on March 24 that 3.75 lakh Indians have returned from the region since the war began. The majority of them are white-collar professionals.

Experts warn that a continuation of the conflict could result in an economic slowdown in the region, resulting in fewer jobs and lower wages. Hence, blue-collar workers have decided to stay put, taking their chances with drones and ballistic missiles flying overhead. The Ministry of External Affairs said at least seven Indians have died in the Gulf states since the war began.

The immediate tasks for New Delhi are to increase diplomatic efforts towards ending hostilities in the region and working with its counterparts in the region to ensure Indians are safe. However, this episode highlights the policy neglect of Indian workers overseas.

A new bill

The main instrument governing labour migration overseas is the Indian Emigration Act 1983. In October, when the Ministry of External Affairs published the Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025, scholars and experts of migration hoped that the exploitation of Indian workers in foreign countries would finally be addressed.

Comments were invited on the draft in November.

Much has changed since 1983, when the Emigration Act was enacted, to liberalise colonial-era restrictions. The number of clearances and recruitment licences granted to agents increased under the Emigration Act, but the law failed to adequately protect the rights of migrant workers.

Since then, migration to West Asia alone has increased 12-fold, from eight lakh to one crore by 2025. Most of the 10 million Indians in the Gulf states are blue-collar workers employed in sectors such as construction, retail, hospitality, domestic and care work.

VIEWS/ SUGGESTIONS ON DRAFT OVERSEAS MOBILITY (FACILITATION & WELFARE) BILL, 2025 pic.twitter.com/vAr33pMAYM

— India in Philippines (@indembmanila) October 30, 2025

The money they send home contributes massively to the $135 billion in remittances India received in 2024 – the highest from any overseas workforce in the world.

Migration scholars and experts have established that these workers suffer gross rights violations: from work-related issues such as wage theft and extortionate recruitment fees to inhumane treatment resulting in avoidable death.

The new law is an opportunity to ensure the rights and dignity of millions of hardworking Indians who contribute to the country’s collective prosperity are protected.

Opaque management

Under the proposed law, the entire edifice of emigration governance will rest on a new, opaque bureaucratic body: the Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council, with a vast mandate. This council, comprising bureaucrats from several ministries, will be assisted by the Director General of Overseas Mobility with regional officers.

The Director General of Overseas Mobility is similar to the Protector General of Emigrants, the authority currently tasked with protecting the interests of Indian workers going abroad. With 16 offices across India, it can grant and revoke the licenses of recruitment agents.

The new council’s work will be expansive, from tackling irregular emigration, leveraging bilateral mobility agreements to studying overseas labour markets. The bill also vests the council with the powers to create and administer schemes for the welfare of emigrants and advise the government on all matters of emigration.

But the bill’s wording is ambiguous, stating that the council shall exercise powers and perform “all or any” of these duties. Essentially the bill will install a new centralised body atop the existing administrative structure. Such a design fails the test of accountability as well as efficiency in governance.

Rights-based approach

The Indian government’s attempt to overhaul the Emigration Act has been prompted by the growing labour shortages in developed and wealthy countries, due to ageing populations, skill shortages and the reluctance of native-born workers to take up precarious jobs.

The Indian government hopes that workers migrating to other countries will alleviate the unemployment crisis in India. The Ministry of External Affairs has signed labour mobility agreements with 20 countries since 2018.

While it is wise to pay attention to facilitating the mobility of workers, the crucial question is mobility on what terms? When a sovereign state approaches this question, its foremost concern must be to protect the rights of its citizens. Given that the Indian government has also acknowledged that workers are being exploited, any new law must place a rights-based approach at its heart.

The first step, then, is for the bill to commit to protecting the rights, dignity and agency of emigrant Indians. This means incorporating provisions through which workers become participants to the act – for instance, by designing insurance policies based on their experiences – not passive subjects on whom the law is enacted.

The guarantee of workers’ rights should result in “safe, legal, orderly and regular” mobility. Here, New Delhi should rely on the decades of experience of workers, administrators and activists troubleshooting the problems of millions of Indian workers overseas.

If the government is serious about the rights of Indian workers overseas, the bill must consider three priorities:

1. Regulating recruitment

When Indian workers find themselves in distress overseas, the problem is seen as occurring “over there”. But the process which delivers workers to such a situation begins in India. Licensed recruitment agents, concentrated in major cities, rely on a vast network of unregistered subagents for workers willing to take up difficult jobs in foreign countries.

Data for 2024 from the Ministry of External Affairs shows that 44% of recruitment agents were concentrated in Delhi and Mumbai. Only 5% of recruitment agents were based in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, even though these states accounted for 55% of all Emigration Clearances issued in 2024, based on my calculations from the ministry’s emigration clearance reports. Since low-income workers largely hold Emigration Check Required passports, when travelling abroad on employment visas they are required to seek clearance from the Protectors of Emigrants.

Adding to this geographical disparity is that licensed recruiters do not reach workers directly. There is a chain of intermediaries, with each link adding a charge that gets passed down to the individual worker. The government has capped recruitment service charges at Rs 30,000, but it is well-known that workers routinely spend up to five times that amount to get jobs overseas. This means that workers take on debt, almost always from non-institutional sources, before seeing a job offer.

Recruiters are often the only source of information about overseas jobs, handing them an advantage in a market with an excess supply of workers. Unscrupulous recruiters misinform workers about the terms of employment and even send workers overseas on tourist visas.

The result is contract substitution: where workers find out, after landing in a foreign country, that the job they were promised does not exist, and since they are already in debt, they are forced to take up employment on whatever terms they are offered.

Unregulated recruitment also results in a loss of state revenue running into billions of rupees annually. Such practices create a black economy robbing the state of crucial revenue while risking the lives of workers.

India must insist on the globally recognised “employer pays principle”, where all costs of recruitment are borne by the employer. Workers should have legal recourse if they are charged excessive fees.

Genuine subagents must be brought within the regulatory ambit while public sector overseas recruitment companies need to be encouraged to set industry standards. At present, the six state recruiters, which include the Telangana Overseas Manpower Company and the Overseas Manpower Corporation Ltd of Tamil Nadu, account for a miniscule share of the recruitment market.

A mutually reinforcing combination of these measures will result in an efficient and fair recruitment industry.

A guided exhibition of stalls by @MEAIndia licensed Recruiting Agents, Skill Departments and TN Cyber Security Police was inaugurated by @ProtectorGenGOI at the margins of TN Overseas Mobility & Employer Partnership Summit 2026.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/qlFSqbiVqB

— Protector General of Emigrants (@ProtectorGenGOI) February 16, 2026

2. Involve states

The Overseas Mobility Bill repeats the mistake of excluding state governments from the governance architecture. Instead, the proposed Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council must include representatives from states with high emigration. State governments such as Telangana and more recently Jharkhand have been working on their own policies to protect migrating workers.

Recruitment irregularities, pre-departure support and rehabilitation or reintegration for returning workers is handled by states. Attention to state level-differences in the composition of the emigrating workforce and corridors of migration is necessary for nimble policy design, which helps with context specific responses. These are crucial elements to consider when designing policies that affect millions.

While in the past workers from the South dominated migration, today every second Indian going to West Asia is from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. Kerala accounts for less than 5% of emigrating workers, based on my calculations using the state-wise Emigration Clearance Reports published by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The proposed law should aim to facilitate knowledge transfers between states, ensure policy coherence and facilitate cooperation across administrative scales in implementation.

There is valuable experience in states such as Kerala, which created the Department of Non-Resident Keralites’ Affairs back in 1996. That should be leveraged by northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

3. Engage civil society

It is a common refrain among migrants to West Asia that Indian embassies and consular officials are unreachable and unsympathetic. There are obvious limitations to state capacities in foreign jurisdictions.

The state’s embassies and consulates act as nodes in foreign countries. But if these nodes were connected to the networks of civil society actors and had established protocols for dealing with them, they could fulfil their policy mandate.

Trade unions could also be important partners. India’s Central Trade Unions have representation at global labour forums and federations, such as the International Labour Organisation and International Trade Unions Confederation. International labour migration is a core focus for these bodies where Indian voices need to be strengthened.

India should follow The Philippines and recognise civil society actors as partners of the state rather than excluding a vast resource that could help realise policy goals.

Economic downturns in segmented labour markets, like the Gulf states, can result in a race to the bottom as migrants compete for fewer available jobs. If hostilities persist, India must work with other labour -sending countries to protect the common interest of all workers rather than pitting them against each other.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government projects itself as a vishwaguru, or world leader. But the true test of India’s global heft is its ability to protect Indian workers overseas. The bill, in its current form, is a long way from making that happen.

Usman Jawed is an independent migration researcher focusing on the Indo-Gulf migration corridor.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said that his government would “break the backbone” of “Miyas” in the state if the Bharatiya Janata Party returns to power in the Assembly elections, PTI reported.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Dhakuakhana of Lakhimpur district, Sarma said that his government had worked for the “indigenous people of the state”.

“And those who came from Bangladesh and encroached on Assam’s land and homes, we broke their hands and legs politically,” PTI quoted the chief minister as saying.

He added: “This time, we will break the very backbone of the Bangladeshi Miyas, so that they cannot dare the Assamese people.”

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

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

In the past months, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Miyas, including claiming that it was his job to “make them suffer” and saying that he had directed BJP workers to file applications seeking to strike the names of Miya Muslims off the electoral rolls.

On February 26, the Gauhati High Court sought a response from Himanta Biswa Sarma on petitions seeking action against him for alleged hate speech against Muslims.

Earlier in February, the Supreme Court had declined to entertain petitions seeking registration of a first information report against him on similar allegations.

During the poll campaign on Friday, Sarma also said that his government had cleared 1.5 lakh bighas of encroached land from Miyas in the past five years, PTI reported.

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

Assembly elections in Assam will be held on April 9 and the results will be declared on May 4.

Also read: In Assam, ‘forged’ forms aimed at deleting thousands of Muslim voters ring alarm bells

The Kerala High Court on Friday directed the Election Commission to decide within two months a plea filed against Bharatiya Janata Party’s B Gopalakrishnan for making allegedly communal remarks during his campaign for the upcoming Assembly elections, Live Law reported.

Assembly elections in the state will be held on April 9 and the results will be announced on May 4.

In a now-deleted video, Gopalakrishnan, the BJP’s candidate from Guruvayur, could be heard purportedly asking why the constituency, which is an “international pilgrimage centre” does not have a Hindu MLA, reported The News Minute.

“I have been called on by Guruvayurappan to rescue the land from this half-century-long imprisonment in the hands of temple looters and temple-opposers,” the news outlet quoted him as saying in the video.

Guruvayur houses a prominent temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Krishna.

On March 22, the Guruvayur Temple Police registered a case against Gopalakrishnan under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to provocation with intent to cause a riot, The Hindu reported. He was also booked under the Representation of the People Act section 125 for promoting enmity between groups during an election.

On Friday, Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas questioned the Election Commission about the impact of such remarks and directed it to act on the complaint “at any rate within two months”.

“Video has been removed, but what about the harm caused to the community, to the society and to the country,” Bar and Bench quoted Thomas as asking.

The court was hearing a plea filed by Gokul, a Kerala Students Union leader, who alleged that no action had been taken on his complaint regarding Gopalakrishnan’s communal remarks.

The Kerala Students Union is the Congress’s student wing in the state.

Gokul also argued that despite the FIR, the returning officer accepted Gopalakrishnan’s nomination papers instead of disqualifying him.

The High Court disposed of the plea after directing the petitioner to first approach the Election Commission, noting that the matter is pending before the chief election officer, Bar and Bench reported.

“Considering that the election process has already commenced, it is not appropriate for this Court to make any observations which may have a bearing on the proposed election,” the judge added.

The Union government on Thursday cut the special additional excise duty on petrol ⁠to Rs 3 per litre from Rs 13 per litre, and on diesel to zero from Rs 10.

Fuel marketing companies in the country have been under strain as retail petrol and diesel prices remain frozen despite a nearly 50% surge in international oil prices since the conflict began in West Asia on February 28. The reduction in the special additional excise duty is expected to help them keep petrol and diesel prices stable.

Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said that the government “has taken a huge hit on its taxation revenues” to make sure that the losses of oil companies are reduced.

“At the same time, export tax has been levied as international prices of petrol and diesel have skyrocketed and any refinery exporting to foreign nations will have to pay export tax,” Puri said.

International crude prices have gone through the roof in the last 1 month from around 70 dollars/barrel to around 122 dollars/barrel. Consequently, petrol and diesel prices for consumers have gone up all over the world. Prices have increased by around 30%-50% in South East Asian…

— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) March 27, 2026

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that duties on exporting diesel have been set at Rs 21.5 per litre, while levies on exports of aviation turbine fuel have been set at Rs 29.5 per litre. Sitharaman said the decision will ensure adequate availability of these products for domestic consumption.

However, Congress leader Pawan Khera said that the announcement on the reduction of levies on petrol and diesel should not be interpreted as relief to common citizens, and noted that prices for dealers and consumers currently remain the same.

“Relief exists but only in the narrative – not in reality,” Khera said. “Instead of manufacturing headlines and fooling people, the government should focus on delivering actual relief to consumers.”

If you saw the headlines about petrol and diesel prices ‘coming down’ and thought the government had offered relief to your pocket – you’d be mistaken.

As of now, prices remain the same for dealers and for consumers.

What has actually been reduced is the ‘special additional… https://t.co/iZ95MEjOC5

— Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 (@Pawankhera) March 27, 2026

Amid the conflict, Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Following a marginal drop in global oil prices on Wednesday amid the conflict, the benchmark Brent crude was again trading above the $100 per barrel-mark on Thursday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.

On Friday, Brent crude was trading at $107 per barrel.

Rating agency Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India Limited had earlier said that if the average crude oil price goes up to $100-105 per barrel, fuel retailers would incur a loss of Rs 11 per litre on petrol and Rs 14 per litre on diesel, PTI reported.

Centre says India has oil for 60 days, LPG for a month

The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Thursday also said that crude oil supplies have been secured for the next 60 days, and supplies of liquefied petroleum gas for about a month have also been arranged.

“Nearly two months of steady supply is available for every Indian citizen regardless of what happens globally,” it said. “Next two months of crude procurement has also been secured.”

The ministry also maintained that there is no shortage of LPG in the country. It said that domestic refinery production has been increased by 40% due to which the net daily import requirement has reduced to 30,000 metric tonnes.

This means that the country “is now producing much more than it needs to import,” the Centre said.

The Union government has cut the special additional excise duty on petrol ⁠to Rs 3 per litre from Rs 13 per litre, and on diesel to zero from Rs 10. This is expected to help oil marketing companies keep petrol and diesel prices stable.

Fuel marketing companies in the country have been under strain as retail petrol and diesel prices remain frozen despite a nearly 50% surge in international oil prices since the conflict began in West Asia on February 28.

While excise rates on petrol and diesel have been cut, the Centre has also decided to levy duties of Rs 21.5 per litre on exports of diesel and Rs 29.5 per litre on exports of aviation turbine fuel. This is aimed at ensuring the availability of these products for domestic consumption, Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. Read on.

Interview: How the war in West Asia could change India’s energy calculus

The Union government increased the commercial allocation of liquefied petroleum gas to 70% of pre-West Asia conflict levels, up from 50%. This additional supply of non-domestic LPG is intended to support industries such as steel, automobiles and textiles, Petroleum Secretary Neeraj Mittal told all states and Union Territories.

“Among these, priority shall be given to process industries or those requiring LPG for specialised heating purposes that cannot be substituted by Natural Gas,” added Mittal.

Meanwhile, Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri dismissed rumours of a lockdown in India due to the ongoing conflict. Read on.

Why the LPG crisis is reviving pandemic fears among migrant workers, reports Anant Gupta

Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah was sworn in as Nepal’s prime minister. He is the youngest person to hold the post in decades.

Shah, better known as Balen, was sworn in a day after he released his first public statement since winning the elections, via a rap song called Jay Mahakaali.

The former Kathmandu mayor became prime minister after his Rastriya Swatantra Party won 182 out of 275 seats in the March 5 election. Read on.

After Nepal’s Gen Z uprising, the country’s communists face a crisis of relevance, writes Shreya Paudel

The Indian rupee fell to a record low of 94.82 against the United States dollar amid the conflict in West Asia. The rupee had opened at 94.18 in the interbank foreign exchange market and slumped 86 paise as foreign fund outflows continued and domestic equity markets weakened.

The benchmark Sensex fell 2.25% while the Nifty declined 2.09% on Friday. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading at $109.8 per barrel, up 0.53% in futures trade. Read on.

A group of opposition MPs has urged the Union government to direct the Central Board of Film Certification to examine the film The Voice of Hind Rajab “strictly in accordance with constitutional principles governing freedom of expression”. They called for the film to be granted certification.

The letter, dated March 24, came after media reports said that the film’s release had been blocked owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel.

The Oscar-nominated film depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead. Read on.

Why the voice of Hind Rajab needs to be heard, explains Nandini Ramnath

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

The passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday has been accompanied by a familiar, almost predictable. justification: protection.

The bill will offer protection for “genuine” beneficiaries of state welfare programmes for transgender persons, supporters say, and protection against these schemes being misused by those falsely claiming transgender identity.

Articulating this logic, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Medha Kulkarni said in the Rajya Sabha that the amendments would ensure that benefits reach the deserving people in a proper manner. “She said there is a need for a law that brings justice to real transgender individuals and punishes fake ones,” All India Radio reported.

To ensure that benefits reach the “right people”, supporters say, the bill removes the right to self-perceived gender identity. It makes verification by medical and bureaucratic boards mandatory for obtaining a transgender certificate.

The spectre of “fraudulent claimants” is being used to legitimise additional layers of procedural control.

But it isn’t clear whom the government believes it is preventing misuse by.

For a community that faces exclusion from housing, employment, healthcare, and even the most elementary forms of social recognition, the suggestion that transgender identity has suddenly emerged as a lucrative site of opportunistic fraud is bizarre.

Are there really self-serving individuals who might decide to declare themselves transgender and voluntarily assume stigma and social ostracism to access often inconsistently provided welfare provisions?

Parliament passes Transgender Persons (Amendment) Bill, 2026. The law redefines “transgender” to exclude self-perceived identities and tightens certification via medical boards, while introducing stricter penalties for forced identity and exploitation. pic.twitter.com/cMMvySraVJ

— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) March 25, 2026

The claim of misuse recasts transgender persons as objects of suspicion instead of citizens with rights. The burden is no longer on the state to ensure inclusion, but on individuals to prove authenticity.

Identity, recognised by the Supreme Court in NALSA v Union of India in 2014 as intrinsic to personal autonomy, is now reduced to a claim to be verified, examined, and, if necessary, denied.

By removing self-identification and introducing mandatory medical and bureaucratic certification, the law effectively narrows the category of who counts as a transgender person. It excludes trans men, trans women, and non-binary persons in favour of a limited list of identities tied to socio-cultural and medical categories.

A law ostensibly designed to prevent fraud has ended up institutionalising an insidious form of misrepresentation by limiting lived identities.

The strategic invocation of misuse and protection deftly avoids the uncomfortable conversation about structural neglect of the trans community. It shifts attention away from inadequate welfare delivery and transforms a question of rights into a question of eligibility.

This isn’t an amendment—it’s erasure

The transgender rights amendment bill strips away the right to self-identify and pushes trans, non-binary, and intersex people back by decades, @mridulasee writes of the panic & fear

Subscribe to read our edit notes https://t.co/2XjoqhV8Hg pic.twitter.com/piUjNuLD6R

— Article 14 (@Article14live) March 21, 2026

The disappointment is not merely with the content of the bill, but with the impoverished imagination it reveals. In 2026, after decades of activism, jurisprudence, and scholarship, transgender identity continues to be approached through the lenses of suspicion and control.

The bill makes restrictive categories appear reasonable. It says that protection requires verification and that recognition must be earned through compliance.

However, what is truly in need of protection is the integrity of welfare delivery.

Swarupa Deb is a senior fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru.

A sessions court has directed the Thane Central Jail authorities to admit dismissed Railway Police constable Chetan Singh, accused of shooting dead three Muslim passengers and his senior officer on a moving train in 2023, to the Regional Mental Hospital in Thane for evaluation and treatment, the Hindustan Times reported on Friday.

In an order delivered on Wednesday, the court directed that the hospital submit fortnightly reports on his condition, including an opinion on whether he is fit to stand trial and capable of conducting his defence.

The direction came during hearings on his second bail application.

On March 2, Singh’s lawyer, Pankaj Ghildiyal, argued that he should be granted bail because of his allegedly unstable mental condition.

The court had asked jail authorities on March 10 to submit a report on Singh’s behaviour in prison by March 25. However, no such report was filed.

Singh, who is in Thane Central Jail, had spent four months at the Regional Mental Hospital in Thane last year after authorities at Akola Central Jail raised concerns about his behaviour. He was let out in June, with the discharge papers describing him as “cooperative, communicative, oriented to time, place and person’’, the newspaper reported.

In December as well, Singh was examined at the Thane prison hospital on the court’s directions, soon after his second bail application was filed. The report described his condition as “stable”, with all his physical parameters normal, The Hindustan Times reported.

Singh’s first bail application, filed soon after his arrest in 2023, had also cited mental instability as grounds for bail. The court, however, rejected it in December 2023, noting that eyewitness accounts and his statements at the time of the incident indicated that he was in a “well-settled position and mind to commit the murder of the persons of the particular community”.

The case

On July 31, 2023, Singh killed Assistant Sub Inspector Tikaram Meena and three Muslim passengers – Abdul Kaderbhai Bhanpurwala, Sadar Mohammed Hussain and Asghar Abbas Sheikh – on the Jaipur-Mumbai Central Superfast Express.

Witnesses in the case had said that Singh walked through four coaches of the train to select his victims and asked them for their names before killing them.

After one of the Muslim victim’s body fell to the floor, Singh had asked the rest of the passengers in the coach to record a video as he made a speech in which he hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath and, presumably, either Uddhav Thackeray or Raj Thackeray.

“If you want to vote, if you want to live in India, then I say Modi and Yogi, these are the two and your Thackeray,” he declared.

Singh was arrested and subsequently booked under the Indian Penal Code for murder as well as under the Arms Act. A week later, the police added charges of kidnapping and promoting enmity on grounds of religion against him.

Opposition MPs have urged the Union government to direct the Central Board of Film Certification to examine the film The Voice of Hind Rajab “strictly in accordance with constitutional principles governing freedom of expression” and grant it certification.

The letter, dated March 24, came after media reports said that the film’s release had been blocked.

On March 19, Variety quoted the film’s local distributor as saying that the Central Board of Film Certification has blocked the theatrical release of the film in the country owing to fears that it will “break up” ties between India and Israel.

The Oscar-nominated film, directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, depicts the real story of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was trapped inside a car attacked by Israeli forces in Gaza and later found dead.

The incident, which took place in 2024, occurred while Israel was carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave. The strikes, which began in October 2023, have left more than 70,000 persons dead.

In a letter to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the MPs said that reports that the film board has “orally declined” certification to The Voice of Hind Rajab raise “serious concerns” about whether factors beyond the statutory framework for film certification had influenced the decision-making process.

They said that any decision on film certification and screening should not depend upon “perceived diplomatic relationships”.

Artistic expression cannot be curtailed through opaque or informal censorship.

Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum, including myself, have jointly written to the I&B Minister urging that the internationally acclaimed film “The Voice of Hind Rajab” be… pic.twitter.com/Uj4cnXNL9j

— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) March 27, 2026

“It is a foundational principle of our constitutional democracy that artistic expression cannot be curtailed through informal or opaque mechanisms,” they added.

The MPs said that any “departure from this due process, including oral instructions or informal advisories that effectively result in denial of certification, undermines institutional credibility and erodes public confidence in regulatory bodies entrusted with protecting creative freedom”.

“India’s democratic strength lies in its confidence to permit diverse narratives to be examined and debated in the public sphere,” they said.

The letter read: “Reliance on considerations beyond the statutory parameters…including perceived geopolitical sensitivities would create an undesirable precedent inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.”

It was signed by Jairam Ramesh of the Congress, John Brittas of the Trinamool Congress, Ram Gopal Yadav and Javed Ali Khan of the Samajwadi Party, Manoj Kumar Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Salma of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Sarfaraz Ahmad of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Haris Beeran of the Indian Union Muslim League.

Also Read: ‘Please don’t leave me,’ Hind Rajab pleaded. Why her voice needs to be heard

The Union government on Friday increased the commercial allocation of liquefied petroleum gas to 70% of pre-West Asia conflict levels, up from 50%.

This additional supply of non-domestic LPG is intended to support industries such as steel, automobiles and textiles, which are “labour-intensive and provide support to other essential sectors”, Petroleum Secretary Neeraj Mittal wrote in a letter to chief secretaries of all states and Union Territories.

“Among these, priority shall be given to process industries or those requiring LPG for specialised heating purposes that cannot be substituted by Natural Gas,” the letter added.

Announcing the decision on social media, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri said that while many countries have adopted strict fuel conservation measures, India continues to “remain an oasis of energy security, availability and affordability”.

On Saturday, the government had allowed an additional 20% allocation of commercial liquefied petroleum gas to states and Union Territories, taking the overall allocation to 50%.

Of the total amount, 10% was to be allocated, subject to states undertaking measures to facilitate the expansion of the piped natural gas network.

Energy supplies to India have been disrupted since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Since the hostilities began, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – through which about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption passes – for most commercial ships.

India imports 88% of its crude oil needs and about half of its natural gas requirement. This mostly comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Due to the disruption, the Centre had initially curtailed the supply of LPG to commercial establishments and had prioritised domestic supplies.

The conflict in West Asia began after Israel and the United States launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government. Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

While Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

‘Lockdown rumours completely false’

In a separate social media post, Puri dismissed rumours of a lockdown in India due to the ongoing crisis in West Asia, calling them “completely false”.

“Let me state this clearly, there is no such proposal under consideration by the Government of India,” he said while warning those spreading rumours and creating panic.

“The global situation remains in flux, and we are closely monitoring developments across energy, supply chains, and essential commodities on a real-time basis,” the minister said. “India has consistently demonstrated resilience in the face of global uncertainties, and we will continue to act in a timely, proactive, and coordinated manner.”

He added that the government was taking all necessary steps “to ensure uninterrupted availability of fuel, energy and other critical supplies for our citizens”.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had said that crude oil supplies have been secured for the next 60 days and supplies of LPG for about a month have also been arranged.

The ministry also maintained that there is no shortage of LPG in the country. It said that domestic refinery production has increased by 40%, due to which the net daily import requirement has reduced to 30,000 metric tonnes.

Former Calcutta High Court judge Sahidullah Munshi on Thursday said that his name has been deleted from the voter list after the adjudication process during the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal, The Indian Express reported.

Munshi, who is currently serving as the chairperson of the West Bengal Board of Auqaf, told the newspaper that the names of his wife and elder son are still under adjudication, while his younger son has applied as a new voter.

“Till now, only my name has been deleted,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “It is very humiliating and painful…a lot of harassment. The unfortunate part is that they took the documents and said they would upload them, but no receipt was given.”

Munshi is waiting to appeal before an appellate tribunal.

The former judge on Thursday expressed surprise at his name being struck off, saying that he had submitted all required documents, The Indian Express reported.

“I do not know how they have adjudicated and how they have deleted,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. We were kept in the dark. Had we been informed that more documents were required, we could have submitted them. There was a list of documents, and any one should have been sufficient.”

Munshi, however, told the Hindustan Times that he does not blame anyone for his name being deleted.

“I think that, as everything was done in such a hurry, they may not have looked into the documents thoroughly,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I submitted my passport so that it can’t be disputed.”

The former judge added that he is waiting for the official reason for his name being struck off before filing an appeal.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

On Monday, a batch of names approved by the judicial officers was added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated.

However, the poll panel has not specified how many voters have been added to or dropped off the list.

Technical glitches

Earlier on Wednesday, the Trinamool Congress had alleged that the Election Commission website incorrectly showed that all voters in West Bengal were under adjudication in the claims process of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The ruling party in the state claimed that this has caused panic among the voters.

The Economic Times had also reported that when the supplementary list was made available online on Monday, there were technical glitches, server problems, downloads were slow and the PDF files could not be downloaded.

The Election Commission later said that the problem had been rectified.

Also read: Millions of Bengalis may lose their vote. Not over citizenship but due to clerical errors

The Madras High Court on Thursday temporarily halted proceedings in a case against former Tamil Nadu Minister K Ponmudy for his allegedly defamatory remarks about women and two denominations of Hinduism, Live Law reported.

Justice AD Jagadish Chandira passed the interim direction on Ponmudy’s plea seeking a halt on the proceedings till his pending plea to quash a magistrate court’s cognisance of the complaint against him, is dealt with.

The High Court also allowed Ponmudy’s plea to exempt him from further appearance before the magistrate, Live Law reported.

The proceedings against Ponmudy stem from his comments at an event in Chennai on April 6.

A widely shared video shows the former minister purportedly linking sexual positions to Hindu denominations Shaivism and Vaishnavism. The comments were made in the context of a joke involving a sex worker and her client.

Taking note of the matter on April 17, 2025 the High Court directed the Tamil Nadu police to register a first information report against Ponmudy. When no case was registered, the court initiated suo motu proceedings against the former minister, holding that his comments amounted to “hate speech”, Live Law reported.

On September 16, the court closed the proceedings after the Tamil Nadu government informed that all the complaints had been duly investigated and closed since there was no incriminating material, Live Law reported.

However the court allowed complainants to approach the concerned jurisdictional magistrates against the closure of complaints.

Following this, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Uma Anandan approached the Metropolitan Magistrate in Chennai holding that Ponmudy must be tried against sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between different groups, deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class and disturbing religious assembly.

Despite Ponmudy’s counsel questioning the maintainability of the complaint, the magistrate took cognisance of the matter, holding that there was a prima facie case made out against the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader.

Ponmudy then approached the High Court against this action.

After outrage against his remarks, Ponmudy was sacked as deputy general secretary of the DMK by Chief Minister MK Stalin on April 11.

On April 27, he resigned as the state’s forest minister after facing criticism from the Madras High Court and within the DMK.

The Election Commission on Thursday said that over Rs 408.8 crore worth of illicit inducements have been seized over the past month ahead of Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry.

The seized illicit inducements included Rs 17.4 crore in cash, liquor worth Rs 37.6 crore, drugs worth Rs 167.3 crore, precious metals worth Rs 23 crore and other freebies worth over Rs 163.3 crore, the poll panel said.

The poll panel also said that it held a meeting on March 24 with the heads of enforcement agencies, along with the chief secretaries, chief electoral officers, directors general of police and other officials from the five poll-bound states and Union Territories, as well as their 12 bordering states and Union Territories, to review readiness and enhance coordination.

The officials were directed to ensure “violence-free, intimidation-free and inducement-free elections”, the Election Commission said in a press note.

The Election Commission further said that 70,944 complaints had been lodged between March 15 and March 25 using the C-Vigil app in the poll-bound states and Union Territories. Of these, 70,831 had been disposed of and 67,899 complaints, or 95.8%, were resolved within 100 minutes.

The app allows users to send geo-tagged videos and images of any violations seen during elections.

Assembly elections will be held in Assam, Kerala and Puducherry on April 9, and and in Tamil Nadu on April 23. West Bengal will vote in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results in all states will be announced on May 4.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party got 10 times more donations than the combined amount received by all other national parties in the financial year 2024-’25, the non-governmental organisation Association of Democratic Reforms said in a report on Thursday.

The BJP received more than Rs 6,074 crore from 5,522 donations, followed by the Congress, which received Rs 517.3 crores from 2,501 donations.

The Association of Democratic Reforms analysed all donations above Rs 20,000 received by national parties in the financial year 2024-’25.

In the report released on Thursday, the organisation said that there was a 161% surge in donations to national parties in 2024-’25 as compared to the previous year, rising by Rs 4,104.2 crore

The Aam Aadmi Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the National People’s Party together received more than Rs 6,648 crore from 11,343 contributions, said the report.

The Bahujan Samaj Party declared that, like the last 19 years, it had not received any donations above Rs 20,000.

The AAP said that it received Rs 38.1 crore, which marked a 244% hike from the last financial year. The CPI(M) received Rs 16.9 crore, which marked a 122% hike, and the National People’s Party got Rs 2 crore, 1,313% higher than the previous financial year.

While the BJP’s collections jumped by 171%, the Congress’ donations increased by 84%.

The highest donations came from corporates, accounting for Rs 6,128.7 crore, or 92.18% of the total contributions. On the other hand, individuals contributed Rs 505.6 crore, making up 7.61% of the total.

The Prudent Electoral Trust was the top donor, sending a total of Rs 2,413.4 crore to the BJP, the Congress and AAP combined.

The trust donated Rs 2180.7 crore to the BJP, or 35.9% of the total funds received by the party. The Congress got Rs 216.3 crore, or 41.8% of the total, from the trust, while AAP received Rs 16.4 crore, or 43.08% of the total.

This is the second part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read the first part here.

English has done remarkable damage to India’s linguistic progress by stifling other Indian languages. Instead, that blame is conveniently laid on Hindi. Blaming English forces one to confront a hard truth that India’s systems are designed to keep most Indians outside the gate. It is easier to blame Hindi, performing critique, while staying inside the inherited structure.

It is time to break this structure down.

India is a “linguistic surplus” nation. However, the main problem with Indians is that they are somewhat ignorant about what to do with this linguistic surplus, ability and strength. Indians are inherently multilingual, but live in a monolingually institutionalised world.

When I say monolingual world, I don’t mean that there is only one functioning language on earth. Don’t count the number of languages but look at how they operate in the post-industrial world and in the binary of the nation-state. Monolingualism is the favoured approach of colonial and post-colonial institutions. It is how institutions scale, status is produced and knowledge is certified in contemporary times.

India is a peculiar case because, in some exclusive quarters, it practices acute monolingualism, but at other socio-cultural levels it tries to retain its old multilingual character. The higher one climbs, the more the system demands that one abandons their linguistic plurality and kneel before one code. That code is English.

For instance, school education is multilingual, but as one progresses towards higher education, it starts becoming more and more monolingual – and that is by design.

When many Indians transition from cultural multilingualism towards institutional monolingualism, language attrition in Indian languages starts happening. Language attrition is the gradual loss of a language or parts of a language when someone stops using it regularly, or the degree of its usage changes.

But the real question is what kind of bilingualism is being demanded of Indians and what kind of linguistic recovery is possible post-language attrition in India?

Here is the hard science that people treat like poetry.

Cognate languages, which are descended from the same ancestral language, function differently. Hindi and “regional” languages, which are considered victims of Hindi, share genetic nativeness: they have the relatively same structures and syntax and share large sets of vocabulary.

The kind of bilingualism in Indian languages is fundamentally different from bilingualism with English. You can switch between cognate tongues with less cognitive effort and regain linguistic strength faster post-language attrition. English shares no such apparent properties with any Indian language.

Hindi is India’s linguistic modernity and political and civic ingenuity. Not because it is perfect on any linguistic parameters, rather, it is the first large-scale attempt at a shared public language that has neither historical priesthood and traditional (or cultural) exquisiteness, nor colonial power like English. That is why the rise of Hindi provokes scathing reactions from other Indians, such as anti-Hindi movements seen in some states. People are witnessing a language, ie, Hindi, claiming linguistic autonomy and strength in front of their eyes and this generates resistance.

The way many academics look at Hindi has made us believe that the real villain is Hindi and its rise. However, English remains the language of elite certification. It is still the language of the Supreme Court, the top bureaucracy, the “serious” university and the “world”.

Everyone more or less accepts the might and legitimacy of English. That itself should make one suspicious. When a gatekeeping tool is accepted as natural, it means people have internalised their place in the hierarchy.

Some will say Hindi has prestige too and it weakens mother tongues. To some extent that is true. Middle-classes shift their linguistic preferences, even for Indian languages. In Bhojpur, people shift to Hindi. But look carefully at the direction of aspiration. The Indian middle-class shifts to Hindi from their mother tongue only to go further to English. Hindi is a ladder. Because they don’t or can’t jump to English directly from Bhojpuri, they shift to Hindi. Hindi gives them the same linguistic feeling for a while, but the ultimate destination is English.

When one sees a Bhojpuri speaker becoming a Hindi speaker, don’t stop the story there and declare Hindi the murderer. Instead, see what higher education, the courts, corporate hiring and social prestige demand. The machine pulls one upward into English. Hindi is the corridor, English is the gate.

That is why a certain kind of anti-Hindi argument often feels incomplete. It critiques the corridor while keeping the gate untouched. Further, Hindi is probably the only language that has, post-independence, real democratic roots – in the sense that it grew as a mass public language in the modern political churn. It belongs to rallies, pamphlets, cinema, street speech, and everyday exchange across sub-regions. That doesn’t mean it is automatically innocent but that it carries a different social energy.

So what do we do with English? We start calling it what it is: a bottleneck. A colonial design and inheritance that still organises who gets to think and who gets to speak in India. Further, to strengthen the sister languages, don’t just fight Hindi. Build a structure where multilingualism is not punished as you climb. “Vernacularise” higher education without making it a tribal trophy. Make the apex institutions linguistically accountable.

Otherwise, Hindi can be replaced with a dozen regional prides and the gate will still be English. That gate will still turn linguistic surplus into linguistic shame or burden.

Finally, the real question is whether India can build a multilingual modernity or keep feeding a monolingual machine and blaming the corridor for what the gate does.

Krishna Kumar Pandey is an assistant professor of Linguistics at the Central Institute of Hindi, Agra. He has been a Fulbright scholar at the University of Michigan.

This is the second part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read the first part here.

The noise around English and its role in India’s cultural disintegration has not subsided after 78 years of independence. Whenever someone discusses language extinction, English is invariably the villain of the story.

This characterisation of English is incongruent with lived reality. But the language serves the purpose of a common enemy.

The harrowing, brutal way in which it came to Indians and its role in the construction of the postcolonial Indian elite makes English a sore spot. It is also the language of a great many institutions with a pronounced British heritage. Understandably, the popular narrative renders English as the prime culprit driving the shrinking footprint of India’s native languages.

But if one looks closely at how local languages actually recede in everyday life, the story appears far more intricate. English is certainly the mighty queen in a globalised world-order, but Hindi is the local feudal lord that subdues a plethora of mother tongues.

Standardised Hindi, as it is taught in school and in which students are expected to speak and write, is the language that is learnt to sound respectable, educated and urban. In India’s hierarchical society, language dictates one’s place in the pecking order. Languages also arrange themselves on a ladder, depending on the status of their users.

Hindi is at the top in most parts of North India where users of other languages find themselves in a state of constant shame. To command respect, at least in the North, one may or may speak English but must speak polished Hindi. With Hindi, one can argue in most courts, read official documents and participate in higher education.

But one cannot be “just Bhojpuri” and claim the same benefits and status. A Bhojpuri speaker appears as much a dehati, or a country hick, to a Hindi speaker as they are to an anglophone elite. So, what does the Bhojpuri speaker do?

In the North, the desire for the provincials is to be recognised by Hindi counterparts as their equal. English remains the domain of a small and now exceedingly powerless elite. One needs English at the airport or at a fine-dining restaurant. But Hindi is the language one uses to communicate with their landlord, friends, teachers, the security guard – that is, the everyday world.

Hindi is certainly a factor in the decline of a host of languages such as Bhojpuri, Maithili, Braj and Awadhi. Hindi may be syntactically similar to these languages, but similarity does not ensure survival. The unnoticed shift away from these languages – at home, in the market, in school corridors – does not announce itself as the death of a language but assumes the face of “better manners”, “appropriate speech” and “dignity”.

Linguistic aspirations

Growing up in a migrant Kumaoni community in Agra, none of us learnt to speak in Kumaoni – and it is not because we were immersed in learning English or French. Our parents’ desire for us to speak in Hindi led to a distancing from our roots. We also saw our fellow Braj speakers in poor light. English was desirable but far too distant and perhaps even unattainable. It was only heard on a few channels on cable television.

Parents everywhere are aspirational, yes. But all linguistic aspirations in India do not culminate in English. There are local and immediate absorbers of desires.

Often the arguments made by the proponents of Hindi appeal to abstract notions of honour and nationalism, but their desire for supremacy stems, ultimately, from an envy of the anglophone elite who are seen as deracinated, their allegiance to India questionable and their access to power and status illegitimate.

It is said India should follow Japan or Germany in instituting one language that unites the country, making it a stable entity. But the comparison is inappropriate. Many countries in the world are strictly monoethnic and monolingual. Only other countries in South Asia can be compared with India, with caveats.

Recent history shows that language battles have caused civil wars in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India’s closest neighbours. Urdu has failed to unite Pakistan’s varied ethnic and linguistic groups while in Sri Lanka, Sinhala nationalism often discriminates against Tamil-speakers.

A neutral language

India needs a language for administration and interstate and interregional communication that is equidistant from all native languages and which a vast majority of Indians are open to learning. Here, India can learn from Singapore, which found English a neutral language, in a multilingual country, that facilitates social cohesion.

This is not to say that English can perform the function of cultural transmission. For that, training in other Indian languages is an important feature of academic studies, but at least the Centre will not be seen promoting one regional language to the neglect and detriment of others.

If one leaves aside a tiny segment of Hindi political elites who eagerly await the triumph of Hindi for their vested interests, most Indians would prefer a two or three-language model in which English holds importance for managing domestic and global affairs.

It is said that Hindi is inclusionary while English excludes the vast majority. But, leaving aside non-Hindi speakers, even most Hindi speakers – here, speakers of “dialects” – find it difficult to make sense of official documents replete with Sanskritised phraseology. The idea that Hindi will be inclusionary is yet to be studied with rigour.

The statements made by powerful ministers in favour of Hindi and the government’s sly way of imposing the language do not do much except upsetting non-Hindi speakers. We need less government in the business of language.

A language becomes popular or obsolete despite politics in a market economy. Hindi has gained more popularity and speakers post liberalisation. This development should not be disturbed by announcing Hindi’s takeover. The battle for language is ultimately a battle for power, but it could snowball into major strife and destabilise all that we hold close to our hearts.

Suraj Gunwant is Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ewing Christian College, University of Allahabad.

This is the first part of a debate on whether Hindi or English are weakening other Indian languages and constricting linguistic diversity. Read part two here.

The Kerala police registered a case against X and a user on the social media platform for sharing an artificial intelligence-generated video about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission. The police alleged that the video depicts Modi and the poll body in a “misleading and defamatory manner”.

It said that the allegedly defamatory content was brought to its notice through official channels, including the Election Commission. The Kerala Police is currently reporting to the Election Commission since the Model Code of Conduct is in force in the state ahead of the Assembly elections. Read on.

With Islamabad mediating peace talks between the United States and Iran, the Congress said that the “colossal failure” in India’s diplomacy, outreach and narrative management has made a “broken country” like Pakistan a “broker country”. The statement came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that India does not view itself as a “dalaal”, or broker, like Pakistan.

Jaishankar made the comments at an all-party meeting convened by the government on the West Asia conflict. Responding to Jaishankar’s comments, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that for Pakistan to “even be…considered for a mediating role is a most damning indictment of both the substance and style of…Modi’s diplomacy”. Read on.

A Supreme Court-appointed advisory committee has written to Union Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, asking that the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill be withdrawn. The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

It will now be forwarded to the President Droupadi Murmu for her assent.

Transgender, intersex and gender-diverse organisations have been protesting against the bill, stating that the changes remove the protections guaranteed under the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act. The proposed amendments focus on redefining who qualifies as a transgender person. Read on.

Iran has allowed “friendly countries”, including India, to pass the Strait of Hormuz amid the conflict in West Asia, the country’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said. He added that vessels linked to Iran’s adversaries will not be allowed transit.

The other countries whose vessels were being allowed to pass through the maritime chokepoint are China, Russia, Iraq and Pakistan, Araghchi added. Read on.

US President Donald Trump said that Iranian negotiators “are very different and ‘strange’”. Tehran was “begging” Washington to make a deal, Trump claimed on social media. “...They should be doing [that] since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal’”, he said.

Reports a day earlier had said that Iran had dismissed the 15-point ceasefire plan proposed by the US and instead countered it with a proposal of its own.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has claimed that the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy Alireza Tangsiri was killed in a strike. Iran has not yet commented on the claim. Read on.

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A Supreme Court-appointed advisory committee on Wednesday wrote to Union Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar, requesting that the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill be withdrawn, The Indian Express reported.

The chairperson of the committee, former Delhi High Court judge Justice Asha Menon, confirmed this to the newspaper.

The bill was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday and in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. It will now be forwarded to the President Droupadi Murmu for her assent.

Transgender, intersex and gender-diverse organisations have been protesting against the bill, stating that the proposed changes remove the protections guaranteed under the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act.

The proposed amendments centre on redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

The bill removes transgender persons’ right to a self-perceived gender identity and limits the law’s scope to those with certain biological or physiological characteristics, intersex variations, or specific socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.

If it receives the presidential assent, transgender men, transgender women and genderqueer persons, who were recognised under the 2019 law, will be excluded from the definition of “transgender person”.

The bill was cleared in Parliament amid protests by the Opposition MPs who argued that it violates constitutional rights.

The advisory committee was constituted by the Supreme Court in October 2025 while hearing a matter involving a transgender woman who was terminated from employment as a teacher by private schools in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat because of her gender identity, The Indian Express reported.

The court had noted the inaction by the administration in implementing the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act and formed the expert panel to identify statutory gaps, draft a comprehensive equal opportunity policy and recommend measures for the “reasonable accommodation” of transgender persons so that they can participate equally in society, the newspaper reported.

Also read: It took me decades to find myself. The trans bill erases me in one sweep

With Islamabad mediating peace talks between the United States and Iran, the Congress on Thursday said that the “colossal failure” in India’s diplomacy, outreach and narrative management have made a “broken country” like Pakistan a “broker country”.

The statement came a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was quoted as saying that India does not view itself as a “dalaal”, or broker, like Pakistan. Jaishankar made the comments at an all-party meeting convened by the government on the West Asia conflict.

During the meeting, the Union government said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made it clear to US President Donald Trump that India “wants to see the war coming to an end” and that it is “affecting everyone”, the Deccan Herald reported.

Responding to Jaishankar’s comments, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on social media that the external affairs minister is “doing his best to cover up India’s extreme embarrassment and the setback to its regional diplomacy”.

For Pakistan to “even be…considered for a mediating role is a most damning indictment of both the substance and style of…Modi’s diplomacy”, said the MP.

“Even after the communally incendiary and poisonous statements of the Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir provided the oxygen for the terror attacks in Pahalgam…we have been unable to isolate Pakistan on the international stage,” Ramesh further said.

He added: “It has only emerged as a more relevant actor and after May 10, 2025, itself it has become clear that…Munir had become a favourite of President Trump and his team.”

Ramesh was referring to Trump hosting Munir at the White House amid heightened tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad.

The tensions between India and Pakistan escalated on May 7 when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

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

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

‘Domestic LPG production increased’

The Union government also said at the all-party meeting on Wednesday that the domestic production of liquified petroleum gas has increased to 60%, which is up from 28% when the war started, the Deccan Herald reported.

Jaishankar said that till now, four India-bound ships had passed through the Strait of Hormuz and more are on the way.

Energy supplies to India have faced disruptions since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has also affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries.

Also read: Qatar’s gas terminal could take years to repair and India will suffer the cost

The Supreme Court on Wednesday verbally expressed concerns about the government’s decision to grant environmental clearances to development projects after they had already begun, holding that it may allow harmful projects to continue until the state intervenes, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi was hearing a batch of writ petitions challenging its November decision to approve the policy. The judgement had reversed the court’s May ruling that disallowed such clearances.

During the hearing on Wednesday, the court verbally observed that if environmental sanctions were to be considered non-negotiable, it would hold the authorities duty-bound to stop projects that had not been cleared.

“If we say prior consent is not negotiable then anything done without prior consent, you are duty bound to stop,” Bagchi said.

Bagchi said that in contrast, the policy that allows for retrospective environmental clearances would allow projects to continue until the state identifies and closes them.

He highlighted that laws are made uniformly but “they are not applied uniformly” and questioned whether the intended “cleansing effect” would be achieved with uneven implementation.

However, he also highlighted that recalling retrospective approvals wholly would mean a “complete road block to anything without prior consent”.

The court will hear the matter further next week, Live Law reported.

In a 2:1 decision in November, the court recalled its May judgement that had declared post-facto approvals illegal. The majority of the bench said that the earlier judgement would have required the demolition of several buildings and public projects that had been approved through post-facto clearances over the years.

BR Gavai, the chief justice at the time, had said that several of the projects were worth more than Rs 20,000 crore and that destroying them now would cause more environmental harm than good.

The May judgement had restrained the Union government from granting post-facto clearances in any form to regularise illegal constructions.

The court had struck down a 2017 notification and a 2021 Office Memorandum that allowed the government to grant post-facto environmental clearances, calling these and related circulars and orders illegal and arbitrary.

However, the bench had clarified at the time that environmental clearances already granted under the 2017 notification and the 2021 Office Memorandum would remain valid.

During the hearing on Wednesday, one of the petitioner’s argued that mandating prior environmental clearance was not just a formality but a substantive safeguard, Live Law reported.

“The principle of ‘polluter pays’ must not be diluted into a regime of ‘pollute and pay’,” the petitioner’s lawyer contented. “That would be a dangerous path.”

On the other hand, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati defended the office memorandum arguing that it does not provide for post-facto environmental clearance or regularisation of past violations.

Instead, the purpose was to bring projects that are operating outside environmental assessment norms under the scrutiny of experts, Live Law quoted Bhati as saying.

The police in Kerala have registered a case against social media platform X and a user on the platform for sharing an artificial intelligence-generated video that allegedly depicts Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission in a “misleading and defamatory manner”, PTI reported.

The Kerala Police is currently operating under the Election Commission since the Model Code of Conduct is in force in the state ahead of the Assembly elections.

The police said that the allegedly defamatory content was brought to its notice through official channels, including the Election Commission, PTI reported.

“Upon verification, it was assessed that the material had the potential to mislead the public, undermine the credibility of constitutional bodies and adversely impact the conduct of free and fair elections,” the news agency quoted the police as saying.

It added that a case was registered against the X account “Laxmi N Raju (@valiant_Raju)” and others, which includes X Corp, at the Cyber Crime Police Station in Thiruvananthapuram, on Wednesday.

Bengal: EC acts against 7 CAPF personnel for attending iftar party

The Election Commission has removed seven Central Armed Police Forces personnel from election duty in West Bengal for allegedly attending an iftar gathering in Murshidabad district in violation of guidelines for deployment during polls, Hindustan Times quoted unidentified officials from the poll body as saying on Wednesday.

The alleged incident reportedly took place a week ago in the Samserganj constituency. Two of the personnel have been placed under the custody of the central forces, while the remaining five have been transferred out of the state, Hindustan Times quoted the officials as saying.

“Forces deployed on election duty are required to maintain strict operational neutrality,” the newspaper quoted a poll official as saying. “Any form of engagement, including accepting invitations or hospitality, creates both real and perceived bias, which is unacceptable in an active election environment.”

The Assembly elections in the state will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results will be announced on May 4.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has claimed that the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy Alireza Tangsiri was killed in a strike, The Times of Israel reported.

Katz was quoted as having described Tangsiri as “the person directly responsible for the terror operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz to maritime traffic”.

Iran has not yet commented on the claim.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that the Iranian negotiators “are very different and ‘strange’”. Tehran was “begging” Washington to make a deal, Trump claimed on social media. “...they should be doing [that] since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal’”, he said.
• “Wrong!” He added. “They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is no turning back, and it won’t be pretty!”
• Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Thursday that “indirect talks” are taking place between the United States and Iran, and that the messages were being relayed by Islamabad. “Brotherly countries of Turkiye and Egypt, among others, are also extending their support to this initiative,” Dar said on social media.
• Dar’s comment came amid speculation about the nature of Pakistan's role in the talks to end the conflict. He also confirmed that the US has shared a 15-point plan to end the fighting, which is “being deliberated upon” by Tehran.
• Reports said on Wednesday that Iran had dismissed the 15-point ceasefire plan proposed by the US and instead countered it with a proposal of its own.
• Iranian state TV quoted an unidentified official as saying Tehran had rejected the plan it had received via Pakistan, saying it would “end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met”, The Guardian reported.
• Later on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his government had not engaged in talks to end the war, “and we do not plan on any negotiations,” AP reported. The statement came even as US President Donald Trump claimed that Tehran desperately wanted to arrive at a deal, but was not willing to admit it.
• The 15-point plan proposed by Washington broadly focused on sanctions relief, civilian nuclear cooperation, rollback of Iran’s nuclear programme, monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, missile limits and access for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, AP quoted unidentified Pakistani officials as saying.
• On the other hand, the conditions laid out by Iran to end the war included guaranteed payment for war damage and reparations, end to aggression and assassinations, concrete guarantees preventing the reoccurrence of war against Tehran, end of the war on Iran and against all resistance groups across the region and international recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, The Indian Express reported.
• Jassim Mohammed Al-Budaiwi, the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, said that the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran is a “crossing of a red line” and will be catastrophic in the long run. “What is being done to the energy facilities in GCC countries...is a brutal aggression on world economy,” he said on Thursday. Iran is not a member of the GCC.
• Al-Budaiwi said at a press briefing in Riyadh on Thursday that the GCC members, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, want a diplomatic solution to the conflict. “Our aim is not to destroy Iran at all,” he said.
• Since the beginning of the conflict, Iran had effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels since the start of the conflict. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.
• Araghchi has said that Tehran will permit passage through the Strait of Hormuz for “friendly nations”, including India, China, Russia, Iraq and Pakistan, the Consulate General of Iran in Mumbai stated on Thursday.
• Following a marginal drop in global oil prices on Wednesday, the benchmark Brent crude was again trading above the $100 per barrel-mark on Thursday. The price was $78 per barrel on February 27, a day before the conflict started.
• Major Asian stock indices fell on Thursday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 1.8%, South Korea’s Kospi had fallen 3.2%, Japan’s Nikkei 0.2% and China’s Shanghai Composite 1%. The Indian stock market was closed on account of Ram Navami.
• Trump on Wednesday said that Iran wants to make a deal “so badly” but “they’re afraid to say it” for fear of being killed, CNN reported. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like we’re doing in the Middle East with Iran, and they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they’re afraid to say it because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people,” the channel quoted Trump as saying at an event. “They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us.”
• Amid the conflict, 1,043 Indians, including 717 students, have crossed out of Iran with the assistance of the mission in Tehran, India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday. At an inter-ministerial briefing, Aseem R Mahajan, who is additional secretary (gulf) in the external affairs ministry, also said the overall flight situation continues to improve, adding that around 4.2 lakh passengers have returned from the region to India since February 28, PTI reported.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a writ petition filed by Congress MP Jairam Ramesh against the government’s decision to grant environmental clearances to development projects after they had already begun, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi questioned how a writ petition could be filed, considering the court had already approved the policy in November after it reversed a May ruling that had disallowed such clearances.

In a 2:1 decision in November, the court recalled its May judgement that had declared such post-facto approvals illegal. The majority said that the earlier judgment would have required the demolition of many buildings and public projects that had been approved through ex post facto clearances over the years.

BR Gavai, the chief justice at the time, had said that several of these projects were worth more than Rs 20,000 crore and that destroying them now would cause more environmental harm than good.

On Thursday, the court questioned the purpose of the petition before it by saying it amounted to indirectly filing a review petition of its judgement, Live Law reported.

“If you are aggrieved by the judgement, then you know your remedy,” PTI quoted the bench as saying. “How can you seek a review of a judgement in a writ petition?”

“Have you filed this for media publicity,” the chief justice asked while warning that the court would impose high costs on such petitions.

Following this, Ramesh’s counsel chose to withdraw the writ petition with liberty to avail remedy in accordance with law, Live Law reported.

The May judgement had restrained the Union government from granting ex post facto clearances in any form to regularise illegal constructions.

The court had struck down a 2017 notification and a 2021 Office Memorandum that allowed the government to grant post-facto environmental clearances, calling these and related circulars and orders illegal and arbitrary.

However, the bench had clarified at the time that environmental clearances already granted under the 2017 notification and the 2021 Office Memorandum would continue to remain valid.

The Karnataka High Court on Thursday issued notice on an activist’s plea challenging a trial court’s decision to accept a report clearing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his family in an alleged land scam involving the Mysuru Urban Development Authority, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice S Sunil Dutt Yadav sought responses from Siddaramaiah, his wife BM Parvathi, brother-in-law Mallikarjun Swamy, former land owner J Devaraju, the Lokayukta Police and the Enforcement Directorate, Live Law reported.

The activist had approached the High Court challenging the special court’s January 28 decision and sought that the probe in the matter be transferred to an independent investigating agency, the legal news outlet reported.

The alleged scam pertains to the allotment of 14 high-value housing sites in Mysuru’s Vijaynagar area to Parvathi in 2021 by the Mysore Urban Development Authority under a state government scheme.

This was allegedly done in exchange for 3.1 acres of land that Parvathi owned in another part of the city. The land was alleged to have been illegally acquired from Dalit families.

The Karnataka governor had approved prosecution against Siddaramaiah in September 2024. A special court had subsequently directed the Lokayukta Police to file a first information report against Siddaramaiah, Parvathi, Swamy and Devaraj.

In February 2025, the Lokayukta police filed a closure report claiming that there was not enough evidence to establish corruption charges against Siddaramaiah, his family and the former land owner.

However, the report had been kept in abeyance to allow the Lokayukta Police to complete investigations into the larger allegations of corruption.

On January 28, a special court in Bengaluru accepted the closure report filed by the Lokayukta Police.

The court, however, clarified that the investigation against other persons accused in the case would continue, Bar and Bench reported.

The ruling has now been challenged by the activist before the High Court.

The activist contended that the special court did not consider the fact that “the allegations in the present case are not in the nature of a private dispute but involve abuse of constitutional office, and therefore required a deeper and independent scrutiny rather than mechanical reliance on the opinion of the investigating agency”, Bar and Bench reported.

He alleged that the trial court had selectively accepted the closure reports against some persons named in the matter, while directing the investigation to continue against others, the legal news portal reported.

This was a sign of “jurisdictional error and a fundamental inconsistency”, the petitioner was quoted as having alleged.

At least 13 persons were killed after a bus collided with a truck near Rayavaram in Andhra Pradesh’s Markapuram district on Thursday, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said.

District Collector P Raja Babu said that 25 of the 41 passengers on the bus were injured, The Hindu reported. They were admitted to a government hospital in Markapuram.

Ten of them suffered severe injuries and five were in critical condition, he added.

The accident occurred at a turn at about 6 am when the private bus collided with the tipper truck loaded with gravel coming from Kanigiri, the newspaper quoted unidentified police officers as saying.

The bus was travelling from Nirmal in Telangana to Vinjamuru in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district.

The collision led to a massive fire that engulfed both the vehicles, The Hindu reported.

In a statement on social media, the chief minister expressed his condolences to the families of those who had died in the accident. Naidu added that he had spoken to officials about the medical assistance being provided to the injured.

He further expressed concern over reports that the toll was likely to increase.

Naidu also ordered an investigation into the accident, The Hindu reported.

మార్కాపురం జిల్లా, రాయవరం సమీపంలో జరిగిన రోడ్డు ప్రమాదంలో 13 మంది ప్రయాణికులు సజీవ దహనమై ప్రాణాలు కోల్పోవడం తీవ్ర దిగ్భ్రాంతి కలిగించింది. తెలంగాణ రాష్ట్రంలోని జగిత్యాల నుంచి నెల్లూరు జిల్లాకు వస్తున్న హరికృష్ణ ట్రావెల్స్ బస్సు - టిప్పర్ ఢీ కొనడంతో ఈ ప్రమాదం జరిగింది. ఘటనపై…

— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 26, 2026

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed his condolences and described the accident as tragic.

He announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the families of those killed in the accident. The injured will receive Rs 50,000.

Since October, there have been at least five major bus accidents in Andhra Pradesh in which at least 35 persons have been killed, according to The Hindu.

The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday extended the interim stay on the Sambhal chief judicial magistrate’s order that directed the registration of a first information report against several police officers in connection with the violence in the town in November 2024, Live Law reported.

On January 9, Sambhal Chief Judicial Magistrate Vibhanshu Sudheer ordered that a case be registered against Additional Superintendent of Police Anuj Chaudhary, Inspector Anuj Tomar and 15 to 20 unidentified police officers in connection with allegations that a man, Alam, had been shot and injured during the 2024 unrest in the town.

Violence broke out on that day after a group of Muslims objected to a trial court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town.

The trial court had ordered the survey in a suit claiming that the mosque had been built in 1526 by Mughal ruler Babar on the site of the “centuries-old Shri Hari Har Temple dedicated to Lord Kalki”.

Five persons were killed in the violence.

Chaudhary was the circle officer of Sambhal at the time.

Yameen, the father of the man who was allegedly shot, said that his son, Alam, had left home that day to sell rusks. He alleged that Alam had been shot by the police near the mosque.

The chief judicial magistrate had said that while it was clear that Alam had been hit by gunshots, the identity of the shooter needed to be investigated. He had remarked that since the offence of attempted murder is serious, it was unlikely that the victim would spare the actual attacker by falsely accusing someone else.

Sudheer had also said that for criminal acts, the police could not invoke the defence that they were merely discharging their official duties.

Weeks after his order, Sudheer was among 14 judicial officers transferred by the High Court. He was transferred on Tuesday to Sultanpur as a civil judge (senior division) on January 20.

Aditya Singh, who was the civil judge (senior division) at Sambhal’s Chandausi town, has replaced him. Singh was the judge who passed the order directing a survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid in Chandausi town.

On Tuesday, Justice Samit Gopal was hearing a petition filed by Chaudhary and Tomar against the order. Gopal extended the interim order granted earlier and fixed April 21 as the date for next hearing.

The High Court had earlier stayed Sudheer’s order after hearing the petition challenging it.

At the time, the counsel for the state government told the High Court that the chief judicial magistrate had exceeded the boundaries of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita by ignoring mandatory safeguards under the law, Live Law reported. The police officers were not given any opportunity to explain the allegations against them before the magistrate, the counsel had added.

Also read: This Instagram-influencer cop is Adityanath’s key to Sambhal

India has pledged that 60% of its installed electricity capacity by 2035 will come from non-fossil sources, the Union government said on Wednesday.

The government said that it also aims to cut by 47% the intensity of carbon emissions per unit of the gross domestic product from the 2005 level.

India aims to further increase its carbon sink to 3.5 billion tonnes to 4 billion tonnes through forest and tree cover by 2035 from the 2005 level. A carbon sink comprises elements such as forests, plants and soil that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The aims were announced as part of the Nationally Determined Contributions for the 2031-’35 period cleared by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday. The targets will be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The declarations are national climate action plans of each country under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Under the 2015 agreement, countries had agreed to keep the long-term global average surface temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

A warming of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius can lead to severe climate change impacts and extreme weather. Pre-industrial levels refer to global atmospheric conditions before the widespread impact of industrialisation, which included burning coal, oil and gas and other such activities.

When the targets were last revised in August 2022, India had pledged that 50% of its installed electricity capacity would come from non-fossil sources by 2030. India had also committed to cut by 45% the intensity of carbon emissions per unit of the gross domestic product from the 2005 levels.

In October, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the commitments made by countries had proved inadequate despite growing scientific alarm at the speed of global temperature increases caused by the burning of fossil fuels – oil, coal and gas.

The lack of NDC ambition means the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius will be breached, at least temporarily, Guterres had warned.

The Union government said on Wednesday that the aims were in line with the target of attaining net zero carbon emissions by 2070, which was announced in 2021.

The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, one of the most politically significant events in the history of the subcontinent, generated an extraordinary volume of documentation – official records, journalistic reports, memoirs, novels, plays and songs.

It also inspired political cartoons, which recorded and interpreted events, often with a sharpness that conventional reportage could not match. Political cartoons are, in a sense, journalism distilled – compressed arguments rendered in ink and wit. In moments of crisis or upheaval, their capacity to condense irony and moral clarity becomes even more pronounced.

Indian newspapers such as Anandabazar Patrika, Jugantar, Desh, Darpan, Amritabazar Patrika, The Statesman and Hindustan Standard published cartoons about the situation across the border with remarkable regularity throughout 1971, creating a parallel narrative alongside the headlines.

The artists behind these images – Amal Chakraborty, Chandi Lahiri, Sufi (Naren Roy), Kutty (PKS Kutty), Sudhir Dar, Rebati Bhushan, Abu, Lakshan, and others – formed a loose but formidable fraternity. Their works appeared not only in Bengali-language newspapers but also in English dailies, extending their reach across India and, in some cases, beyond.

This sustained visual discourse tracked the evolution of the war with remarkable sensitivity.

Changing tones of cartoons

Cartoons, by their nature, do not simply describe events: they select, exaggerate and reframe, producing a version of reality that is at once subjective and revealing. In the case of 1971, at least four overlapping narrative frameworks can be discerned.

For Bangladesh, the year signified liberation, genocide, and the birth of a nation. For India, it was a humanitarian crisis that demanded moral and logistical responses – sheltering millions of refugees, training freedom fighters, building international support and ultimately intervening militarily.

For Pakistan, the narrative was one of dismemberment, often explained through the language of conspiracy involving India, local Hindu populations and nationalist politicians.

Meanwhile, much of the international media, particularly in the United States, framed the conflict first as a civil war between East and West Pakistan and later as a conventional war between India and Pakistan.

These competing narratives found visual expression in the cartoons in India, sometimes clashing, sometimes converging, but always illuminating the ideological terrain.

The progression of the war from March to December is mirrored in the changing tone and content of the cartoons. In the early months – March and April – the focus was on the non-cooperation movement in East Pakistan, the mass uprising, the brutality of the Pakistani military under President Yahya Khan and the conspiratorial maneuvers of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the chairman of the Pakistan People's Party.

Cartoonists also turned their attention to the silence – or complicity – of the global community, particularly criticising the policies of the United States and China. These early cartoons are marked by a sense of foreboding, an awareness that the political deadlock was sliding toward violence.

By May and June, the lens shifted inward slightly. Indian policies came under scrutiny, especially the hesitancy to formally recognise Bangladesh. Cartoonists questioned the government’s caution, portraying it as indecision in the face of mounting atrocities.

At the same time, Pakistan’s provocations continued to be depicted with increasing ferocity. The months of July, August, and September saw a growing emphasis on the refugee crisis, which had by then reached staggering proportions.

Millions of people had crossed into India, particularly into West Bengal, straining resources and altering the social fabric. Cartoons from this period often juxtapose human suffering with bureaucratic inertia, highlighting the enormity of the crisis.

As the year moved into its final quarter – October, November, and December – the tone of the cartoons sharpened further. There was a palpable anticipation of Pakistan’s defeat, accompanied by intensified criticism of the United States and China for their geopolitical alignments.

By December, with the war’s outcome becoming clear, cartoons began to celebrate victory, often with a mix of triumph and sardonic humor. The arc from despair to vindication is rendered through a series of visual snapshots, each capturing a moment of emotional and political intensity.

Resonating with public sentiment

Recurring characters populated these cartoons, serving as visual shorthand for larger political entities. Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman often appeared as the embodiment of the Bangladeshi people – tall, resolute, and dignified.

Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and, occasionally, other Indian leaders represented the Indian state, sometimes as a burdened yet determined figure. Pakistan’s president, General Yahya Khan, was frequently depicted as a monstrous or grotesque figure, emphasising the brutality of the Pakistani military regime, while Bhutto appeared as a scheming conspirator.

International figures such as US President Richard Nixon and China’s Mao Zedong were caricatured to critique the policies of their governments, often shown as distant, calculating, or indifferent to human suffering.

The effectiveness of these cartoons, however, cannot be understood in isolation from the political culture in which they were produced. As prominent Indian journalist and cartoonist Chandi Lahiri once observed, very few cartoons actually create public opinion; rather, they resonate when they align with existing sentiments.

A cartoon that captures the mood of the moment can become instantly popular because it articulates what people already feel but cannot easily express. In this sense, the cartoons of 1971 offer a valuable window into public perception, particularly in Calcutta, where the proximity to the conflict made it impossible to remain detached.

The broader context of global civil society also played a role. Across the world, ordinary people, activists, writers, and artists mobilised in support of Bangladesh. Marches, rallies, and cultural interventions sought to draw attention to the genocide and the refugee crisis.

Cartoonists were part of this larger ecosystem of resistance, contributing through satire and symbolism.

Cartoonists who stood out

Among the prominent figures, Amal Chakraborty stands out for his sustained engagement with the war. Working primarily with Jugantar, he produced a series of cartoons that were later republished in English-language newspapers as well.

His March 3 cartoon in Jugantar, for instance, captures the political tension surrounding the postponed session of Pakistan’s National Assembly. Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League had won a majority but Bhutto refused to accept it. Mujib is depicted as a calm yet towering figure, embodying resolve, while Yahya Khan represents the looming threat of military power.

Bhutto appears as an instigator, warning against reconciliation. The composition is simple, but the implications are profound: a political stalemate on the brink of collapse.

Chandi Lahiri contributed extensively through the “Tirjak” section of Anandabazar and Desh. His April 10 cartoon critiques the voyeuristic curiosity of some West Bengalis who flocked to border areas as if witnessing a spectacle.

By asking whether genocide could be treated as entertainment, Lahiri turned the gaze back on his own society, exposing its moral ambiguities. A day later, on April 11, he depicted Yahya Khan celebrating Easter with a shopping bag full of human skulls – a chilling image that encapsulates the grotesque normalization of violence.

Cartoonist Kutty’s work, meanwhile, is notable for its stylistic variation and conceptual breadth. His March 6 cartoon in the Desh weekly titled “Challenge” presents Mujib as a towering, almost mythic figure, contrasted with a diminished Bhutto.

In May 22, in Desh, he depicted India as a camel burdened with multiple crises – economic, political, and social – while the refugee problem threatened to destabilise everything. His later cartoons, especially those from September and December, adopt a more overtly theatrical tone, portraying global leaders in staged scenarios that underscore their detachment or hypocrisy.

Sufi, or Naren Roy, though less celebrated, produced a remarkable body of work under the title “Obartho” in Jugantar. His early identification on March 21 of Bhutto as a genocidal figure, even before the official onset of mass killings on March 25, demonstrates a keen political intuition.

His “Refugee” cartoon juxtaposes violence in East Pakistan with instability in West Bengal, creating a dual narrative of suffering. Another cartoon, titled “Who Will Save Us,” situates Bangladesh within a broader landscape of Cold War conflicts, linking it to crises in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. The question it poses is both rhetorical and urgent, reflecting a sense of abandonment by the international community.

These diverse works remind us that the history of 1971 was also drawn in lines and shadows, where incisive cartoons captured the weight of a nation’s struggle.

All these cartoons are from the book Cartoon e Muktijuddho by Muntasir Mamoon and Chowdhury Shahid Kader.

March 26 is Bangladesh Independence Day.

Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist.

The Union government has mandated that households using liquefied petroleum gas must shift to piped natural gas in areas where infrastructure and supplies for it are available.

The mandate comes amid disruptions in energy supplies to India since the conflict in West Asia broke out on February 28. Iran has effectively blocked the strategic Strait of Hormuz for most international commercial vessels. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.

This has also affected LPG supplies in India. The country imports about 60% of its LPG demand, most of it from Gulf countries.

Due to the disruptions, the Union government has been appealing to consumers to switch to PNG if it is available, so as to take some pressure off LPG supplies. It has also offered additional commercial LPG allocation to states if they undertake measures to ease the expansion of the PNG network.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas notified the 2026 Natural Gas and Petroleum Products Distribution Through Laying, Building, Operation and Expansion of Pipelines and Other Facilities Order under the Essential Commodities Act.

The order is aimed at accelerating pipeline infrastructure, easing approvals and promoting a shift from LPG to PNG to strengthen energy security. It states that LPG supply will cease after three months if a household does not opt for PNG despite availability.

The order, however, allows LPG supply to continue where it is technically unfeasible to provide a piped connection. This is subject to a no-objection certificate.

It further states that public authorities must grant right of way or permissions within prescribed timelines to facilitate rapid rollout, failing which approvals will be deemed granted. It also bars authorities from imposing charges beyond those specified.

Entities controlling access in residential areas must grant permissions within three working days, the order states, adding that last-mile PNG connectivity will have to be provided within 48 hours. It added that applications for pipeline connectivity in such areas cannot be rejected.

Addressing a press briefing, Sujata Sharma, joint secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said that entities authorised or holding licenses to retail PNG in a geographical area will send notices to LPG users about its availability, PTI reported.

The 2026 Natural Gas and Petroleum Products Distribution Order provides a “streamlined and time-bound framework” to speed up pipeline laying and expand gas infrastructure, particularly in residential areas, to enhance last-mile connectivity and support a transition to cleaner fuels, she said.

The joint secretary further noted that there are around 60 lakh households in India that have PNG infrastructure available in their vicinity but continue to use LPG, The Indian Express reported.

So far in March, around 2.5 lakh new PNG connections, both domestic and well as commercial, have been provided and 2.2 lakh LPG uses have shifted to PNG, she added.

Also read: Why the LPG crisis is reviving pandemic fears among migrant workers

N Gowreeshwaran arrived on Indian soil with just two sets of clothes in 2006. It was all that could fit on the tiny boat that he and 10 members of his family travelled in from war-torn Sri Lanka. Since the age of 16, he has lived at a rehabilitation camp for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Chennai.

He yearns to see how his hometown Trincomalee, a coastal city in Sri Lanka, has changed in 20 years – but only as a tourist. “I would never consider moving there,” said Gowreeshwaran. “There is nothing there for us anymore.”

As ethnic violence and civil war ravaged the island nation for nearly three decades, lakhs of Sri Lankan Tamils fled their homes and landed up in India, mainly in Tamil Nadu. Many, like Gowreeshwaran, are refugees who have built new lives in India – but without gaining Indian citizenship.

A Sri Lankan minister’s comments, earlier in March, welcoming refugees back to the island nation brought to fore the longstanding issue of citizenship, which has resonance in both countries. But refugees Scroll spoke to said they would not return to Sri Lanka, even if offered the option. India is now their home.

Gowreeshwaran completed his education, started working, got married and now has children. “My life is here now,” he said.

Refugees said that getting Indian citizenship would allow them to access formal employment, better jobs and help the community move past the trauma of war and displacement.

“We have Aadhaar cards but they mention that we are refugees,” said Gowreeshwaran. “We still don’t have a proper address to put on documents.”

For decades, Gowreeshwaran’s family and refugees like him have lived in 10x10 rooms in the Puzhal camp in Chennai. Getting citizenship would improve life drastically, he said.

Nothing to return to in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan minister Bimal Rathnayake told The Hindu in an interview on March 18 that the island nation was ready to receive refugees who had fled during the civil war and were living in India. He also said the Indian and Tamil Nadu governments must not use refugees as “a tool for political propaganda around elections”.

Rathnayake was responding to a query on Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s letter to the Indian government on citizenship for Sri Lankan Tamil refugees. Stalin, in his letter in February, had asked the Centre to revoke administrative instructions that barred Sri Lankan Tamil refugees from applying for Indian citizenship. Elections will be held in Tamil Nadu on April 23.

Parivelan KM, a member of the advisory committee for the welfare of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, said Rathnayake’s comments must be appreciated, but there was nothing new about this stand. “Nobody has said that the refugees cannot return, but asking them to return without a policy of rehabilitation and reconstruction is just empty words,” said Parivelan, who is also a professor at Woxsen University, Hyderabad.

In a survey Parivelan conducted of 520 families in 2014, he found that 68% would prefer to stay in India. Even so, it is not a simple matter of citizenship and belonging.

“Refugee is a blanket term used to refer to people who fled during the civil war,” Parivelan said. But the residents of the refugee camps include those with Indian roots, who were taken to Sri Lanka by the British to work on tea estates.

The two governments signed pacts, one in 1964 and the next in 1974, allowing some of these tea workers Indian citizenship and others Sri Lankan citizenship. Some fell through the cracks. “These people became stateless,” said Parivelan.

“Those who got stranded there, tried to flee after the civil war escalated post the 1980s,” he said. “They also ended up in the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee camp with the refugee tag.” Given that such refugees don’t belong to Sri Lanka or India, the issue needs to be mapped carefully and addressed with sensitivity, he said.

Rathnayake told The Hindu that 18,542 refugees from Tamil Nadu had returned to Sri Lanka since the civil war ended in January 2009. But refugees Scroll spoke to said that only those with land or money could consider moving back to Sri Lanka. Gowreeshwaran said that his family has relatives in Sri Lanka, but not land.

“Everything was lost during the war, so what would we do for work?” he said

Similarly, Priyamani*, a refugee, said that some people may have help from relatives who sought asylum in Western countries and have money. “But people like us came here with nothing,” Priyamani said.

In S Anitha’s case, her father has been trying for more than a decade to reclaim the land he owned. Anitha’s family hails from Kilinochchi, which witnessed some of the worst war crimes. At the height of the civil war in 1990, Anitha’s family fled leaving behind their possessions, including land documents.

Anitha’s father returned to Sri Lanka but has been running from pillar to post to reclaim their land. “He was supposed to show proof that he had lived there,” she said. “He had to prove that neighbours recognised him, which he did and then he followed through with the process but things haven’t progressed.”

Anitha, who lives in a camp in Madurai, said that most refugees don’t have pattas for their land in Sri Lanka or that their land was grabbed during the war. In many areas, people have also resettled since the war. “Even if people do have pattas, who knows who lives there now?” she said.

Livelihood, trauma of war

More than themselves, the refugees said they hoped that at least their children would be granted Indian citizenship.

Priyamani said her children, who were born in India and are completing their higher education, would prefer to live here but have few employment prospects. “MBBS, law and government exams are still not open to our children even though they were born here,” said Priyamani.

Anitha said job options are restricted to the private sector where growth is limited. “At the most, young people earn about Rs 30,000 even in good jobs,” said Anitha. “If someone has a job that requires travel to other countries, they need a passport and other documents, which they don’t have,” she said. “So nobody is able to move beyond a certain position.”

Kanni*, a 24-year-old woman living in a camp in Cuddalore, is moving to Sri Lanka soon but only because she is marrying a man from that country. “It just so happened that we got an alliance from there,” she said. Her parents have no intention of moving back. “Like my parents, I would [have] stayed here,” she said. “I was born here, studied here and work here.”

For some, like Priyamani, memories of the civil war linger painfully. “I remember the bodies and the bombs and continue to suffer the impact of that on my mental health,” she said. Having witnessed the war at such close quarters, she feels scared about returning.

Saravanan, a refugee who is stateless, feels that returning to Sri Lanka is unfeasible. “We have Indian origins, [but] our ancestors moved there and we were also born there [in Sri Lanka],” he said.

Since escaping from the war, Saravanan lived in a camp in Thirupathur where there are others like him who are stateless. “The government has built us our homes here,” he said. “So we live here legally, but we are not given citizenship.”

Better policies

Returning to Sri Lanka, the refugees said, offered nothing unless it was backed by policies and concrete promises. “They can say they will welcome us back but are they saying anything about how they will support us?” asked Saravanan. “How will they provide rehabilitation and jobs?”

Parivelan, of the advisory committee for the welfare of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, echoed Saravanan’s concerns. Referring to Rathnayake’s offer, he said, “They must tell people what their rehabilitation measures are – what about housing or livelihoods?”

“I don’t think they have planned or drafted anything yet on those lines,” he said.

Priyamani and Anitha agreed. “Somebody from the Sri Lankan government should come and meet us and ask us how we are, what our problems and needs are,” said Anitha. “It’s not right to just make such comments for political reasons.”

Parivelan said that the Sri Lankan minister’s remark about not making refugees an election issue was unnecessary. “This is election time and these issues should be raised,” he said. “It is already a political issue.”

Anitha also said that Rathnayake’s comment about Tamil refugees being used for election propaganda was misplaced. In Tamil Nadu, past governments have all tried to help the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees, she said. Besides, Anitha said, refugees in the camp support various political parties.

“Some vote for AIADMK, some DMK,” she said, referring to the opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

“There are also people who support Vijaykanth’s party and Vijay’s party,” said Anitha – the regional party Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam was founded by actor Vijaykanth while actor Vijay launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in 2024.

Parivelan said the priority now is to best meet the needs of the refugees. “The Indian government and the Sri Lankan government should both come together to figure out how to help these groups and how to grant them citizenship or repatriation as per their informed choices.”

*Name changed to preserve anonymity.

The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed by voice vote the 2026 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Amendment Bill.

It was cleared by the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, a motion to refer the bill to a select Parliamentary committee was rejected. The legislation will now be sent to President Droupadi Murmu for her assent.

Introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 13, the bill proposes amendments to the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act by redefining who qualifies as a transgender person.

It removes transgender persons’ right to a self-perceived gender identity and limits the law’s scope to those with certain biological or physiological characteristics, intersex variations, or specific socio-cultural identities such as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta.

If it receives the presidential assent, transgender men, transgender women and genderqueer persons, who were recognised under the 2019 law, will be excluded from the definition of “transgender person”.

Provisions of bill

The new bill proposes to make medical evaluation and certification mandatory for legal gender recognition. It underlines that the authority to permit such transitions is vested in medical professionals operating under a medical board.

The bill also introduces graded punishments based on the severity of offences, increasing the maximum penalty from two years under the 2019 law to up to 14 years.

It also specifies that those who have been “compelled” assume, adopt or outwardly present a transgender identity under “undue influence” will not be covered under the law.

It emphasises that the law is intended to protect a defined class of persons facing “extreme and oppressive” discrimination and not all “persons with various gender identities, self-perceived sex/gender identities or gender fluidities”.

During the discussion in the Rajya Sabha, Opposition members raised concerns that the bill undermines the right to self-identification recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 National Legal Services Authority v Union of India matter, or NALSA case.

The judgement had formally created the “third gender” category for transgender persons that recognised them as a socially and economically backward class.

It had issued directions to the government to ensure transgender community gets job quotas, admission in educational institutions, health benefits, separate public toilets and a host of other safeguards against discrimination.

Opposition criticises amendments

Renuka Chowdhury of the Congress questioned why medical boards, rather than self-identification, would determine gender, arguing that transgender persons have the same constitutional rights as others.

“[The] Constitution is with the people who identify as transgenders today,” she added. “The prime minister himself has called himself non-biological.”

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Tiruchi Siva told the Rajya Sabha that even if the bill is passed by Parliament with a government majority, it is likely to be struck down by the Supreme Court.

“It violates Article 14, 15, 19 and 21 of the Constitution which deprives the community of the right to freedom, dignity and self determination,” he said.

Article 14 guarantees equality before the law, Article 15 prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, Article 19 guarantees fundamental freedoms and Article 21 protects the right to life and personal liberty.

Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale criticised the government for not consulting the community and accused it of relying on foreign examples, claiming the legislation undermines historical recognition of gender diversity in India.

“This bill is nothing but trashy colonial legislation,” he asserted.

Shiv Sena (Uddhab Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi questioned the lack of consulting the transgender community, while Manoj Kumar Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal criticised the absence of a rights-based approach.

Also read: It took me decades to find myself. The trans bill erases me in one sweep

The Union government on Wednesday introduced the 2026 Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha.

Speaking in Parliament, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said the amendments would enable the government to act against organisations using foreign funds for activities such as forced religious conversions or actions “against the spirit of the Constitution, the law and the interest of the country”.

Three Opposition MPs opposed the proposed law, describing it as “dangerous” and “draconian”.

Registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act is mandatory for a non-profit organisation to receive foreign funds.

The amendment bill seeks to address “operational and legal gaps” in the 2010 Act, particularly in cases where an organisation’s registration is cancelled or expires, Bar and Bench reported.

Among its key provisions is one that allows the government to take control of an NGO’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses. Under the proposed framework, such funds and assets will provisionally vest in a government-appointed “designated authority”. If the organisation fails to regain registration, this control would become permanent. The authority would then be empowered to use, transfer or dispose of these assets for “public purposes”.

The bill also imposes stricter restrictions during the suspension of registration. NGOs will not be allowed to transfer, sell or otherwise deal with assets created out of foreign funds without prior approval from the central government.

Between 2016-’17 and 2021-’22, over 6,600 NGOs lost their FCRA licences, the government had told Parliament in December 2022. In 2023, it informed Parliament that 13,520 registered non-profit organisations had received Rs 55,741.5 crore in foreign contributions between 2019-’20 and 2021-’22.

On Wednesday, Congress MP Manish Tewari said the amendment bill grants “sweeping and disproportionate powers” to the executive without adequate constitutional safeguards.

His party colleague GK Padavi argued that it would further shrink democratic space, leaving civil society operating under “regulatory uncertainty and fear of punitive action”.

Trinamool Congress MP Pratima Mandal claimed that the bill concentrates excessive power in the hands of the Union government.

Also read: How India’s crackdown on NGO funds has crushed key grassroots services and ended livelihoods

Talks between Iran and the United States to end the conflict in West Asia might be held in Pakistan later this week, The Guardian quoted the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency as saying on Wednesday.

The talks will focus on “missiles, militias allied with the Islamic Republic and security guarantees for Iran”, Rafael Grossi told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, according to The Guardian.

On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump claimed that his country has won the war in Iran, and that it was only “fake news” portals that were claiming otherwise. There was no immediate response from Iran to the US’ claims.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

• Grossi said “there are alternative diplomatic plans that would allow both a solution that says that at the moment there will be no more enrichment because the political, military and trust situation does not allow it; and, in principle, to reassess the issue in five or ten years’ time”.
• Trump, while claiming that the US has won the war in Iran, also said: “There won’t be any nuclear weapons. Iran has agreed to that.” He made the statement two days after directing the Department of War to postpone military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days following “good and productive conversations” between Washington and Tehran. Iran, however, had claimed that it was the US president who “backed down” after learning that it would target all power plants in West Asia.
• On Wednesday, the Iranian military rejected Trump’s claims about the negotiations, state-owned Fars news agency reported. “Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the state of negotiating with yourselves?” military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari was quoted as having asked in a video. He added that Washington should not describe its failure as an agreement.
• The Iranian news agency quoted Zolfaghari as saying that there will be no return to the oil prices as were before the conflict, or to the previous order, “until our will is done”.
• Washington has offered a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran, AP quoted an unidentified official as saying on Tuesday. The plan was submitted to Iran by intermediaries from Pakistan, which has offered to host renewed negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the official said. Israeli officials, who have been advocating for Trump to continue the conflict, were surprised by the submission of the plan, the official was quoted as saying. This came as the US military is preparing to send at least 1,000 more soldiers to supplement some 50,000 troops already in West Asia.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The war in Iran has been won.

The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. pic.twitter.com/pAYfeglpzJ

— Department of State (@StateDept) March 24, 2026

• Iran has said that at least 12 persons were killed and 28 others injured in an “enemy attack” on the residential areas of Varamin in southern Tehran, Al Jazeera quoted the Iranian state-owned Fars news agency as saying on Tuesday. In Iran, at least 1,500 persons have been killed and more than 18,550 injured in the conflict that started after the United States and Israel launched an attack on the country on February 28.
• Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations said that non-hostile vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz in coordination with the the Iranian government, provided that “they neither participate in nor support acts of aggression against Iran and fully comply with the declared safety and security regulations”.
• The United Arab Emirates’ defence ministry said that a Moroccan citizen working as a civilian contractor with the armed forces was killed during a routine mission in an Iranian missile attack in Bahrain, Gulf News reported on Tuesday. The attack also injured five personnel from the ministry, it added.
• Drones targeted a ​fuel tank ‌at Kuwait International Airport, ​causing a ​fire but no ⁠casualties, ​Reuters quoted the country’s Civil Aviation ​Authority as saying on Wednesday. The authority said that emergency procedures ​had been ​activated immediately, with firefighting ‌teams ⁠responding to the blaze. Initial reports ​indicated only ​material ⁠damage, it added.
• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that he had received a call from United States Donald Trump, adding that he had a “useful exchange of views” on the situation in West Asia. “India supports de-escalation and restoration of peace at the earliest,” Modi said on social media. “Ensuring that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, secure and accessible is essential for the whole world. We agreed to stay in touch regarding efforts towards peace and stability.”
• Iran had effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterbody connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea, for most international commercial vessels since the start of the conflict. About 20% of global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint. The International Energy Agency has said that the fighting has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.

The conflict

The US and Israel launched an attack on Iran on February 28, claiming that Tehran’s action posed an existential threat to Israel. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Iran has retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in Gulf countries and some ships.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has booked All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s state unit chief Haji Shaukat Ali for making allegedly provocative remarks during an Eid event in Meerut, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

Three of the party’s office-bearers have also been arrested for organising the gathering without permission.

The event was held at a farmhouse on Monday, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

Action against the AIMIM members came after a video of the programme was widely shared on social media, in which Ali is heard making remarks purportedly about the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

“Give me just 11 MLAs, and I promise that if a Muslim is killed in an encounter in Uttar Pradesh, those who are responsible for the encounter will also face an encounter,” Ali could be heard purportedly saying.

He also reportedly criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party government for the closure of madrasas and punitive demolition of homes.

Meerut Superintendent of Police Antriksh Jain said a case had been registered at Lohiya Nagar police station.

The first information report includes charges related to promoting enmity between groups and making statements conducive to public mischief, The Indian Express reported.

“The speeches were intended to create enmity between different religions and communities and affect law and order,” PTI quoted Jain as saying.

The AIMIM leaders arrested have been identified as the party’s western Uttar Pradesh president Mehtab Chauhan, metropolitan president Imran Ansari and metropolitan secretary Razi Siddiqui, according to the news agency.

The Indian rupee fell to a record low, breaching the 94-mark against the United States dollar. The currency slumped 29 paise to close at a record low of 94.05 as the outflow of foreign funds continued amid the conflict in West Asia.

A drop in global crude oil prices and positive sentiments in the domestic equity markets also did not provide any respite to the local unit.

In the domestic equity market, the benchmark Sensex surged by 1.63% while Nifty was up 1.72%. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 4.33% lower at $99.97 per barrel in futures trade. Read on.

How the Iran war is ratcheting up cost of medical supplies, writes Tabassum Barnagarwala

The Union government introduced the 2026 Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha. The amendments would enable the government to act against organisations using foreign funds for activities such as forced religious conversions or actions “against the spirit of the Constitution, the law and the interest of the country”, said Union minister Nityanand Rai.

Among other key provisions of the bill is one that allows the government to take control of an NGO’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses.

Opposition MPs opposed the proposed law, describing it as “dangerous” and “draconian”. Congress MP Manish Tewari said the amendment bill grants “sweeping and disproportionate powers” to the executive. Read on.

How India’s crackdown on NGO funds has crushed key grassroots services and ended livelihoods, reports Kunal Purohit

A Singapore coroner’s inquiry into the death of singer Zubeen Garg has ruled that he died of accidental drowning. There was no reason to disagree with the Police Coast Guard’s conclusion that Garg was “severely intoxicated” and had refused to wear a life jacket, said State Coroner Adam Nakhoda.

The death certificate issued by the authorities in Singapore on September 20 stated the cause of Garg’s death as drowning. The authorities reiterated the findings in October and December. However, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has repeatedly claimed that the singer’s death was not accidental but was a murder. Read on.

The Supreme Court criticised the Haryana Police for allegedly derailing the investigation into the rape of a four-year-old girl in Gurugram. The bench stated that “all-out attempts” were made to “protect the accused” and that the police tried to dilute the gravity of the offence.

It also noted that there was prima facie evidence to indicate that the offence of “aggravated penetrative sexual assault” under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act section 6 was committed. However, the police only registered a first information report for “aggravated sexual assault” under Section 10 of the Act, which is a lesser offence, the court added. Read on.

The National Democratic Alliance formally announced its seat-sharing agreement for the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. The Bharatiya Janata Party will contest 27 of the state’s 234 Assembly seats, seven more than it had in the 2021 polls.

The Edappadi K Palaniswami-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is likely to contest about 169 seats – all that have not been allocated to its partners. Read on.

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to entertain a petition challenging the Union government’s advisory on the playing and singing of all six stanzas of the patriotic song Vande Mataram at government and public functions, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi was hearing a writ petition filed by Muhammed Sayeed Noori, who runs an academic institution.

Noori had challenged the January 28 Ministry of Home Affairs circular, which directed that all six stanzas of Vande Mataram be sung first when it is played together with the national anthem Jana Gana Mana.

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

The counsel for the petitioner argued that even without formal penalties, the advisory could lead to social pressure and compel individuals to participate.

The persons who do not follow it will be “singled out and discriminated against”, the counsel argued.

The petitioner submitted that persons of all religious backgrounds, including atheists, would eventually be forced to sing the song as a “social demonstration of loyalty”, adding that “patriotism cannot be compelled”.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court held that the plea was “premature” and based on “vague apprehensions”, Live Law reported.

The bench observed that the advisory neither makes singing the song mandatory nor prescribes penal consequences for non-compliance, Bar and Bench reported.

“We will hear all this when there are penal consequences or [it is] made mandatory,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying.

Vande Mataram was written in Sanskrit by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1875 and is a popular patriotic song from India’s freedom movement.

A Press Information Bureau note issued on November 6 to mark 150 years of the song stated that the Constituent Assembly had adopted Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem and Vande Mataram as the national song.

The note quoted Rajendra Prasad, the first president, as having told the Assembly in January 1950 that Vande Mataram, because of its role in the freedom movement, “shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it”.

However, the Constitution mentions only the national anthem, not Vande Mataram.

Also read: Vande Mataram debate: The novel in which the poem appears is a cry for freedom – but from whom?

The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday rejected petitions filed by nine persons seeking to quash criminal proceedings related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Kanpur, Live Law reported.

Large-scale riots had broken out in early November 1984, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was the prime minister at the time, by her Sikh bodyguards.

The High Court on Tuesday described the violence as amounting to a genocide and crimes against humanity.

The bench of Justice Anish Kumar Gupta held that delays in recording witness statements and the absence of original police records are not sufficient grounds to terminate proceedings.

Gupta dismissed the seven connected applications challenging the chargesheets and the cases pending before the chief judicial magistrate in Kanpur Nagar.

In all the cases, first information reports had been lodged soon after the incidents, but the final reports were later submitted exonerating the persons accused in those matters, Live Law reported.

Subsequently, the Union government set up the Justice Nanavati Commission to inquire into the riots. The Supreme Court had later constituted a Special Investigation Team and directed that cases where FIRs had been extracted by forensic laboratories should be investigated and tried.

Following the directions, fresh investigations were conducted, witnesses were examined and chargesheets were filed, after which cognisance was taken by the chief metropolitan magistrate.

The applicants argued that the absence of original records, including FIRs and post-mortem reports, made a fair trial impossible. They also contended that the identity of the persons accused in the matter itself is doubtful, as the incident had taken place in 1984 but the witness statements were recorded between 2020 and 2022.

One of the applicants also raised a plea of alibi, claiming he was not present at the scene of the violence.

The state opposed the petitions, submitting that the Supreme Court had been aware of the missing records when it ordered the reinvestigation.

Additional Advocate General Manish Goyal, representing the state, argued that the authorities are bound to act in aid of the Supreme Court and that the delay alone cannot justify closing the cases.

Goyal further submitted that the heinous nature of the crimes left a lasting impression on witnesses, enabling them to give clear accounts.

The High Court agreed with the state, observing that final reports had been filed hastily in the past to protect those involved.

It noted that it was an admitted fact that the records had either been weeded out or destroyed over time. The court said the incidents formed part of a wider pattern of violence against the Sikh community across the country, involving killings, arson and looting on a large scale.

The judge held that a prima facie case is made out against the applicants, as there is sufficient material to indicate their involvement and establish their identity.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday criticised the Haryana Police for allegedly derailing the investigation into the rape of a four-year-old girl in Gurugram, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi stated that “all-out attempts” were made to “protect the accused” and that the police tried to dilute the gravity of the offence.

The court noted that there was prima facie evidence to indicate that the offence of “aggravated penetrative sexual assault” under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act section 6 was committed.

However, the police only registered a first information report for “aggravated sexual assault” under Section 10 of the Act, which is a lesser offence, the court added.

While section 6 provides for at least 20 years in jail, section 10 mandates only 10 years.

The bench said that the “entire police force, from the commissioner to the sub inspector, made all attempts to prove that the child had no proof or that the parents did not make any sense”.

“Child went through more horrifying experience after what happened with her,” the legal news outlet quoted Kant as saying. “Repeated victimisation.”

He added: “You are disbelieving a four year child…Shame on them.”

The court constituted a Special Investigation Team led by Indian Police Service officer Nazneen Bhasin to probe the case, Live Law reported. It also directed that Gurugram’s commissioner of police and the investigating officer be removed from the probe.

The police officers were issued a show-cause notice seeking an explanation on why no disciplinary action should be taken against them.

The court also criticised the judicial magistrate for not ensuring that the matter was investigated under Section 6 of the POCSO Act.

It further pulled up the members of the Child Welfare Committee for handling the case in an allegedly insensitive manner.

“Who appointed these [Child Welfare Committee] members?,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “Acted as if the victim was a table or chair.”

The court said that it has doubts about the academic and professional qualifications of the committee members and asked the Haryana government’s Department of Women and Child Development to file an affidavit on why the current members were appointed to the panel, NDTV reported.

The court was hearing a writ petition filed by the parents of the child seeking a probe by either the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Special Investigation Team in the case.

The National Democratic Alliance on Wednesday formally announced its seat-sharing agreement for the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, ANI reported.

The Bharatiya Janata Party will contest 27 of the state’s 234 Assembly seats, seven more than what it had in the 2021 polls. The seats include Chennai’s Mylapore, Coimbatore North, Madurai, Tiruppur, Avadi, Thanjavur, Tiruvannamalai, Nagercoil and Radhapuram.

The Edappadi K Palaniswami-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam will contest all seats that have not been allocated to its partners. It is likely to contest about 169 seats.

The Anbumani Ramadoss-led faction of the Pattali Makkal Katchi will contest 18 seats, including Dharmapuri, Pennagaram, Vikravandi, Sholingur, Tiruporur, Uthiramerur, Polur, Gingee and Vriddhachalam.

The TTV Dhinakaran-led Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam was allocated 11 seats. The constituencies include Mannargudi, Tiruvaiyaru and Nanguneri.

While the Tamil Maanila Congress will contest five seats, the Indhiya Jananayaka Katchi will fight on two. The Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam and the Puthiya Bharatham Party will contest one seat each.

The voting will be held in a single phase on April 23. The counting of votes will take place on May 4.

In the 2021 polls, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led alliance, which includes the Congress and the Left, won the polls.

The alliance clinched 159 seats in the 234-member Assembly. The NDA, mainly comprising the AIADMK and the BJP, had won 75. DMK leader MK Stalin had become the chief minister.

The Election Commission website incorrectly showed that all voters in West Bengal are under adjudication in the claims process of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, the Trinamool Congress alleged on Wednesday.

This has caused panic among the voters, the party claimed.

While the problem was later resolved, it highlighted the “serious technical glitches and faulty software” used by the poll panel, party MP Mahua Moitra said.

“How can a software maintained with taxpayers’ money be so error-prone and unreliable?” Moitra asked on social media. “What concrete steps has the Election Commission taken to fix these recurring issues? Instead of addressing matters of such grave importance that affect millions of voters, the Vanish Commission is busy enabling [the Bharatiya Janata Party].”

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.

However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

On Monday, a batch of names approved by judicial officers was added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated.

However, the poll panel has not specified how many voters have been added to or dropped off the list.

The Economic Times reported that when the supplementary list was made available online on Monday, there were technical glitches, server problems, downloads were slow and the PDF files could not be downloaded.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

West Bengal Chief Minister had moved the Supreme Court against the exercise, raising concerns that voter roll revision poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible electors in the Assembly elections. She sought the court’s direction that the elections be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.

The Assembly elections in the state will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results in all states will be announced on May 4.

Problem rectified, says poll panel

The Economic Times quoted West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal as saying on Tuesday that “in the initial stages, there are technical glitches”. He added that the problems will be “resolved after a few hours”.

On Wednesday, PTI quoted a polling official as saying that the Election Commission was examining what had caused the technical glitch that briefly showed all voters in the state being “under adjudication”.

“At one point, the system erroneously reflected that all electors in the state were under adjudication,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified official as saying. “This was not the case, and it was purely a display error.”

The problem has been rectified, the official said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday verbally observed that the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls had been conducted smoothly in all states except in West Bengal.

Also read: As polls knock, why is Bengal’s SIR in a state of chaos with no end in sight?

On Wednesday, Moitra alleged that the Election Commission had appointed the husband of a BJP leader from Bihar as the police observer in Bengal’s Malda.

“At the same time, central forces are being misused as extra hands for BJP, with personnel carrying campaign materials for the party’s prachar [publicity] in Bankura,” she alleged.

This is a “dangerous assault” on electoral integrity, the Trinamool Congress leader said.

The Assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday verbally observed that the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls had been conducted smoothly in all states except in West Bengal, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a batch of petitions against the special intensive revision in the state. During the hearing, the chief justice said that he had read an article about the exercise across the country.

“Apart from West Bengal, everywhere it happened smoothly,” Bar and Bench quoted Kant as saying.

In response, advocate Kalyan Banerjee, representing the West Bengal government, said that certain developments in the state were unusual. He said that the Election Commission had not published a “logical discrepancy” list or issued administrative notifications at unusual hours during the process in other states.

“Logical discrepancies” flagged by the poll panel during the voter list revision included mismatches in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six.

However, the chief justice noted that there had been equally complicated problems in other states, but the revision “by and large” went on smoothly there, Live Law reported.

The bench also noted the pressure on judicial officers tasked with adjudicating claims in the state. “Do you realise we have put so much pressure on the judicial officers to complete 60 lakh cases within 45 days?” the legal news portal quoted Bagchi as saying.

In response, Banerjee said that the pace of the exercise was “inhuman”, reiterating that such an exercise could realistically take two to three years.

The bench also acknowledged that the exercise had thrown up “unique challenges” in West Bengal.

West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of electoral roll was undertaken.

On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, indicating the exclusion of more than 61 lakh voters. However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.

A batch of names approved by judicial officers were added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published on Monday. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated. However, the poll panel did not specify how many voters had been dropped and or included in the list.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.

Four days later, it allowed judges from Odisha and Jharkhand to also be deployed to decide on the claims and objections raised during the process.

At the hearing on Tuesday, Banerjee told the bench that the entire supplementary list had not yet been made available to stakeholders and requested that soft copies be provided to all political parties, Live Law reported.

Advocate DS Naidu, representing the Election Commission, told the Supreme Court that the poll panel was willing to publish supplementary lists on a daily basis and had placed a proposal before the chief justice of the Calcutta High Court.

Advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, raised concerns about the impact of pending voter claims on the Assembly elections, Bar and Bench reported.

The elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.

Divan told the bench that about 14 candidates for the polls were on the adjudication list. This could affect their ability to file nominations before the deadline, he added.

The deadline for filing nominations for the first phase is April 6 and April 9 for the second.

The advocate added that the electoral roll in the state must be frozen seven days before polling.

In response, the chief justice said that these concerns appeared to be administrative in nature and should be taken up before the High Court.

The Supreme Court is tentatively scheduled to take up the matter again on April 1, Live Law reported.

Punjab MLA Harmit Singh Pathanmajra, who has been absconding since September after being booked in a rape and cheating case, has been arrested in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior on Tuesday, The Indian Express reported.

Pathanmajra, an Aam Aadmi Party legislator representing the Sanour constituency, was arrested at about 10 pm, the newspaper quoted a government spokesperson as saying.

The MLA had been booked on charges of rape, cheating and criminal intimidation on September 1 after a woman from Zirakpur, Punjab, accused him of sexually exploiting her on the pretext of marriage. She also alleged that he had concealed his first marriage.

After the first information report was registered, the police had sent a team to arrest him from his relative’s home in Haryana’s Karnal district. However, Pathanmajra escaped as his supporters allegedly thew stones and fired gun shots at the police.

In November, Pathanmajra appeared in a video interview with a web portal and claimed that he was in Australia, adding that he would “return home only after securing bail”. The MLA claimed that he had been framed.

However, a court in Patiala rejected his petition for anticipatory bail and issued a proclamation notice against him.

Issued under the Criminal Procedure Code section 82, a proclamation requires an absconding person to appear at a specified place and time not less than thirty days from the date of publishing such a notice.

Punjab’s Anti-Gangster Task Force had been on his trail since then, The Indian Express reported.

Denying the allegations against him in his interview in November, Pathanmajra had described the case as a “political conspiracy” that was aimed at silencing voices that speak for the residents of Punjab.

“In Punjab, ministers and MLAs are not consulted on key matters,” the MLA had said. “Freedom of speech is being curtailed. After losing in Delhi, those [AAP] leaders have now taken over Punjab, and they are ruining it the same way.”

In February 2025, the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the AAP in the Delhi Assembly polls.

Earlier, Pathanmajra had also accused the AAP’s Delhi unit of “controlling Punjab ministers like puppets”.

“I spoke about mismanagement during the floods, and soon after that, cases started coming up against me,” the MLA had said in a statement after being booked.