Two persons were killed in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district on Tuesday after clashes broke out between Karbis and non-Karbis, a senior police official told Scroll.

One of those killed belongs to the Karbi community, while another is a Hindu Bengali.

The violence took place amid protests demanding that Hindi-speaking persons be evicted from grazing reserves around the town of Kheroni.

Police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets to control the protesters.

Director General of Police Harmit Singh told reporters that 38 police personnel were injured in the violence. Singh added that he too had been hit by a stone thrown during the clashes.

Mobile internet has been suspended indefinitely in Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong.

The number of protesters injured in the violence remained unclear.

However, PTI reported earlier in the day that at least eight persons had been injured.

Members of the Karbi community were on a hunger strike for the past two weeks, demanding that Hindi-speaking persons with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh be evicted from Kheroni.

The protesters have been demanding that Hindi speakers be evicted from village grazing reserves and professional grazing reserves.

On Monday, a mob in the West Karbi Anglong district set fire to the ancestral home of Tuliram Ronghang, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the chief of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council.

The council is a self-governing body set up to administer the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. It is currently headed by the BJP.

Protesters also vandalised the shops and vehicles of non-tribals in Kheroni market. About 15 shops were torched the area.

Following the violence, the authorities in the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts prohibited public gatherings under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita until further orders.

On Tuesday, a crowd came out to protest against the violence a day earlier despite the prohibitory orders. Demonstrators demanding the eviction of Hindi-speaking persons from the tribal belt also gathered in the Kheroni market area, PTI reported.

Stones were thrown from both sides, injuring protesters, police personnel and reporters, a police officer told the news agency. The police personnel had to baton-charge the protestors and fire tear gas to disperse both groups, he added.

Additional forces have been deployed at the site.

Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Akhilesh Kumar Singh told Scroll that protesters again set fire to several shops and establishments belonging to non-tribal residents near Zero Point.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the situation in Karbi Anglong was “very sensitive”, PTI reported. He added Ranoj Pegu, state education and plain tribe and backward classes minister, was present in the district.

The chief minister expressed confidence that the matter would be resolved soon.

Pegu had arrived in the district on Monday night. He said on Tuesday that after his appeal, the agitators agreed to call off their hunger strike, and agreed to a discussion with the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council and the Assam government.

Sarma will head the discussion on December 26, Pegu said.

On Tuesday, Raijor Dal MLA Akhil Gogoi said that he was “shocked and disappointed” to see visuals of the violence in Kheroni and the setting on fire of Ronghang’s home. In a letter, Gogoi urged the chief minister to control the situation immediately so that no more harm is done to the residents of the district.

The Karbi community is Assam’s third largest tribe, constituting 11.1% of the state’s 38.8 lakh tribal population, after Bodo and Mising.

In February 2024, the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council ordered officials to evict more than 2,000 families from grazing land in the hills of Assam, alleging that they were unauthorised occupants of the land.

Most of those affected were Hindi-speaking residents with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The action had come in the backdrop of protests and demonstrations by Karbi civil society groups against the Hindi-speaking population in the region. One such protest was followed by violence in Kheroni on February 15, 2024, when members of a Karbi students’ group came under attack allegedly from Hindi speakers.

Also read:

Why tribal groups in Assam’s Karbi hills are demanding the eviction of Hindi speakers

Vinod Kumar Shukla, renowned Hindi writer, poet and novelist, died in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur on Tuesday. He was 88.

Shukla died at 4.58 pm at the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences in Raipur due to multiple organ infection and organ failure, The Indian Express quoted the hospital’s Public Relations Officer Laxmikant Choudhary as saying.

The writer was admitted to the hospital on December 2.

Shukla is survived by his wife, son and a daughter.

The writer, born in Rajnandgaon district in 1937, published his first poetry collection, Lagbhag Jaihind, in 1971. He subsequently wrote several novels, including Naukar Ki Kameez, Khilega To Dekhenge, Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi and Ek Chuppi Jagah.

Naukar ki Kameez was later made into a film of the same title by director Mani Kaul, while Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999. Shukla also received the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature in 2023.

Earlier this year, Shukla was conferred the 59th Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour in the country, for his contributions to Hindi literature. Shukla became the first person from Chhattisgarh to receive the award.

“His writings are known for their simplicity, sensitivity and unique writing style,” the Bharatiya Jnanpith, which gives out the award, had said at the time. “…His poems and stories present the nuances of a common life in simple language.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he was deeply saddened by Shukla’s death and added that his invaluable contribution to the world of Hindi literature would always be remembered.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said that Shukla’s passing was an “irreparable loss” to the state. “The Chhattisgarh government, in recognition of his unparalleled contributions, has decided to accord him a final farewell with full state honours,” he said on social media.

Also read:

Vinod Kumar Shukla: An artist forever seeking to be one with his conscientious creation

A trial court rejected a petition filed by the Uttar Pradesh government to withdraw all charges against 10 persons accused in the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in 2015. It directed that the matter be categorised as “most important” and heard on a daily basis.

The court also told the authorities to write to the police to ensure that the evidence is protected.

On September 28, 2015, 50-year-old Akhlaq was lynched following rumours that he and his family had killed a calf and eaten beef during Eid festivities.

A forensic report in May 2016 said the meat found in Akhlaq’s home was that of a cow or its progeny. The police had said that the report “does not diminish the case as murder is an offence”.

All the accused persons have been out on bail since 2017. Read on.

The Delhi High Court suspended the life sentence of expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the Unnao rape case. Granting him bail, the bench directed Sengar to remain in Delhi during the pendency of his appeal against his conviction.

He was also told not to go within 5 km radius of the complainant’s home and report to the police every Monday at 10 am. The bench also directed him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 15 lakh with three sureties of the same amount.

In December 2019, Sengar was convicted and sentenced to life for raping a woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in 2017. She was a minor at the time. Read on.

Hundreds of persons associated with Hindutva groups protested outside the Bangladesh High Commission on Tuesday against communal violence in that country, including the recent lynching of a Hindu man. Some of the protestors were associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal.

Earlier in the day, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry summoned the Indian envoy in the country to express concerns about the security of its missions in India after protests in front of them on December 20 and December 22.

After the disruption in the high-security zone on Tuesday, the Delhi Police detained several persons.

A Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was beaten to death in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district on December 18 by a mob that accused him of blasphemy. Seven persons have been arrested in the case. Read more.

The Union government has issued 91 takedown notices to social media platform X since March 2024 for over 1,100 URLs allegedly violating legal provisions. Over half of these URLs, or 566 of them, were flagged for “disturbing public order”, The Indian Express reported.

There was reportedly an increase in notices around the Lok Sabha elections in 2024 and Operation Sindoor in May.

These notices were issued to X under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act via the ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.

This provision states that online intermediaries, such as social media platforms, can lose their safe harbour status if they fail to remove or disable access to content that is used to commit an “unlawful act” despite being told to do so by government authorities. Removing this status would mean that the platforms would be liable for the content in question. Read more.

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Once found in the alpine, temperate, tropical, and subtropical forests across Asia, the dhole, or Asiatic wild dog, has now disappeared from much of its former range. Known for its high-pitched whistles, coordinated pack hunts, and remarkable endurance, this wide-ranging carnivore now survives in only small, fragmented populations due to habitat loss, prey decline and increasing human pressures.

A recent large-scale study has now mapped suitable habitats where these elusive wild dogs could persist. It spanned 12 countries within the dhole’s known range, grouped into three regions: Mainland China, the Indian subcontinent (India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh), and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia).

Researchers assessed which landscapes still provide the ecological conditions necessary for dholes. They then used MaxEnt (Maximum Entropy) modelling, a computational method, to predict habitat suitability using 24 environmental variables (such as climate, ecology, geophysical characteristics, and human impact), which are known to influence the distribution of large, wide-ranging carnivores.

“MaxEnt finds the probability of distribution across the landscape that matches only such environmental conditions, thus predicting habitat suitability only where supported by provided environmental variables,” explains Monsoon Pokharel Khatiwada, corresponding author of the study and member of the IUCN Dhole Working Group.

The team compiled a dataset of 1,604 verified dhole observations recorded between 1996 and 2018. The data was provided by participants of a 2019 workshop co-organised by the IUCN Dhole Working Group, the IUCN Conservation Planning Specialist Group, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Kasetsart University, and Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park. Because dholes are more often spotted in protected forests, the data was filtered using spatial software to ensure records were evenly spaced, reducing sampling bias.

Two models were then run: a coarse-scale model to identify broad regions of suitability, and a fine-scale model to zoom in on likely areas of dhole presence. Both were validated with independent datasets and statistical tests, showing strong predictive accuracy.

Fractured forests

The models highlighted three primary regions of suitable dhole habitat: western India, central India, and across the Himalayan foothills through Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia as a region was found to have the largest share of potential dhole habitat (56%). Among individual countries, India held the largest proportion of potential range. Meanwhile, Bhutan, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia showed the highest relative probability of dhole presence within their habitats.

Khatiwada points out that some of this concentration may reflect better research effort rather than actual distribution. “Our observation data were more biased in these regions, and the provided environmental variables match the probability of distribution of dholes across these regions. The bias of observations could have been caused by field efforts being prioritised in areas where the species is most likely to be observed,” she says.

The study also found that legally protected forests were the strongest predictor of whether dholes can survive in an area, which means conservation efforts cannot rely only on isolated reserves. Corridors and surrounding landscapes need protection too if populations are to remain connected and viable.

“Simply knowing where the suitable habitat is for dholes alone is not sufficient for their conservation. Functional corridors and connectivity play a crucial role in their long-term survival,” says Khatiwada.

This broader landscape perspective is crucial, as the study found that remaining dhole habitats are poorly connected, limiting dispersal and genetic exchange. Maintaining connectivity is especially important for wide-ranging species like dholes. Without corridors linking forest patches, small populations become isolated, leading to inbreeding and increased vulnerability to disease or local extinction. Conservation strategies that only focus on protected areas may fail if surrounding landscapes cannot support movement and hunting.

“We suggest focusing conservation actions within each of these three regions, and on improving connectivity among dhole populations,” says Khatiwada.

A call for regional cooperation

The global adult dhole population is estimated at just 4,500-10,500 individuals across South and Southeast Asia and parts of China, of which 1,000-2,000 are adult, mature individuals capable of reproducing.

Even in areas where suitable habitat remains, dholes face ongoing pressures. Forests continue to be cleared or altered for agriculture, roads, and urban expansion. “Increasing human population and the need of urbanisation are the main factors causing habitat loss, not only for dholes but for other wide-ranging species as well,” says Khatiwada.

Livestock grazing can also influence dhole movement and sometimes spark conflict with humans. Diseases from domestic dogs may spill over into wild packs, causing local declines. Even forests that appear intact may be functionally unsuitable if prey populations have been depleted.

Additionally, because dholes cross national borders, international collaboration is essential for long-term conservation.

Khatiwada outlines practical priorities, “Initiate coordinated transboundary meetings, strengthen cross-border conservation initiatives, improve monitoring in the northern part of their historic range, focus conservation beyond protected areas, and work to improve functional corridors, connectivity, and bottlenecks among suitable habitats,” she says.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

A court in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday rejected a petition filed by the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government to withdraw all charges against persons accused in the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in 2015, The Indian Express reported.

Additional District Judge Saurabh Dwivedi ordered that the case be classified as “most important” and be heard on a daily basis. The judge also directed the government to write to the police to ensure that the evidence is safeguarded, according to The Indian Express.

The case has been listed for further hearing on January 6.

On September 28, 2015, 50-year-old Akhlaq was lynched following rumours that he and his family had killed a calf and eaten beef during Eid festivities.

A forensic report in May 2016 said the meat found in Akhlaq’s home was that of a cow or its progeny. The police had then said the report “does not diminish the case as murder is an offence”.

On October 15, the Uttar Pradesh government filed an application before the Upper Sessions Court in Gautam Buddha Nagar under the Criminal Procedure Code to withdraw all charges against the 10 persons accused in the case.

All the accused persons have been out on bail since 2017. They face charges of murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and criminal intimidation.

The application before the trial court said that the state government has the written approval of the governor and reiterated that the meat found was identified to be beef.

Before Adityanath became the state’s chief minister, he had said Akhlaq’s family should face charges for cow slaughter and be stripped of the benefits they were given after his killing.

The September 2015 incident had sparked nationwide outrage and fuelled a debate on religious intolerance in the country.

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, who was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh at the time, had offered Akhlaq’s family Rs 20 lakh as compensation. The family moved to Delhi soon after the lynching, fearing for their safety.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday suspended the life sentence of expelled Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar during the pendency of his appeal against his conviction in the Unnao rape case, reported Live Law.

A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar also granted bail to Sengar. The court directed him not to travel within a five-kilometre radius of the complainant’s home and to remain in Delhi while on bail, Bar and Bench reported.

The court told him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 15 lakh with three sureties of the same amount, and to report to the police every Monday at 10 am.

In December 2019, Sengar was convicted and sentenced to life for raping a woman in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao in 2017. She was a minor at the time.

In March 2020, Kuldeep Singh Sengar and his brother Jaideep Singh Sengar, among others, were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for the killing of the woman’s father in judicial custody.

While sentencing Sengar to life imprisonment in 2019, the trial court had directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to take adequate steps to ensure that the life and liberty of the complainant are protected.

The woman and her family had been placed under the protection of the Central Reserve Police Force after an order from the Supreme Court in 2019. The court had noted at the time that there was a threat to the lives of the complainant, her mother and her lawyer, among other persons.

This came after the woman and her lawyer were severely injured in a car crash. Her family had alleged that Sengar was behind the accident. Two of the woman’s relatives, one of whom was a witness in the rape case, were killed.

In 2024, the Centre had moved a plea against the CRPF security cover provided to the complainant and her family, claiming that they no longer needed the security detail.

In March, the Supreme Court refused to revoke the security cover provided to the complainant, citing continued concerns of threats to her safety.

The top court, however, directed that the security cover for the woman’s family members and other witnesses in the case be revoked.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has issued 91 takedown notices to social media platform X since March 2024 for over 1,100 URLs allegedly violating legal provisions, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

More than half of these URLs, or 566, were flagged for “disturbing public order”, notices reviewed by the newspaper showed. This was followed by 124 for targeting political and public figures.

The newspaper reviewed a compilation of these notices issued between March 20, 2024 and November 7, 2025, which was filed in an affidavit by the Ministry of Home Affairs before the Delhi High Court in December.

These notices were issued to X under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act via the ministry’s Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre.

This provision states that online intermediaries, such as social media platforms, can lose their safe harbour status if they fail to remove or disable access to content that is used to commit an “unlawful act” despite being told to do so by government authorities.

Removing this status would mean that the platforms would be liable for the content in question.

As per the notices examined by The Indian Express across the 20-month span, 58 takedown notices were issued to X in 2024, including 24 for provisions related to violating public tranquillity and promoting enmity.

Three other notice flagged content deemed to threaten national integrity and sovereignty, the newspaper reported.

Fourteen notices were issued during the period for alleged criminal activity, including promoting betting apps, impersonating official handles with potential to cause financial fraud and circulating child sexual abuse material.

As per the newspaper, there was also an increase in notices around the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, and Operation Sindoor in May.

At least 761 URLs were flagged in takedown notices to X during the elections in April and May 2024. Of these, nine notices flagging 198 URLs referred to violations of the Representation of the People Act.

Operation Sindoor were strikes carried out by the Indian military on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad escalated on May 7.

The strikes were in response to the Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

Several notices were issued for posts on X amid the tensions, including five seeking the takedown or removal of 56 URLs for content that posed a threat to India’s “integrity, sovereignty and security”, The Indian Express reported.

After Operation Sindoor in May, two notices were also issued seeking the removal of three URLs for posting content allegedly “critical of the Indian Army”.

This comes as X is challenging the legitimacy of Sahyog, a portal set up by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre to “streamline” orders to take down content, in court. This portal also uses Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology to issue takedown notices.

X has described this portal as a “censorship portal”, and claimed that the Information Technology Act does not contain any provision to create such a portal, or to require social platforms to appoint a nodal officer for it.

Also read:

• How India is using its Information Technology Act to arbitrarily take down online content

• ‘Excessive power to state’: Why experts are worried about Karnataka High Court Twitter verdict

A trial court in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district on Monday convicted 13 persons for murdering a father and son during a violent protest against the Waqf Amendment Act in April, The Indian Express reported.

Harogobind Das, 72, and his 40-year-old son Chandan Das were killed by a mob on April 11 in the district’s Samserganj area.

According to the police, the violence that led to the killings broke out after rumours that security personnel had fired near a mosque, following which arson and attacks were reported in the area, The Times of India reported.

Jangipur Sub-Divisional Court judge Amitabh Mukhopadhyay convicted the persons accused in the case under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to murder, robbery, trespassing, rioting with deadly weapon, causing hurt and wrongful restraint, the newspaper quoted special public prosecutor Bivas Chatterjee as saying.

Violence had broken out in Murshidabad on April 11 and 12 during protests against the Waqf Amendment Act passed by Parliament on April 4. Three persons, including Chandan Das and Hargobind Das, were killed in the violence.

The third fatality was that of a man named Ijaz Momin, who was allegedly shot dead by the police in the Suti town in Murshidabad.

The widow of Harogobindo Das alleged in a first information report that a mob had dragged her husband and son out of their home and murdered them. “Though there were many people, the murder was committed by few people,” she alleged.

A 25-member Special Investigation Team had filed a 983-page chargesheet after six months of the killings.

The SIT conducted raids in West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand to arrest the accused.

The victims’ family had sought the maximum punishment and had also approached the Calcutta High Court seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe, which is still under consideration.

The rioting in Murshidabad led hundreds of Hindus, who are a minority in the district, to flee to neighbouring Malda.

The Waqf Amendment Act curbs the authority of waqf boards and allows greater government control over them. Critics allege that the amended law violates the right to equality and the freedom to manage religious affairs.

A waqf is an endowment under Islamic law dedicated to a religious, educational or charitable cause. Each state has a waqf board led by a legal entity vested with the power to acquire, hold and transfer property.

A Bharatiya Janata Party councillor in Delhi has triggered a row after posting a video on social media in which she is seen threatening to bar a man from teaching football at a public park if he does not learn Hindi within a month.

Reports said that the man was African, but it was unclear which country he is a citizen of. He provides football coaching at a municipal park in the Mayur Vihar area.

The video shows Renu Chaudhary telling the man: “You have not learnt Hindi. Why have you not learnt it? If you do not learn Hindi within a month…then take the park away from him”.

The councillor, who represents the Patparganj ward, also said: “If you make your living here, you must learn the local language as well.”

The man has lived in the area for nearly 15 years, NDTV reported.

Chaudhary told The Hindu that she had visited the park to address unrelated complaints about the park made by residents.

Defending her remarks, Chaudhary was quoted as saying: “Anyone living and working in the country for years should make an effort to understand and speak the local language, just as we respect rules and language of the land when we go abroad.”

National News Channels will not cover this because this isn't from Maharashtra, Karnataka or Tamil Nadu. This is BJP councillor Renu Chaudhary from Delhi confronting an African football coach in a public park, threatening him to learn Hindi within one month. The coach has been… pic.twitter.com/iqMkt9b8gH

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) December 22, 2025

She said that as most people in India speak in Hindi, there is nothing wrong if foreigners learn the language, NDTV reported. The councillor said that it was not her intention to threaten anyone but to ease communication between the coach and the authorities.

Most employees of the municipal corporation do not understand English, Chaudhary added.

“I had asked him eight months ago to pay revenue, as that was an [Municipal Corporation of Delhi] park and he was using it for commercial activities,” NDTV quoted Chaudhary as saying. “Since he was charging children for football lessons, I asked him to pay revenue to the MCD. He told me that he does not understand Hindi.”

“The MCD official had also said that since he did not know Hindi, they were finding it difficult to communicate with him,” she added.

Stating that the Bhagavad Gita is “not a religious book, rather a moral science”, the Madras High Court has set aside the Union government’s decision to deny registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to a trust, reported Live Law on Monday.

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

Justice GR Swaminathan was hearing a petition filed by a trust named Arsha Vidya Parampara, which was set up in 2017 and conducts online classes as well as residential courses to teach Hindu religious texts, yoga and Sanskrit.

The trust had applied for an FCRA license in 2021, but the request remained pending for years, reported Bar and Bench. In 2024 and 2025, the Union home ministry sought clarifications on it.

In January, Arsha Vidya Parampara filed a fresh application, which was rejected in September. The main reason cited by the home ministry was that the trust “appears to be religious”.

The trust moved the High Court challenging this decision.

In his order delivered on December 19, Swaminathan held that the “Bhagavad Gita cannot be confined within a given religion”, reported Live Law.

“It is a part of Bharatiya civilisation,” he was quoted as saying.

The court also said that the Centre’s reasoning that the trust is a religious organisation falls short of the requirements under FCRA Section 11, which pertains to the registration of organisations under the Act.

To deny FCRA registration to such organisations, the government is required to provide a “definite” and well-reasoned explanation, said the court, according to Bar and Bench.

Swaminathan held that in the present case, the authorities had concluded that the trust’s activities “appeared to be religious”, and not definitely religious.

“The authority could have rejected the application by forming a definite conclusion which should of course be based on materials,” he was quoted as saying by Live Law. “It cannot be a tentative one.”

The Centre had told the court that another reason for rejecting the trust’s application was that it had allegedly received foreign funds before obtaining the FCRA registration.

The trust had acknowledged this and chose to “compound” the offence under section 41 of the Act, which allows certain violations to be settled by paying a fee, reported Bar and Bench.

The court held that, as the offence was compounded, it could not be used to reject the application.

Swaminathan directed the Centre to issue a fresh notice in the application and pass its order within three months.

Swaminathan was at the centre of controversy earlier this month, when Opposition MPs submitted an impeachment notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against him. The legislators contended that the judge’s recent orders and actions have been viewed as “disruptive to social harmony and detrimental to integrity of the judiciary”.

This had come against the backdrop of Swaminathan’s order directing the authorities of the Subramaniya Swamy Temple at Thirupparankundram in Madurai to ensure that the Karthigai Deepam was lit at the deepathoon, a stone pillar, near a dargah on the top of a hill.

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

A video showing a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur assaulting a visually impaired woman inside a church, accusing her of carrying out religious conversion, triggered a row in the state on Monday.

The assault took place on Saturday at a church in the Hawa Bagh area under the Gorakhpur police station, reported The New Indian Express.

In the video, the BJP’s Jabalpur city unit Vice President Anju Bhargava is seen shouting at the woman in the presence of a police officer.

Bhargava is seen abusing the woman, twisting her arm and grabbing her face. The woman is heard asking Bhargava to speak to her instead of assaulting her.

The BJP leader is also heard telling the woman that she “will be blind in her next birth too”.

Bhargava had entered the church with members of several Hindutva organisations, alleging that visually impaired children were being coerced into religious conversion, reported The Indian Express on Tuesday.

Police officials told the newspaper that the gathering had been organised by Christian organisations as part of Christmas celebrations.

Visually impaired students were invited from a government-run hostel for lunch and a prayer meet.

The students denied that any religious conversions had taken place during the gathering. An unidentified police officer was also quoted as saying by The Indian Express that there was “no evidence of forced conversion”.

Despite this, Hindutva organisations registered a complaint with the police, questioning how students from a government hostel were taken to a religious site without informing the authorities, reported The Indian Express.

They also claimed that prayers conducted during the gathering were “exclusively Christian in nature and that non-vegetarian food was served”.

Speaking to the newspaper, Bhargava defended her actions and said that she had arrived at the church after receiving information that “visually impaired women” were being “held against their will” near the church.

She also claimed that she was “assaulted during the confrontation, but no complaint was filed by her side because the woman involved was blind”.

Sharing a video of the assault on social media, the Congress leader Supriya Shrinate said that “cruelty is the easiest way to advance in the BJP”.

“These people are stains on society,” said Shrinate, referring to Bhargava.

यह औरत जो एक दृष्टिहीन लड़की के साथ मारपीट कर रही है वो जबलपुर में BJP की उप जिलाध्यक्ष अंजू भार्गव हैं

यह जाहिलियत और क्रूरता करना BJP में आगे बढ़ने का सबसे आसान तरीका है

धब्बे हैं यह लोग समाज पर
pic.twitter.com/tgsxjzhaLA

— Supriya Shrinate (@SupriyaShrinate) December 22, 2025

Hundreds of persons associated with Hindutva groups staged a demonstration outside the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi on Tuesday against communal violence in that country, including the recent lynching of a Hindu man, PTI reported.

Some of the protestors were associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal.

Several persons were detained by the Delhi Police after the disruption in the high-security diplomatic zone, ANI reported.

The authorities had deployed additional police and paramilitary personnel and erected three layers of barricades around the mission in anticipation of the protest, PTI reported. Despite this, the police still reportedly struggled to contain the crowd.

#WATCH | Delhi | Members of Vishva Hindu Parishad and other Hindu organisations protest near the Bangladesh High Commission over the atrocities against Hindus and the mob lynching of Dipu Chandra Das in Bangladesh pic.twitter.com/PTsCWrKCrO

— ANI (@ANI) December 23, 2025

A Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das, was beaten to death in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district on Thursday night by a mob that accused him of blasphemy. His body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire. Seven persons have been arrested in the case so far.

He was killed amid widespread unrest in Bangladesh following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, who succumbed to gunshot injuries at a hospital in Singapore on Thursday.

Hadi was a prominent leader in the 2024 student protest that led to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government.

Here is more on this and other top updates:

• Protests similar to the ones in Delhi were also held outside the Bangladesh Visa Application Centre in West Bengal’s Siliguri on Monday, The Statesman reported. Bangladesh has since suspended all consular services at its missions in Delhi and Agartala.
• Bangladesh’s foreign ministry on Tuesday summoned the Indian envoy in the country to express concerns about the security of its missions in India, Hindustan Times reported. The foreign ministry said it condemned “such acts of premeditated violence or intimidation against diplomatic establishments, which not only endanger the safety of diplomatic personnel but also undermine the principles of mutual respect and values of peace and tolerance”. 
• Hindu leaders in Bangladesh on Monday held a human chain-protest in Dhaka, seeking justice for Das and alleging that the government had failed to protect minorities, The Daily Star reported. Manindra Kumar Nath, the joint coordinator of the Minority Unity Front, said that while Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus claimed that he was building a humane country, he was in reality “an inhumane chief adviser”. 
• The Secretary-General of the United Nations also expressed concern on Monday about the violence in Bangladesh. “We’re very concerned about the violence that we’ve seen in Bangladesh,”  Stéphane Dujarric, the UN chief’s spokesperson said. “Whether it’s in Bangladesh or any other countries…people who don’t belong to the ‘majority’ need to feel safe and all Bangladeshis need to feel safe.”

Also Read: Opinion: What India must do to help restore stability in Bangladesh

The Economic Offences Wing and Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Chhattisgarh Police on Monday alleged that former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s son, Chaitanya Baghel, personally gained Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore in an alleged liquor scam in the state between 2019 and 2022, The Indian Express reported.

Bhupesh Baghel was the chief minister of Chhattisgarh between December 2018 and December 2023.

In its seventh supplementary chargesheet filed on Monday, the Economic Offences Wing alleged that a syndicate of senior bureaucrats, politicians and excise department officials operated a parallel excise system, selling illegal liquor and causing a loss of Rs 3,074 crore to the state exchequer, The Indian Express reported.

Chaitanya Baghel, who was arrested in July in connection with the alleged liquor scam, has been accused of acting as a bridge between government officials and the alleged liquor syndicate.

The Economic Offences Wing has alleged that Chaitanya Baghel helped transfer proceeds collected by the network allegedly run by Anwar Dhebar, another accused in the case, up the chain within the liquor syndicate, The Indian Express reported.

Anwar Dhebar is the brother of former Raipur Mayor and Congress leader Aijaz Dhebar.

In return, Chaitanya Baghel allegedly received a share of the money through firms linked to another suspect in the case, Trilok Singh Dhillon. The funds were then allegedly funnelled into family-owned firms and real estate projects.

“The scale of the scam evidence indicates that besides managing funds at a high level, Chaitanya personally received approximately Rs 200-Rs 250 crore,” The Indian Express quoted a press release by the agency as saying.

An unidentified official told The Indian Express that as of now the liquor scam was valued at Rs 3,074 crore, but further investigation suggested that the amount could exceed Rs 3,500 crore.

With this a total of eight chargesheets have been filed in the case so far, The Times of India reported.

In response to the Economic Offences Wing’s allegations, Chaitanya Baghel’s lawyer told The Indian Express that the investigating agency has “no evidence”.

“They are making a case based on statements of absconding accused in the case,” he was quoted as saying.

In September, the Enforcement Directorate had alleged that Chaitanya Baghel was the “controller and ultimate authority” of the “organised liquor syndicate” in the state.

The Enforcement Directorate had also claimed that it had established that the former chief minister’s son personally handled about Rs 1,000 crore generated from the alleged scam.

The liquor scam case

The Chhattisgarh Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a first information report in the alleged liquor scam in January 2024 based on the Enforcement Directorate’s complaints.

The bureau had alleged that during Bhupesh Baghel’s tenure a syndicate of bureaucrats and politicians ran a parallel excise department, under which liquor was sold without any revenue going to the state exchequer.

The FIR accused 70 persons of involvement in the alleged scam, including former state Excise Minister Kawasi Lakhma, Special Secretary Arun Pati Tripathi and Indian Administrative Service officer Anil Tuteja.

They have been charged with corruption, cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The authorities in Kerala have confirmed an outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the Alappuzha and Kottayam districts, PTI reported on Tuesday.

State Animal Husbandry Minister J Chinchu Rani told the news agency that samples sent to a central laboratory in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal confirmed the outbreak in the two districts.

“Cases of avian flu came to our notice about a week ago,” PTI quoted Rani as saying.

Bird flu or avian influenza is a highly contagious disease caused by Influenza Type A viruses. The disease affects poultry and does not spread easily among humans. Those who come in contact with infected birds can contract the flu.

In the latest outbreak, cases have been reported from Alappuzha’s Nedumudi, Cheruthana, Karuvatta, Karthikappally, Ambalappuzha South, Punnapra South, Thakazhi and Purakkad panchayats, The Hindu reported.

While chickens were found to be infected in Nedumudi, ducks were affected in the remaining areas.

In Kottayam, the disease has been recorded in the Kuruppanthara, Manjoor, Kallupurakkal and Velur villages, the newspaper reported. Quails and chickens were found to be infected in these villages.

Rani told PTI that the State Animal Husbandry Department was currently assessing the intensity of the outbreak, adding that no restrictions had been imposed on the consumption of poultry products so far.

“However, after further analysis, if required, steps such as culling and restrictions on the consumption of poultry meat will be announced,” she added.

Poultry farmers could be affected due to the outbreak as sales usually rise during the Christmas and New Year season, she added.

Compensation is generally provided to farmers, the minister said. “However, on some occasions, there are issues related to fund allocation from the Centre, and the state has to depend on its own funds,” the news agency quoted Rani as saying.

Expert teams were working on the ground in light of the outbreak, she said.

“Our assessment is that avian flu spreads through migratory birds,” the minister said, adding that a similar outbreak had been reported in Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta last year too.

Also read: Avian flu isn’t ‘one mutation away’ from becoming the next pandemic – yet

Three persons, one from Gujarat and two from Uttar Pradesh, were arrested by the Karnataka Police for allegedly sharing sensitive information about the Indian Navy with handlers in Pakistan, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

The Gujarat resident, 34-year-old Hirendra Kumar, was arrested on Saturday, The Indian Express reported. The two others, 29-year-old Rohit and 37-year-old Santri, both from Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur district, were arrested in November.

They have been booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to acts endangering the sovereignty and integrity of India, as well as Section 3 and Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act, which deal with spying and the wrongful communication of official information, the newspaper reported.

Rohit and Santri were employed as insulators at Shushma Marine Private Limited, a subcontractor for the Udupi Cochin Shipyard.

The police alleged that Rohit collected confidential details about naval ships, including identification numbers, repair schedules and sensitive infrastructure information, and messaged them to Pakistani handlers, NDTV reported.

He continued to do so with Santri’s assistance even after being transferred from the site, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

Kumar allegedly provided Rohit with a SIM card registered in his name in exchange for money, the police alleged.

“The Gujarat-based accused was supplying SIM cards and OTPs that were used to activate WhatsApp accounts for communication with Pakistani handlers,” NDTV quoted Assistant Superintendent of Police of Karkala sub-division Harsha Priyamvada as saying.

The case came to light in November when the chief executive officer of Cochin Shipyard filed a complaint at Malpe police station about a security breach.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, five residents of Kashmir were arrested on Thursday by the Arunachal Pradesh Police on charges of spying, Inspector General of Police, Law and Order, Chukhu Apa told Scroll.

They have been booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and are accused of collecting “sensitive information from different parts of Arunachal Pradesh and sharing it with their Pakistani handlers”.

Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on Monday claimed that the redefining of the Aravalli Hills is only meant to prevent illegal mining in the area and added that the Narendra Modi government remains committed to protecting and restoring the mountain range, PTI reported.

Yadav said that mining remains prohibited in the National Capital Region.

The 700-km Aravalli mountain range stretches diagonally from southwest Gujarat, through Rajasthan to Delhi and Haryana. Its highest point is Guru Shikhar in Mount Abu, which rises to an elevation of 1,722 metres.

Under the new definition that has been accepted by the Supreme Court, an Aravalli hill is any landform that rises at least 100 metres above the surrounding terrain. An Aravalli range is formed by two or more such hills located within 500 metres of each other, including the land between them.

However, environmentalists have warned that defining the Aravallis solely by their height could leave many lower, scrub-covered but ecologically important hills vulnerable to mining and construction. Experts say these smaller hills are crucial for preventing desertification, recharging groundwater and supporting local livelihoods.

On Monday, Yadav said that the new definition was designed to allow “sustainable mining legally”. He said that no new mining leases will be granted until a comprehensive Management Plan for Sustainable Mining is finalised.

Only 0.19% of the entire Aravalli area can potentially be mined, Yadav added.

He said that the Congress was spreading misinformation and lies on the matter.

“The Congress, which allowed rampant illegal mining in Rajasthan during its tenure, is spreading confusion, misinformation and lies about the issue,” PTI quoted the minister as having alleged.

The Congress has criticised the new definition, saying that the changes could have devastating ecological consequences for the region, ANI reported.

Congress leader Pawan Khera accused the government of jeopardising the ecological balance of the National Capital Region and other nearby areas.

“If the new order on the Aravallis is implemented, the ecological balance of this entire region, several states, or half of Hindustan will be destroyed,” he said.

Congress leader Sachin Pilot also expressed concerns and asked “what will we leave behind for our future generations” if we allow illegal mining to continue, ANI reported.

Also read: The slow destruction of Delhi’s forgotten spine

In December 2024, government data submitted in Parliament reiterated how caste is central to sanitation work in India.

In response to a minister’s question in Lok Sabha, the Ministry of Social Justice said “sewer and Septic Tank Cleaning is an occupation based activity rather than caste based” though the data provided contradicted this assertion.

Of the 57,758 sewer and septic tank workers profiled across India’s urban local bodies, a majority of 68%, or 37,060, are from Scheduled Castes. About 8.05% of the sanitation workers were categorised as “general”. The data was gathered as part of the Centre’s National Action for Mechanized Sanitation Ecosystem Mission, or Namaste scheme, to be implemented in urban bodies.

These figures hold up a mirror to frequent debates on cleanliness, sanitation and “civic sense” in Indian cities. The politics of who cleans and who does not is fundamental to civic behaviour.

Cleanliness is usually described as a matter of civic sense: people, it is said, must behave better, litter less and keep public spaces clean. But civic behaviour is shaped by the society they live in.

Inside homes in India, hygiene is maintained through constant labour, most of it done by women family members or women domestic workers. Outside the home, sanitation work is similarly carried out primarily by lower castes. These differences shape who learns to see cleanliness as hard work and who learns to see it as something provided for them.

At the same time, those who undertake hazardous sanitation work largely reside in informal settlements or poorer parts of the cities with inadequate garbage management and overflowing drains. Those who benefit from their work live and move in cleaner spaces where the labour behind cleanliness stays invisible.

Caste, class and labour

Under the caste system, the “untouchable” castes have historically been assigned the “polluting” labour of tasks such as cleaning, or handling bodies and dead animals. The colonial British administration relied on the same caste system for organised waste removal and drain cleaning in Indian towns and cities: “sweeper” became “sanitary worker,” and “caste-bound duty” became “municipal service”.

This continues to structure sanitation work and even the geography of India’s modern cities.

Much of sanitation and cleaning work happens before cities wake up, keeping the labour out of sight. In wealthy neighbourhoods and gated societies, cleaning workers wait outside the gate because they are not allowed to enter buildings.

Sanitation workers enter airports and shiny malls only as cleaners, rarely users. Earlier this year, an Air India advisory asked passengers to flush properly and leave airplane washrooms usable, reported The Times of India. According to the airline, passengers had flushed clothes, plastic bags and rags. Those who have never performed cleaned, treat public facilities as if maintenance is automatic.

In September, a sanitation worker, with no safety gear, was filmed cleaning a clogged drain outside the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly declared manual scavenging – cleaning sewers by hand – illegal.

In cities and towns across India, cleaning contractors send sanitation workers into sewers and septic tanks with little more than a rope and a bucket. A deadly job becomes regular maintenance work. Everyone involved knows the work is illegal, but they also know who takes the risk.

Data submitted in Parliament year after year shows whose lives pay the price or cleanliness: between 2019 and 2023, at least 377 people died cleaning sewer and septic tanks.

For the bodies that labour and clean, cleanliness is elusive: the areas they return to look nothing like the ones they clean. Several homes depend on a single tap and public toilets are dirty or not functioning for weeks.

A study by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, reported by Article 14 in 2023, found that Dalit neighbourhoods across several Indian cities receive weaker water supply, slower repairs and fewer municipal visits.

Civic sense

When the work of cleanliness is unequal, the habits formed through them will also be unequal.

A 2014 investigation by Human Rights Watch found that municipal bodies often recruit from the same neighbourhoods, assuming the work will continue within the same communities. “I am a cleaner. I am born to do this,” Deepak Valmiki told The Guardian in 2018.

Children learn the same lesson by watching whom officials call when a drain overflows, who is sent when a septic tank collapses and who returns home soaked in sewage after the job. Unless these conditions change, the disregard for the labour of cleanliness and hygiene will remain the same.

India’s failure to inculcate civic sense is the result of a society conditioned to outsourcing the labour of cleaning: where children grow up in homes where women clean, and in cities where specific caste groups clean everything else.

Unless cleanliness is collective, it will never become a collective habit.

Mohit Nirmender studies how labour, public infrastructure and state systems shape everyday life and social inequality across contemporary societies.

The administration in Assam’s Biswanath district has ordered two declared foreigners to leave the state within 24 hours, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The orders were issued by the district administration under the 1950 Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act.

The Act grants power to district commissioners and senior superintendents of police to expel “illegal migrants” from the state by bypassing the foreigners tribunals.

The order, dated December 20, named Asmul Khatun and Afuja Begum, stating that they were declared foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunal in 2005, The Indian Express reported.

It added that being a declared foreigner, Khatun and Begum’s “presence in India/state of Assam” was “detrimental to the interest of general public” and “internal security of the state”, the newspaper reported.

The order directed them to leave the state through the Dhubri, Sribhumi or South Salmara-Mankachar routes. This effectively requires the two to leave the country.

Biswanath Superintendent of Police Ajagwran Basumatary told The Indian Express that the women are being detained at the Matia Transit Camp in Goalpara district.

“Their deportation is under process and will be undertaken in due time after receiving the green signal from the Border Security Force,” Basumatary was quoted as saying.

Similar orders were issued against 15 persons in Nagaon district on December 17, and against five persons in Sonitpur district on November 18.

In September, the Assam Cabinet approved the framing of a standard operating procedure under the Act. Earlier, cases pertaining to undocumented migrants were handled by foreigners tribunals.

Sarma had said that the standard operating procedure to use the 1950 Act had been approved, which would, to a large extent, “nullify” the role of the foreigners tribunals.

Foreigners tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. However, the tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and of declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

As per the standard operating procedure, if a district commissioner receives information from the police or other sources that a person is suspected to be an “illegal immigrant”, the official will direct the person to produce evidence of his citizenship within 10 days, Sarma had at the time.

If the district commissioner finds that the evidence submitted is not satisfactory, he can pass an expulsion order by invoking the 1950 Act, ordering the removal of the undocumented immigrant from Assam “by giving 24 hours’ time and by the route so specified”.

In June, Sarma informed the Assembly that the state government was planning to invoke the 1950 law to “push back” more suspected foreigners.

The chief minister had claimed that the expulsion of declared foreigners was justified in the legal framework provided by the Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act.

Also read: Why experts contest Assam CM’s use of 1950 law to justify forcing out people into Bangladesh

A mob in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district on Monday set fire to the ancestral home of Tuliram Ronghang, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and the chief of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, a district official told Scroll.

Following the violence, the authorities in the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts prohibited public gatherings under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita until further orders.

Members of the Karbi community have been on a hunger strike for about two weeks, demanding that Hindi-speaking persons with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh be evicted from the town of Kheroni. The town is about 25 km from Dongkamukam, where Tuliram’s home is located.

The protesters have been demanding that Hindi speakers be evicted from village grazing reserves and professional grazing reserves.

On Monday morning, the Assam Police detained seven protesters, including women, from the site of the hunger strike. This triggered protests later in the day, and led to Tuliram’s home being burned down, a resident of the area told Scroll.

Four persons, including a policeman, were injured when security forces opened fire at the demonstrators, PTI reported.

A police officer who was at the spot said that about 800 to 1,000 persons arrived in the area and broke police barricades.

“They threw stones at us,” the official said. “Many police personnel, including the superintendent of police, were injured.”

Pawan Kumar, a member of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council, said that the protesters also tried to torch his home and damaged a vehicle. “They tried to torch the house, but the security personnel prevented them from doing so,” Kumar told Scroll.

The Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council is a self-governing body set up to administer the Karbi Anglong and West Karbi Anglong districts under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. It is currently headed by the BJP.

The Karbi community is Assam’s third largest tribe, constituting 11.1% of the state’s 38.8 lakh tribal population, after Bodo and Mising.

In February 2024, the council ordered officials to evict more than 2,000 families from grazing land in the hills of Assam, alleging that they were unauthorised occupants of the land. Most of those affected were Hindi-speaking residents with origins in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

The action had come in the backdrop of protests and demonstrations by Karbi civil society groups against the Hindi-speaking population in the region. One such protest was followed by violence in Kheroni on February 15, 2024, when members of a Karbi students’ group came under attack allegedly from Hindi speakers.

Also read:

Why tribal groups in Assam’s Karbi hills are demanding the eviction of Hindi speakers

Delhi’s air quality was in the “severe” category on Tuesday, with 29 of the city’s 40 monitoring stations recording Air Quality Index readings above 400, according to data from the Sameer application at 9.05 am.

The national capital’s average AQI stood at 416, showed the application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

At least five stations recorded an AQI of 450 or more, which is in the “severe plus” category.

At 9 am, the Delhi airport said that flight operations had been hampered because of “dense fog”, which may cause delays and cancellations.

The cities adjoining the capital also reported hazardous air quality levels on Monday. While Noida recorded an AQI of 428, Ghaziabad 416 and Greater Noida 378, Gurugram remained in the “very poor” category at 362.

An index value between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air. Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

An AQI in the “severe” and “severe plus” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

#WATCH | Delhi | Layer of toxic smog shrouds the national capital as air quality remains in 'very poor' quality, as claimed by the Central Pollution Control Board

CAQM (Commission for Air Quality Management) has invoked all actions under GRAP Stage-IV in Delhi-NCR.

Drone… pic.twitter.com/NIeEnM9Y70

— ANI (@ANI) December 23, 2025

Delhi and the National Capital Region are under Stage 4 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan to curb pollution. The restrictions came into force on December 13 after the air quality slipped into the “severe plus” category.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region.

The air quality in the national capital had worsened to the “severe plus” category between December 13 and December 15, but had improved marginally to the “very poor” category till December 22.

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

Also read: Why air quality numbers in Delhi vary widely

I could not believe that I was holding something that was probably a hundred million years old. I had in my hand an ammonite, a fossilised hard-shelled creature.

I was on a reporting trip in Uttarakhand, with my colleague Kritika. We were documenting how road widening work under the Chardham project had led to an increased number of landslides in the Garwhal Himalaya.

Just short of the temple of Badrinath, one of the four shrines part of the Chardham pilgrimage, among the stalls selling prashad, we spotted a vendor with a small basket full of ammonites. I gasped in excitement. Mistaking my enthusiasm for the fossil with devoutness, the vendor promptly told us, “It’s a shaligram, an avatar of Vishnu.”

He started to explain the folklore behind it, but my mind had already drifted. Ammonites were marine creatures, the closest relative to them are our modern-day squids. So what were these fossils doing 11,000 feet above the sea, in the Himalayas?

“I got these from Nepal’s Gandak river,” the vendor told us.

That’s when facts I had gleaned over the years from lectures on fossils, YouTube videos, and Pranay Lal’s book Indica started to knit themselves together in my mind.

Indeed, a sea used to exist here.

Before the Himalayan range emerged, the Tethys ocean sprawled from what is today’s Gibraltar in the west to Indonesia in the east.

Ammonites lived in these waters, some feeding on drifting organic matter, others hunting smaller organisms for food. The fossils in the vendor’s basket were small enough to easily fit in my palm, but their ancestors could grow as large as a truck tyre.

Ammonites flourished until about 65 million years ago, when a sudden change in climate killed the planktons and other small oceanic creatures which they fed on. They disappeared from earth around the same time as the dinosaurs.

Centuries later, India’s landmass collided with the Eurasian plate. With this, the Tethys ocean slowly started to break into a string of salty lakes, which ultimately dried up.

As the plates continued to push against each other, they caused the land to rise and take the shape of mountains. The Himalayas, so formed, contain in them sediments from the Tethys ocean – including the fossils of ammonites.

This explains why Nepal’s Gandak river abounds with these fossils.

If you, like me, find it hard to grasp time on this scale, there is an easier way to do this. Think about Earth’s history as a single day of 24 hours. The first sign of life emerged at 4 am. Hard-shelled creatures like ammonites arrived at 9:30 pm – and vanished around 11 pm. The Himalaya started to rise at 11:45 pm. We, humans, showed up just four seconds before midnight, which is when the earth became as we know it today.

We may have been around only for a short while but we are having an outsized impact on the planet – and part of my job is documenting these changes in India.

On this trip, Kritika and I were reporting on how unscientific cutting of the mountains was triggering massive landslides, with home after home developing cracks because of land subsidence. Local residents also complained of changing weather patterns – not enough snowfall in the winter, too much rain in the monsoon – making agriculture unsustainable.

Naturally, it is not just people who are bearing the brunt of human-induced climate change – all of Himalayan flora and fauna is affected, including the fossils. With increasing glacier melt and gravel mining, the Gandak river is changing its course and it is becoming harder to find the fossils.

We might lose ammonites to climate change once again.

For now, the fossil I picked up at Badrinath lies safely at my home in the company of other souvenirs from field reporting – salt crystals from Gujarat’s Kutch, pine cones from Himachal Pradesh, and shells from Nicobar, each a reminder of how rapidly landscapes are changing on a warming earth.

All photographs by Vaishnavi Rathore.

The Bangladeshi High Commission in New Delhi and the Assistant High Commission in Agartala have suspended consular and visa services until further notice amid diplomatic tensions following unrest in Bangladesh.

The decision came two days after a group of 20 to 25 persons protested outside the Bangladeshi High Commission in New Delhi, The Daily Star reported on Monday.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain told reporters in Dhaka on Sunday that he had received information that the country’s High Commissioner Riaz Hamidullah had been made death threats by protesters on Saturday evening, the newspaper reported.

On Sunday, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs rejected reports in Bangladesh claiming that Indian citizens had threatened Bangladeshi diplomats in New Delhi, calling the allegations “misleading propaganda”.

Responding to queries about the reported demonstration, external affairs ministry Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Sunday said that a group of 20 to 25 persons had gathered to protest the killing of Dipu Chandra Das, a member of Bangladesh’s Hindu community, and to demand protection for minorities in the country.

Das was beaten to death on Thursday after which his body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire during the unrest in Bangladesh last week.

Jaiswal on Sunday added that there had been no attempt to breach security at the Bangladeshi High Commission and that the gathering dispersed within minutes, reiterating India’s commitment to the safety of foreign missions and diplomats under the Vienna Convention.

The suspension of services came against the backdrop of widespread unrest in Bangladesh following the killing of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi.

The death of Hadi, a prominent leader of the 2024 student-led movement against the Sheikh Hasina government, triggered protests, vandalism and clashes in several parts of Bangladesh.

Stones were thrown at the residence of the assistant Indian high commissioner in Chittagong on Thursday. The offices of newspapers and properties linked to Hasina’s Awami League were also attacked.

On Sunday, New Delhi suspended visa operations at its Chittagong centre and heightened security around Indian diplomatic missions following attacks in Bangladesh.

India operates five Indian Visa Application Centres in Bangladesh: Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Sylhet. An official told PTI that the remaining four centres were operational as of Sunday.

India had resumed visa operations at its Dhaka centre on Thursday, a day after suspending services amid heightened security concerns. The centres in Rajshahi and Khulna were also briefly shut after anti-India protesters attempted to march towards Indian missions in those cities.

Agartala

The Bangladeshi Assistant High Commission in Agartala on Monday also said that consular and visa services at the mission will be closed from Tuesday until further notice.

This came after protests were held last week outside the Assistant High Commission in Agartala by a Hindutva group and the youth wing of the TIPRA Motha Party, an ally of Tripura’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The demonstrators were protesting against remarks by leaders in Bangladesh threatening to isolate India’s North East states and to provide refuge to the region’s separatist groups if Bangladesh is destabilised.

Protests in Kolkata

West Bengal’s Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari and Congress leaders held protests outside the Bangladeshi Deputy High Commission in Kolkata on Monday against attacks on Hindus in the neighbouring country, The Hindu reported.

Adhikari, along with Bharatiya Janata Party supporters, attempted to march to the Bangladeshi Deputy High Commission in the Beck Bagan area and were stopped by the Kolkata Police citing security concerns, the newspaper reported.

The protesters had a scuffle with the police after being barred from entering the premises and effigies of the Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, were burnt.

Following this, Adhikari and others staged a sit-in on the road.

Congress workers had held a similar protest outside the Deputy High Commission a few hours before BJP’s demonstration. They were also stopped by the police before they could enter the premises to submit a deputation, The Hindu reported.

The brutal lynching of our brave Hindu Brother; Dipu Chandra Das, by a fanatic mob in Mymensingh; Bangladesh, over baseless blasphemy allegations, is a stark reminder of the escalating genocide against Hindus in that country.
Today, I along with thousands in Kolkata marched to… pic.twitter.com/qsqkzBZdBB

— Suvendu Adhikari (@SuvenduWB) December 22, 2025

Also Read: Opinion: What India must do to help restore stability in Bangladesh

Days after the Bihar Assembly elections, leaders from the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress – the two biggest Opposition parties in the state – began blaming each other for their sizeable defeat. Their Mahagathbandhan alliance managed to win only 35 of Bihar’s 243 seats, prompting some to suggest that it may no longer be viable for them to contest elections together in the future.

The election was swept by the National Democratic Alliance consisting of the Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

On the national stage, the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal are members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – and the Bihar result created ripples in this broad anti-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition too.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the INDIA bloc had played a key role in denying the BJP a simple majority. The BJP was able to return to power only with the support of its National Democratic Alliance partners.

The INDIA alliance has stayed together since then and even won elections in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir.

But after Bihar, the media was rife with speculation that the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, an INDIA member, was going to switch sides and join hands with the BJP. The party, which successfully led the Opposition in last year’s Jharkhand elections, was upset that its allies had not given it any seats to contest in Bihar.

In an interview with Hindustan Times on December 7, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah sympathised with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha. The prominent INDIA bloc leader admitted that the alliance had failed to fight unitedly in several states. Asked if this meant that the coalition was dead, Abdullah responded: “We are sort of on life support.”

Abdullah is not alone. Several members of the alliance shared similar views when Scroll contacted them. Few were optimistic about the bloc sticking together in all the state elections expected to be held next year. Most blamed Congress, the largest Opposition party, for this situation.

The only unifying factor for INDIA parties, these leaders noted, is their antipathy towards the BJP. That is what brings them on one page to raise issues such as “vote chori”, the catch-all term used by the Congress and its allies to refer to the BJP’s alleged electoral malpractices.

Collective action, coordination, cynicism

But this cooperation is limited to protests in Parliament and social media campaigns. It does not necessarily translate into collective action on the ground. For example, no other INDIA party joined the Congress rally against so-called vote chori, or vote theft, in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on December 14. It is unclear if the Congress had even invited their leaders to the event.

“So far, the alliance has been basically limited to some parliamentary coordination and electoral seat-sharing,” complained Dipankar Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. “It has to go beyond this. It has to be more programmatic and more organically connected with all the ongoing struggles.”

He suggested that INDIA parties should hold joint protests against the four new labour codes introduced by the Modi government in November. Bhattacharya believes this could provide the alliance an impetus because it was the massive farmers’ protests of 2020 that gave a fillip to Opposition politics in the country before.

However, others are more cynical about the road ahead.

Supriyo Bhattacharya, general secretary of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, anticipated that the INDIA bloc is likely to remain disunited till the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, after which it would regroup to chart its way forward. The reason for this, he contended, is that most parties were choosing to prioritise their own interests over taking partners along.

“We got to see in Bihar that many of the parties which are leading the fight against the BJP are unfortunately lacking in coordination among themselves,” he said. “Alliances are all about balance. We tried to strike that balance in Jharkhand and expected our allies to do the same elsewhere. The Bihar result shows that they were unable to do so.”

Another place where INDIA parties are running in different directions is Maharashtra, which will hold elections to its municipal corporations in January. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a spokesperson from one alliance member admitted that the Maha Vikas Aghadi, as the Opposition formation is known in the state, may not survive in its current form.

While all parties in the alliance had fared poorly in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Congress party’s predicament was different from that of others, this leader argued. Allies may not stay with it because the Congress does not have enough workers to be valuable in local politics. In addition, for the sake of its own future in the state, the party may also prefer to go alone.

“It depends on whether you are rebuilding a party or keeping it alive,” this person added. “Regeneration and survival are not mutually compatible. Other INDIA parties are in survival mode. But the Congress has to rebuild itself from the bottom up.”

Those in the Congress know this well. Anshul Avijit, a national spokesperson of the Congress, was candid about the challenge his party faces. In fact, he blamed coalition politics for “constricting” his party’s growth.

“If we do not fight for seats, if there are districts where we do not have a candidate, what organisation will we be left with?” he asked. “People simply leave the party. Over the years, Congress had to pay this price for coalition politics.”

That is why the party insisted on contesting 61 seats in Bihar, which led to so-called friendly fights that ultimately damaged the alliance, Avijit explained.

In Delhi, too, Congress contested Assembly polls alone earlier this year and seemingly hurt the Aam Aadmi Party, which was then its ally at the national level. The grand old party’s conduct offended Aam Aadmi so much that it walked out of the INDIA bloc soon after.

Ideological allies

However, this does not mean that the INDIA bloc has fallen apart everywhere. In parts of the country such as Tamil Nadu, it remains intact. Saravanan Annadurai of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which heads the ruling coalition in the state, said this was because of the ideological alignment among INDIA parties.

“We oppose the divisive ideology of the BJP,” the party spokesperson said. “Electoral setbacks apart, there is a strong bond that ties all of us. Nobody is going to say tomorrow that BJP is a saint and ally with them.”

Issues like “vote chori” are also bringing these parties closer, he said. Anshul Avijit, the Congress leader, agreed that opposition parties purportedly shortchanged by the BJP’s alleged malpractices will continue to stick together in the coalition.

“There is a common ground and an ideological enemy,” he added. “Everyone is on the same page regarding that. In the fine and minute details, there may be disagreements. These will be hashed out in due course.”

Allies in one state, rivals in another

When it comes to Opposition unity, state elections to be held next year in Assam, West Bengal, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are likely to be a mixed bag. INDIA parties are expected to contest together only in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

In Kerala, the Congress party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) will once again lock horns in a bitter battle as they lead their respective state-level coalitions into the polls. In West Bengal, though, they might join hands.

Without naming the Congress, Mohammed Salim, state secretary of the CPI(M), told Scroll that he was open to allying with other “secular and democratic” parties. But, he added, that they must ask for seats according to their strength in the state.

“Strength should be displayed through movements, mass mobilisation and organisation,” he pointed out. “After the Bihar election, I think they [Congress] will be realistic.”

But even if the Congress and CPI(M) come together, they will still have to contend with the Trinamool Congress, which is the ruling party in West Bengal. While the Trinamool Congress is a member of the INDIA bloc, it did not contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections or the 2021 Assembly elections before that with any other INDIA ally.

Party leaders that Scroll spoke to dismissed the possibility of an alliance with the Congress ahead of the next election in the state. The Trinamool Congress is also likely to field candidates in some constituencies in Assam, where the contest is otherwise a straight fight between the BJP and the Congress.

Samajwadi Party National Secretary Abhishek Mishra acknowledged that the INDIA bloc must avoid such contests. But he sided with the Trinamool in this instance, blaming the Congress for refusing to follow the lead of its allies in regions where they are the dominant players.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party emerged as the largest player. The result came as a boost for the party, which last ruled the state in 2017 and is now gearing up for the 2027 Assembly elections.

What would be the best tactic for the INDIA coalition to win crucial states like West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh? Mishra, the Samajwadi Party spokesperson, believes that the Congress should cede leadership to regional parties in state elections just like they had accepted its national role.

“The captain for T20s will have to be different from the captain in Test matches,” Mishra said, drawing an analogy to cricket’s different formats. “In state elections, Congress will have to play a supporting role to regional players.”

Former Punjab Inspector-General of Police Amar Singh Chahal shot himself with a security guard’s revolver on Monday after allegedly losing money in a cyber fraud, The Indian Express reported.

Chahal was taken to hospital with a chest injury and is in critical condition, The Tribune reported.

Patiala Senior Superintendent of Police Varun Sharma was quoted as saying by The Indian Express that a 12-page note was recovered from Chahal’s home in the city, where the incident took place.

The note is addressed to the Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav mentions financial distress after Chahal was allegedly duped in a Rs 8.1-crore cyber fraud, the senior superintendent of police said.

An investigation into the incident, including the claims made by Chahal, was underway, the police said.

The former Indian Police Service officer is accused of involvement in the 2015 Kotkapura firing case.

In October 2015, the police fired at a group of protesters and lathi-charged them in the Faridkot district’s Kotkapura city, injuring several persons. Later on the same day, two persons were killed in police firing at the district’s Behbal Kalan village.

The protests were against a series of incidents of desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text of the Sikhs.

Several persons have been accused of being involved in a conspiracy to use illegal and excessive force against the protesters. They have been charged under provisions pertaining to attempted murder and criminal conspiracy, among others, under the Indian Penal Code. They have also been charged under the Arms Act.

The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the conviction of former Maharashtra minister Manikrao Kokate in a 1995 document tampering and fraud case, Live Law reported.

The stay means that the leader from the faction of the Nationalist Congress Party headed by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar will not be disqualified as an MLA while the case is being heard.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi passed the order on a plea filed by Kokate challenging a Bombay High Court order that had suspended his sentence but not stayed his conviction.

However, the Supreme Court said that Kokate will not be able to hold an office of profit while the matter is heard.

In February, a trial court held Kokate and his brother guilty of fraudulently acquiring flats in the Nirman View Apartment in Nashik’s Yeolekar Mala in 1995 under a government scheme by misrepresenting their income.

They had been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined Rs 50,000. The court subsequently granted the Sinnar MLA bail.

The trial court held that Kokate and his brother acquired the flats by forging documents to falsely show that they belonged to the low-income group and their annual income to be below Rs 30,000, which enabled them to secure flats under the chief minister’s 10% discretionary quota.

However, on Monday, Bagchi was quoted as saying by Live Law that there was a fundamental error in the conviction. The judge observed that a “false declaration does not make a document forgery (sic)”.

On Thursday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis accepted Kokate’s resignation as a minister after the Nashik District and Sessions Court upheld the conviction and issued an arrest warrant against him.

Under the law, a public representative sentenced to two or more years in prison cannot remain in office.

A key leader of Bangladesh’s student-led National Citizen Party, Muhammad Motaleb Shikder, was hospitalised after being shot in Khulna district. Shikder is a central leader of the newly-formed party’s labour wing, the Jatiya Sramik Shakti.

Shikder was shot amid a fresh wave of violence in the country triggered by the killing of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi in Dhaka. Hadi died in Singapore on December 18, six days after he was shot.

The death of Hadi, a prominent leader of the student-led movement against the Sheikh Hasina government in 2024, triggered protests, vandalism and clashes in several parts of Bangladesh.

In an interview to ANI, Hasina blamed the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus for the violence, warning that the deteriorating law and order situation was hurting relations with India. Read more.

The Kerala government alleged that a migrant worker from Chhattisgarh who was lynched in Palakkad on December 17 was a “victim of Sangh Parivar’s hate politics”. The state Local Self Government Minister MB Rajesh alleged that the man, Ramnarayan Baghel, had been “attacked after being stigmatised as Bangladeshi”.

Baghel, who hailed from Champa district of Chhattisgarh, was lynched in Palakkad’s Attappallam village after being accused of theft. In a video of the incident, the assailants can be heard asking Baghel: “Are you a Bangladeshi?”

Commenting on the killing, Rajesh, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader from Palakkad, alleged that the assailants included Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers who are facing criminal charges in other cases.

The Kerala Police arrested five persons in the case on Thursday and charged them with murder. Read more.

A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr sentenced five persons convicted in a 2016 gangrape case to life imprisonment. The men had held a family captive at gunpoint, looted cash and jewellery, and raped two, including a 13-year-old girl.

The men – Juber alias Sunil, Sajid; Dharamvir alias Jitender, Naresh alias Sandip Baheliya and Sunil Kumar alias Sagar – had been found guilty on Saturday.

The gangrape and dacoity case had sparked widespread outrage at the time.

The Allahabad High Court had transferred the probe in the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The agency filed a chargesheet in November 2016 against three persons, and submitted a supplementary chargesheet in April 2018 against six others. One of the accused men died in judicial custody while the trial was pending. Read more.

The Supreme Court asked the Uttarakhand government why it was “sitting like mute spectators” amid alleged large-scale grabbing of forest land, and initiated a suo moto case in the matter. The bench also directed the state authorities to set up a fact-finding committee.

After assessing the situation, the committee will submit a report, which will enable the court to understand the scale of the alleged encroachment of forest land and how state authorities have responded.

The court also ordered that all construction on forest land be stopped immediately and for the Forest Department to take over all vacant land, except areas where residential houses already stand. Read on.

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A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr on Monday sentenced five persons convicted in a 2016 gangrape case to life imprisonment, ANI reported.

The men – Juber alias Sunil, Sajid; Dharamvir alias Jitender, Naresh alias Sandip Baheliya and Sunil Kumar alias Sagar – had been found guilty on Saturday.

The five were held guilty of having carried out rape, dacoity and wrongful confinement in August 2016. They had held a family of six captive at gunpoint, and looted cash and jewellery. During the captivity, two, including a 13-year-old girl, had been raped.

The incident had sparked widespread outrage at the time.

The Allahabad High Court had transferred the probe in the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The CBI filed a chargesheet in November 2016 against three persons accused in the matter before the Additional District and Sessions Judge-cum-Special Judge (POCSO Cases) in Bulandshahr. A supplementary charge-sheet was filed in April 2018 against six others.

One of them died in judicial custody while the trial was pending before the court.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday said that Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s criticism of the law that replaced the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was based on “mischaracterisations, selective memory and outright falsehoods”.

On Sunday, the 2025 Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill was given assent by the president, two days after it was passed by Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties. The new rural employment law will replace the MGNREGA.

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

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

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

In an article published in The Hindu on Monday, Gandhi wrote that the MGNREGA had been developed through extensive public consultations and that both Houses of Parliament had passed the bill unanimously.

“Over the past few days, the Narendra Modi government worked to bulldoze MGNREGA’s abolition without any discussion, consultation, or respect for parliamentary processes or Centre-state relations,” the Congress leader wrote.

She added: “The removal of the Mahatma [Gandhi]’s name was only the tip of the iceberg. The very structure of MGNREGA, so integral to its impact, has been annihilated.”

The Modi government had destroyed the idea of a legal employment guarantee in the new law, Gandhi said in the article for The Hindu.

“MGNREGA enacted the right to work in all rural India,” she added. “The Modi government’s new bill has restricted the ambit of the scheme to rural areas as notified by the Union at its discretion.”

By “transferring a significant portion of the expense onto the states” through a new funding model, the Modi government was “discouraging states from providing work under the scheme”, Gandhi alleged. “The finances of states, already under severe stress and strain, will be further devastated,” she added.

In response, BJP publicity chief Amit Malviya said that the VB-G RAM G was “not demolition” but an “overdue repair” of MGNREGA.

Malviya said that Gandhi’s claim that the MGNREGA had “emerged from widespread consultation “was far from the truth”. MGNREGA was conceived and driven by the National Advisory Council and “to now present this process as participatory democracy is historical revisionism,” he said.

Malviya said that the legal right to employment remains untouched.

“Far from weakening the guarantee, employment has been strengthened from 100 days to 125 days,” he added. “In FY [financial year] 2024-’25, planned allocations closely tracked actual demand, demonstrating that disciplined planning works.”

The BJP leader said the allegations that the Union government was “shifting the financial burden to states” by changing the funding model, were false.

“MGNREGA was never funded at 90% by the Centre in practice,” he said. “States already bore 25% of material costs, major administrative expenses, and 100% of unemployment allowance – often without predictability or transparency.”

The new funding model “formalises and rationalises funding, making states equal partners rather than passive implementers of top-down mandates”, he added.

Also read:

• BJP chief ministers wanted MGNREGA to include farm work. Modi government’s bill goes another way
• ‘A bill to destroy MGNREGA’: Why experts fear the worst from new job guarantee bill

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Uttarakhand government why it was “sitting like mute spectators” amid alleged large-scale grabbing of forest land, reported Live Law.

Initiating a suo motu case, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi directed the chief secretary of Uttarakhand and the principal conservation secretary to set up a fact-finding committee, according to Bar and Bench.

The committee will have to submit a report after assessing the situation. This could enable the court to assess the scale of the alleged encroachment of forest land and how state authorities have responded.

The court also ordered that all construction on forest land be stopped immediately and “the vacant land, other than residential houses, shall be taken into possession by the Forest Department and concerned collector”.

The matter pertained to 2,866 acres of government forest land, part of which was leased out to an organisation named Pashu Lok Seva Samiti.

The organisation told the court that it had allotted parcels of the land to its members. After the organisation came under liquidation, it surrendered 594 acres of land to the Forest Department on 23.10.1984.

Some persons claimed they had taken possession of the land in 2001.

“The facts of this case prima facie show as to how thousands of acres of forest land have been systematically grabbed by private individuals,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

It posted the matter for hearing next on January 5.

In September, the Supreme Court observed that “illegal” felling of trees appears to be rampant in the Himalayan region.

While development is necessary, it should not come at the “cost of the environment and lives”, the court had said.

Muhammad Motaleb Shikder, a key leader of Bangladesh’s student-led National Citizen Party, was shot in Khulna on Monday, Prothom Alo reported. He was taken to hospital.

Shikder is a central leader of the party’s labour wing, the Jatiya Sramik Shakti. The student-led National Citizen Party was formed in February.

Shikder was shot amid a fresh wave of violence in the country.

The unrest in Bangladesh was triggered by the killing of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi on December 12 in Dhaka. He died in Singapore on December 18.

The death of Hadi, a prominent leader of the student-led movement against the government led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, triggered protests, vandalism and clashes in several parts of Bangladesh.

Stones were thrown at the residence of the assistant Indian high commissioner in Chittagong on Thursday. The offices of newspapers and properties linked to Hasina’s Awami League were also attacked.

On Sunday, New Delhi suspended visa operations at its Chittagong centre and heightened security around Indian missions following attacks in Bangladesh.

Hasina blames interim government for violence

Hasina on Sunday blamed the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus for the recent violence, warning that the deteriorating law and order situation was hurting relations with India, ANI reported

The crisis has also raised concerns about the safety of Indian diplomats in Bangladesh, she told the news agency.

“When you [government] cannot maintain basic order within your borders, your credibility on the international stage collapses,” the former prime minister said, adding that India was watching the chaos with “justified concern”.

Hasina also accused the Yunus govenrment of placing persons linked to extremist ideologies in positions of power, claiming that such groups had been emboldened to attack religious minorities and media offices. This was a key reason for Dhaka’s ties with New Delhi having strained recently, she said.

“India’s concerns about the safety of its personnel are justified,” Hasina told ANI. “A responsible government would protect diplomatic missions and prosecute those who threaten them. Instead, Yunus grants immunity to hooligans and calls them warriors.”

Hasina resigned as prime minister and fled to India on August 5, 2024, after weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government. She had been in power for 16 years.

Yunus, a Nobel economics laureate, took over as chief adviser of the interim government three days after Hasina resigned.

India had last week summoned Bangladesh’s high commissioner to convey concerns about calls by groups in the neighbouring country to create a security situation around the Indian High Commission in Dhaka. It has also raised concerns about the attacks on religious minorities during the violence, including the killing of a Hindu man, Dipu Chandra Das.

On Sunday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs rejected reports in Bangladesh claiming that Indian citizens had threatened Bangladeshi diplomats in New Delhi, describing the allegations as “misleading propaganda”.

Responding to queries about a reported demonstration outside the Bangladeshi High Commission on Saturday, ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that a group of 20 to 25 persons had gathered to protest the killing of Das and to demand protection for minorities in the country.

Jaiswal added that there was no attempt to breach security at the High Commission and that the gathering was dispersed within minutes, reiterating India’s commitment to the safety of foreign missions and diplomatic personnel under the Vienna Convention.

The Kerala government on Monday alleged that the migrant worker from Chhattisgarh who was lynched in Palakkad on December 17 was a “victim of Sangh Parivar’s hate politics”, reported The Indian Express.

The Sangh Parivar refers to the group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre.

Ramnarayan Baghel, 31, was a resident of Champa district and had travelled to Kerala on December 13. He was lynched in Attappallam village after being suspected of theft.

In a video of the incident, the assailants can be heard asking Baghel: “Are you a Bangladeshi?” reported The Indian Express.

Kerala’s Local Self Government Minister MB Rajesh said that Baghel had been “attacked after being stigmatised as Bangladeshi”, the newspaper reported.

Rajesh, who is a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader from Palakkad, alleged that the assailants included RSS workers, who are facing criminal charges in other cases.

“The migrant worker who came in search of a job was tried (sic) and assaulted, accused of being a Bangladeshi,” Rajesh was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “He is a victim of the racial hatred being spread by Sangh Parivar in the country.”

On Thursday, the Kerala Police arrested five persons in the case and charged them with murder, according to the newspaper.

Baghel’s family refused to receive his body at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital on Sunday, reported The Hindu. They demanded compensation of Rs 25 lakh and for the state government to bear the cost of transporting the body to his village.

On Monday, the Kerala government promised compensation of at least Rs 10 lakh to the family, reported The Indian Express.

Palakkad Superintendent of Police Ajith Kumar said that a Special Investigation Team, headed by the deputy superintendent, has been formed to probe the case. He added that the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Prevention of Atrocities Act will be included against the persons accused in the matter.

A 23-year-old man from Gujarat’s Morbi, who had been arrested by Ukrainian authorities after allegedly being recruited by the Russian Army, has appealed to the Indian government for his release, reported The Indian Express on Monday.

In October, the Ukrainian government said that it captured Sahil Mohamed Hussein Majothi who had been fighting alongside the Russian military during the ongoing conflict between the two countries

He had travelled to St Petersburg in Russia on January 10, 2024, on a student visa to pursue a course in Russian Language and Culture from ITMO University.

In April 2024, he was charged in a drug case and sentenced to seven years in jail in Russia. To avoid further imprisonment, he was offered to join the Russian Army amid the country’s war on Ukraine.

He was later captured by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

In a video message received by his family on Sunday night, he said that he was “stuck in Ukraine as a war criminal”, according to The Indian Express.

“Now I am hopeless, I do not know what will happen in future,” Majothi can be heard saying in the video. “But I want to send a message to my Indian citizens. Those Indians coming to Russia for higher studies or work, be careful because there are so many scammers here.”

He warned students that they may be trapped in “criminal cases, narcotics cases, illegal cases, so take care of yourself”.

Majothi also appealed to the Indian government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “if possible, please help”.

The external affairs ministry has repeatedly issued advisories warning Indian citizens against joining the Russian military. New Delhi contends that many are duped by unscrupulous agents and are often hired as support staff, such as cooks and helpers, amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

The Russian defence ministry stopped recruiting Indians in April 2024, according to the country’s embassy in New Delhi. However, contracts for military service have delayed the release of several Indians.

The recent video of Majothi came days after the Ministry of External Affairs told Parliament that of the 202 Indian citizens believed to have been recruited into the Russian military, 26 had been killed and seven are missing.

One hundred and nineteen persons have been discharged from service, Minister of State Kirti Vardhan Singh said in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

Efforts are being made to secure the release of the remaining 50 persons, he added.

The ministry and Indian diplomatic missions in Russia have been assisting citizens discharged from the Russian Army for their return to India by facilitating their travel documents and providing them with air tickets, Singh said.

A 20-year-old pregnant woman was murdered allegedly by her father and relatives in Karnataka’s Dharwad district on Sunday over her inter-caste marriage to a Dalit man, nearly seven months after her wedding, The Indian Express reported.

The woman, Manya Dhoddamani, was six months pregnant and had married Vivekananda Dhoddamani in May. She was allegedly attacked in Inam Veerapur village under the Hubballi Rural taluk.

The Hubballi Rural Police said that three persons were arrested in connection with the killing – Manya Dhoddamani’s father, Prakashgouda Patil, and her relatives, Veeranagouda Patil and Arunagouda Patil, The Indian Express reported.

Manya Dhoddamani belonged to the Lingayat community, The New Indian Express reported.

The couple had married against the wishes of Manya Dhoddamani’s family and had been living in Haveri district.

An unidentified police officer said that Manya Dhoddamani and Vivekananda Dhoddamani had been in a relationship for several years and married at a sub-registrar’s office in May after their families opposed the union, The Indian Express reported.

After the marriage, Manya Dhoddamani’s parents threatened to torch Vivekananda Dhoddamani’s house, but the police warned them, the newspaper reported.

“After they got married, they appeared before the police,” The Indian Express quoted the police officer as saying. “The local police officer convened a meeting between the families, and warned Manya’s parents not to trouble them after they said that they would not allow her to enter their house.”

On December 8, the couple returned to Inam Veerapur village to collect documents such as Aadhaar cards and other credentials required for hospital admission during her delivery, the newspaper reported.

On Sunday evening, while Manya Dhoddamani was working on a farm, her father and other family members allegedly assaulted her with iron pipes, Gunjan Arya, the Dharwad superintendent of police, told The Indian Express.

Vivekananda Dhoddamani’s mother, Renavva, and a relative, Subhash, were also attacked when they attempted to intervene, she added.

All of them were taken to a private hospital in Hubballi, where Manya Dhoddamani succumbed to her injuries later that night. Police said that another group of assailants also attempted to attack Vivekananda Dhoddamani, who managed to escape and reach a police station.

He, along with his relatives, is under treatment at a hospital.

A case of murder has been registered at the Hubballi Rural police station, and further investigation is underway.

Kerala Education Minister V Sivankutty on Sunday said that the state government will resist pressure to create division along religious lines, flagging reports of schools in the state cancelling Christmas celebrations due to alleged pressure from Hindutva organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, reported The Hindu.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre.

A row had erupted after reports emerged that some schools run by Hindutva organisations and a privately managed Hindu institution allegedly halted Christmas celebrations, Onmanorama reported.

However, the RSS and the management of the schools denied the allegations.

On Sunday, the state government warned that schools would not be allowed to be turned into “communal laboratories”, PTI reported. It also added that an “urgent inquiry” had been ordered.

Speaking to reporters, Sivankutty claimed that certain schools had returned money collected from students for Christmas celebrations under threat from Hindutva organisations in the “RSS-Sangh Parivar’s” orbit of influence, The Hindu reported.

“Several parents, students, and teachers complained to me,” the newspaper quoted the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader as saying. “The government is treating the matter very seriously.”

He added that action was underway against the school managements that “abandoned Christmas celebrations under threats from the RSS”.

Sivankutty said that Kerala would not tolerate practices that divide people along religious lines.

The minister accused the RSS and its affiliates of seeking to expel the religious practices and celebrations of Christian and Muslim minorities from the state’s cultural life.

“The RSS is seeking to intertwine state holidays with religion to create communal schisms in society,” The Hindu quoted him as saying. “It has zeroed in on Kerala’s schools, erroneously reckoning they are soft targets for their divisive purposes.”

He added that no one will be permitted to “introduce the north Indian models that divide people on the basis of religion or belief in Kerala’s educational institutions”, Onmanorama reported.

Schools play a crucial role in fostering unity among children, irrespective of caste or religion, the minister said, adding that attempts to inject divisive ideas into educational spaces would not be accepted.

“All schools, whether aided or unaided, are bound by the Constitution of India, education rules and laws of the country,” Onmanorama quoted Sivankutty as saying. He added that institutions have a duty to uphold secular values.

Government and private schools in the state also operate under the Kerala Educational Rules, he said.

Kerala has a glorious legacy of assimilating diverse cultures and traditions without questioning them, the CPI(M) leader said.

“The government will resist any attempt to transform schools into stifling compartments of religious segregation by banning celebrations frowned upon by the RSS or any fundamentalist group,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

He called for a broader ideological battle against the RSS.

Christmas event cancelled in Haridwar hotel

In Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, a hotel run by the state tourism department cancelled a Christmas celebration on the banks of river Ganga after protests called by the Ganga Sabha, which administers the Har-ki-Pauri ghat, The Times of India reported on Monday.

The hotel had organised an “Experience Christmas” event on December 24. The manager of the hotel, Navaneet Singh Naula, told the newspaper that the management had organised games for children on the occasion of Christmas.

He added that this was “misunderstood” as a celebration of the festival.

Priests from the Ganga Sabha described it as an “anti-Hindu event which cannot be allowed to be in an establishment on the banks of the holy river”.

Ujjwal Pandit, the secretary of the Ganga Sabha, claimed that he had his entire community’s support against the event. “It is against the holy city’s tradition as well as Haridwar municipal bylaws to organise an event of this nature along the holy river,” he added.

Naula told The Times of India that the event was cancelled to avoid a controversy.

On November 24, the state Assembly unanimously passed a resolution to grant the status of “holy cities” to the three places.

A notification in this regard was issued on December 15.

In a social media post on Sunday, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the decision to accord the places the “holy cities” status had come into effect.

“These cities are not only religious centres, but also important symbols of our cultural heritage,” said Mann. “I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the entire Sikh sangat.”

He added that along with the ban on meat and intoxicants, the Punjab government would undertake “appropriate development” in the three cities so that devotees visiting from other places “do not face any inconvenience”.

Facilities such as e-rickshaws, mini-buses, shuttle buses and other public transport services will be provided, said the chief minister.

In November, Mann had said that the holistic development of these cities would accelerate religious tourism, reported The Indian Express.

After the resolution in November, reports noted that several restaurants selling non-vegetarian food had been operating in Amritsar’s walled city for decades.

Apart from Punjab, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh have also enforced bans on the sale of alcohol and meat in their holy cities.

In July, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in Odisha banned the sale of liquor within a 2-km radius of the Jagannath temple in Puri.

The government also planned to ban the sale of meat along the 2.5-km Grand Road, or Bada Danda, where the idols of four deities are placed on chariots and pulled during the annual Rath Yatra.

The road, which connects the Jagannath temple to Gundicha temple, is lined with hundreds of hotels.

It was unclear when the ban would come into force.

In Madhya Pradesh, a ban on liquor took effect in 19 cities and gram panchayat areas of religious significance in April.

Chief Minister Mohan Yadav had described the ban as a “historic step towards de-addiction” and said it was motivated by “public faith and religious reverence” associated with the places.

The Bharatiya Janata Party received more than Rs 6,000 crore in political donations in 2024-’25, a leap from nearly Rs 4,000 crore in 2023-’24, fresh disclosures filed with the Election Commission of India show.

That is nearly 12 times the collection of the Indian National Congress, which received Rs 522 crore in the same period, falling from Rs 1,130 crore in 2023-’24.

The Election Commission on Friday released disclosures made by the Bharatiya Janata Party about the funds it received from donors who gave away more than Rs 20,000, as well as contribution reports by the Prudent electoral trust about the donations they made to political parties. Similar disclosures by the Congress and six other political parties and electoral trusts had been published last month.

Collating the data, Scroll found that the BJP’s share of political donations shot up to 85% in 2024-’25 from 56% in the year leading to the 2024 Lok Sabha election. A large part of these donations were made in April and May, before the election verdict was announced. The ruling party won the election but its tally came down from 303 seats to 240.

Between 2018 and 2024, political parties collected most of their donations through electoral bonds, a scheme that was struck down by the Supreme Court in February 2024. Since then, most corporate groups have switched to electoral trusts to make political donations.

As a result, the largest political donors in 2024-’25 are electoral trusts.

At the top is Prudent Electoral Trust, which donated Rs 2,181 crore to the BJP, and Rs 216 crore to the Congress. The largest contribution to Prudent came from Elevated Avenue Realty LLP, a firm linked to Larsen & Toubro, an engineering and technology conglomerate, amounting to Rs 500 crore.

Second on the list is the Progressive Electoral Trust, which donated Rs 757.6 crore to the BJP and
Rs 77.3 crore to the Congress. As Scroll reported last month, the trust is controlled by the Tata Group, which used it to channel the donations to the BJP, weeks after securing semiconductor projects with lucrative subsidies from the Modi government.

This makes the Tata Group the largest individual donor of the BJP.

The third largest contributor among electoral trusts is the AB General Trust, which donated Rs 606 crore to the BJP and Rs 15 crore to the Congress. Though the Election Commission is yet to make its donors public, the trust has traditionally been used by the Aditya Birla group.

The fourth largest donation of Rs 160 crore came from the New Democratic electoral trust – this was sourced entirely from the Mahindra Group. Of this, Rs 150 crore went to the BJP whereas Rs 5 crore each went to the Congress and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).

The new disclosures show the same set of companies continued to donate funds to the BJP. What changed was that the amounts increased significantly, with the companies setting aside a much larger share for the ruling party compared to its allies or the Opposition parties.

While the overall amount donated to eight major national and regional political parties remained largely constant at around Rs 7,000 crore, the BJP’s share rose from 56% in 2023-’24 to 85% in 2024-’25.

These numbers could see a slight revision after political parties file their audit reports, which will also account for donations below Rs 20,000. Additionally, disclosures for parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam are yet to be made public.

Prudent’s contributors

The Prudent electoral trust has traditionally been a major donor of the BJP. Data from the Election Commission shows that between 2018 and 2025, its contribution to the BJP increased by more than 32 times.

The most dramatic increase came during the 2024 general elections, with the trust nearly tripling its donations to the BJP from Rs 724 crore to Rs 2,180 crore, according to its latest filing. In comparison, the trust donated just Rs 488 crore to other parties.

As many as 285 donations were made to Prudent by more than 100 firms. The trust then cut cheques to political parties. This makes it hard to trace which firm donated to which political party.

Among the contributors to Prudent, after L&T, the second highest donation came from Megha Engineering and Infrastructures and its promoter, PV Krishna Reddy, amounting to Rs 320 crore. The firm had made the highest contribution to the BJP using electoral bonds between 2018 and 2024.

Tiger Associates, a partnership linked to lottery businessman Santiago Martin – another major electoral bonds donor – donated Rs 147 crore to Prudent. It also donated Rs 50 crore directly to the All India Trinamool Congress, according to the party’s disclosure.

Firms linked to the RP Sanjiv Goenka group donated Rs 144 crore to Prudent.

Interglobe Aviation Limited, the parent company of Indigo airlines, donated Rs 40 crore to the trust. Ashok Leyland and Apollo Tyres, with whom Indigo shares common directors, also donated Rs 150 crore to the trust.

Ashok Leyland is part of the Hinduja group. Combined, the group’s firm donated Rs 177.5 crore to Prudent.

Other major donors include firms connected to Naveen Jindal’s faction of the OP Jindal group, which donated Rs 107 crore to the trust, followed by the DLF group at Rs 100 crore and the Torrent group at Rs 98.5 crore.

Direct donations

Other companies avoided using electoral trusts and instead made a direct contribution to the BJP, according to the party’s latest disclosure.

This includes the Serum Institute of India, which donated Rs 100 crore to the party, followed by the Rungta group at Rs 95 crore.

The Bajaj group donated Rs 74 crore to the BJP, followed by Hero enterprise at Rs 70 crore, the ITC group at Rs 72.5 crore and the Vedanta group at Rs 65 crore.

These groups donated through associate firms and subsidiaries.

ITC also donated Rs 15.5 crore to the Congress in 2024-’25 and Vedanta contributed Rs 20 crore to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in the same period.

Firms and people linked to the Kotak group donated Rs 40 crore to the BJP and Rs 10 crore to the Congress.

Century Plywoods (India) Limited and its promoters donated Rs 26 crore to the Congress and Rs 7 crore to the BJP.

The Indian government on Sunday indefinitely suspended visa operations at the Indian Visa Application Centre in Bangladesh’s Chittagong amid widespread unrest following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, the Dhaka Tribune reported.

The Indian Visa Application Centre said services at its Chittagong facility would be suspended from until further notice, citing a recent security incident at the Assistant High Commission of India in the city. The statement added that an announcement on reopening would be made after reviewing the situation, PTI reported.

Hadi’s death triggered protests, vandalism and attacks across Bangladesh, including stone-throwing at the residence of the Assistant Indian High Commissioner in Chittagong on Thursday.

The unrest also prompted demonstrations in India. On Sunday, the Ministry of External Affairs rejected reports in sections of the Bangladesh media claiming that Indian nationals had threatened Bangladesh’s diplomats in New Delhi, describing them as “misleading propaganda”.

Responding to queries about a reported demonstration outside the Bangladesh High Commission on Saturday, ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that a group of 20 to 25 youths had gathered to protest the killing of Dipu Chandra Das, a member of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority, and to demand protection for minorities in the country.

He had added that there was no attempt to breach security at the mission and that the gathering was dispersed within minutes, reiterating India’s commitment to the safety of foreign missions and diplomatic personnel under the Vienna Convention.

Hadi was a prominent leader of last year’s student-led protests that led to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government. He was also a candidate in the general elections scheduled for February 12. He was shot in the head in Dhaka area on December 12 and died while undergoing treatment in Singapore on December 18.

India operates five Indian Visa Application Centres in Bangladesh which are in Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Chattogram and Sylhet. An Indian Visa Application Centre official told PTI that the remaining four centres were operational as of Sunday.

India had resumed visa operations at its Dhaka centre on Thursday, a day after suspending services amid heightened security concerns. The centres in Rajshahi and Khulna were also briefly shut after anti-India protesters attempted to march towards Indian missions in those cities.

On Saturday, security was further tightened at the Assistant High Commission of India and the visa application centre in Bangladesh’s Sylhet, PTI reported.

The measures were put in place to ensure that “no third party can exploit the situation”, Additional Deputy Commissioner (Media) of the Sylhet Metropolitan Police, Saiful Islam, was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Tribune.

On December 17, India’s Ministry of External Affairs summoned Bangladesh’s envoy to New Delhi, Riaz Hamidullah, and conveyed its concerns over announcements by extremist elements about creating a security situation around the Indian mission in Dhaka.

Also Read: Opinion: What India must do to help restore stability in Bangladesh

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday claimed that security forces apprehended 19 undocumented migrants in Assam and sent them back to Bangladesh.

“In a full doomsday moment, Assam Police & BSF [Border Security Force] assembled and snapped,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader said on social media. “Nineteen illegals from Nagaon and Karbi Anglong disappeared from India, reappeared in their hell hole.”

He added: “Message is crystal clear: Illegal stay in Assam? Endgame guaranteed.”

Sarma has repeatedly claimed that the state government was committed to ensuring an “infiltration-free” Assam, claiming that about 35 to 40 “illegal” immigrants were being “pushed back” every week, PTI reported.

The development on Sunday came days after the administration in Nagaon ordered 15 declared foreigners to leave the state within 24 hours on December 17, claiming that their presence was “detrimental to the interest of the general public” and “internal security of the state”.

The orders were issued by District Commissioner Devasish Sharma under the 1950 Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act.

The Act grants power to district commissioners and senior superintendents of police to expel “illegal migrants” from the state by bypassing the foreigners tribunals.

In November, similar orders were issued against five persons in the state’s Sonitpur district.

In September, the Assam Cabinet approved the framing of a standard operating procedure under the Act. Earlier, cases pertaining to undocumented migrants were handled by foreigners tribunals.

Sarma had said at the time that the standard operating procedure to use the 1950 Act had been approved, which would, to a large extent, “nullify” the role of the foreigners tribunals.

Foreigners tribunals in Assam are quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate on matters of citizenship. However, the tribunals have been accused of arbitrariness and bias, and of declaring people foreigners on the basis of minor spelling mistakes, a lack of documents or lapses in memory.

As per the standard operating procedure, if a district commissioner receives information from the police or other sources that a person is suspected to be an “illegal immigrant”, the official will direct the person to produce evidence of his citizenship within 10 days, Sarma had at the time.

If the district commissioner finds that the evidence submitted is not satisfactory, he can pass an expulsion order by invoking the 1950 Act, ordering the removal of the undocumented immigrant from Assam “by giving 24 hours’ time and by the route so specified”.

In June, Sarma informed the Assembly that the state government was planning to invoke the 1950 law to “push back” more suspected foreigners.

The chief minister had claimed that the expulsion of declared foreigners was justified in the legal framework provided by the Immigrants Expulsion from Assam Act.

A 45-year-old meat trader was assaulted allegedly by a group of men in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district on Saturday after they accused him of transporting cow meat, despite his claim that he was carrying buffalo meat purchased from a licensed supplier, the Hindustan Times reported.

Two persons have been arrested in connection with the incident, police said.

Shareef Qureshi was attacked while transporting meat on his motorcycle to his shop in the Harduaganj area of the district after he was stopped on Hanumgarhi Road by a group of men who arrived on motorcycles and in a car.

In his complaint, he alleged that the men assaulted him with bricks and verbally abused him. His family alleged that the assailants also tore up his valid purchase documents before attacking him, claiming that the meat was cow meat, The Hindu reported.

Rajeev Dwivedi, circle officer (II), Aligarh, told the Hindustan Times that a case had been registered on the basis of Qureshi’s complaint under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to rioting, wrongful restraint, voluntarily causing hurt, breach of peace by intentional insult, criminal intimidation and mischief.

The accused named in the case are Anuj Pandit, Sheelu Rajput, Naveen Chaudhary, Sumit Thakur, Aditya Hindu, Yashu Pandit and Prashant Jatav along with 10 to 12 unidentified persons, all residents of Harduaganj.

Anuj Pandit and Rajput have been arrested, the circle officer told The Indian Express.

Dwivedi added that Qureshi had purchased around 20 to 25 kilograms of meat from a licensed supplier in Aligarh and was transporting it to his shop, The Indian Express reported.

A sample of the meat recovered from the complainant has been sent to a laboratory in Mathura to determine its nature.

Twelve of Delhi’s 40 air quality monitoring stations recorded Air Quality Index readings above 400 on Sunday evening, placing them in the “severe” category, according to data from the Sameer application at 7.05 pm.

The city’s average AQI stood at 374, categorised as “very poor”, showed the application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

Intense air pollution and dense smog reduced visibility across the capital, disrupting air and rail travel. At least 97 flights were cancelled at Delhi airport and more than 200 were delayed, the Hindustan Times reported.

More than 50 Northern Railway trains were also running late due to poor visibility caused by smog and foggy conditions.

An index value between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air. Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

An AQI in the “severe” and “severe plus” category signifies hazardous pollution levels that can pose serious risks even to healthy individuals.

The cities adjoining the capital also reported “very poor” air quality on Sunday, with Noida recording an AQI of 329, Ghaziabad 364, Greater Noida 329 and Gurugram 328.

The Ministry of Earth Sciences’ Air Quality Early Warning System for Delhi said air quality is likely to remain in the “severe” category until Monday and is expected to improve slightly to the “very poor” category by Tuesday, the Hindustan Times reported.

Delhi and the adjoining National Capital Region are under Stage 4 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan to curb pollution. The restrictions came into force on December 13 after the air quality slipped into the “severe plus” category.

GRAP is a set of incremental anti-pollution measures that are triggered to prevent further worsening of air quality once it reaches a certain threshold in the Delhi-NCR region.

This was the first time this season that Stage 4 restrictions, triggered when the AQI breaches the 450 mark, were enforced in Delhi-NCR.

The curbs include a ban on the entry of trucks into the region, a halt on construction activities for public and private projects, and a shift to hybrid mode for schools, except Class 10 and Class 12.

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

Also read:

• Coastal cities may no longer offer escape from air pollution

• Why air quality numbers in Delhi vary widely

President Droupadi Murmu on Sunday gave her assent to the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025, formally clearing the way for the new rural employment law to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025 was passed by both Houses of Parliament amid protests by Opposition parties.

It was cleared by the Lok Sabha on Thursday, even as Opposition members objected to the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the scheme. It was passed by the Rajya Sabha after midnight on Friday.

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

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

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

On Thursday, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and nine other academics wrote an open letter to the Union government warning that repealing MGNREGA would be a “historic error”.

Several experts have also cautioned that provisions in the new law could lead to inequitable access to work and incentivise distress migration, particularly as the Centre will identify the rural areas where employment will be provided.

Concerns have also been raised about a provision allowing a 60-day pause in guaranteed work during agricultural seasons, with labour rights groups warning that it could weaken workers’ bargaining power and leave farm labourers vulnerable to exploitation.

President gives assent to Viksit Bharat- Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB- G RAM G) Bill, 2025

The Act Enhances Statutory Employment Guarantee to 125 Days

Read here- https://t.co/nCLBrDLJoO

— PIB Rural Development (@PIB_MoRD) December 21, 2025

Also read:

• BJP chief ministers wanted MGNREGA to include farm work. Modi government’s bill goes another way

• ‘A bill to destroy MGNREGA’: Why experts fear the worst from new job guarantee bill

The Ministry of External Affairs on Sunday rejected reports in sections of the Bangladesh media that claimed Indian nationals had threatened Bangladesh’s diplomats in New Delhi, describing them as “misleading propaganda”.

Responding to queries about a reported demonstration outside the Bangladesh High Commission on Saturday, ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that a group of 20-25 youths had gathered outside the mission to protest the killing of Dipu Chandra Das, a member of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority, and to demand protection for minorities in the country.

“There was no attempt to breach the fence or create a security situation at any time,” Jaiswal said, adding that the police stationed at the spot dispersed the group within minutes. “Visual evidence of these events is available publicly for all to see,” he said.

Jaiswal reiterated that India was committed to ensuring the safety of foreign missions and diplomatic personnel in accordance with the Vienna Convention.

The statement came after Amar Desh, a Bangladesh daily edited by Mahmudur Rahman, published a report alleging that members of a Hindutva group had staged an “aggressive” protest at the Bangladesh High Commission in Chanakyapuri and threatened to kill the country’s High Commissioner to India, Riaz Hamidullah, The Hindu reported.

The report claimed that demonstrators had crossed security barricades and issued violent threats while the High Commissioner and his family were present at the residence.

Our response to media queries regarding the reported demonstration in front of the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi on 20 December 2025 ⬇️

🔗 https://t.co/tQ29y4EMbS pic.twitter.com/CgBqKqBYfp

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) December 21, 2025

The ministry of external affairs rejected these claims, saying the gathering did not pose any security threat.

In its statement, the ministry also expressed concern over the killing of Das in Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district, describing it as “horrendous” and “barbaric”.

“India continues to keep a close watch on the evolving situation in Bangladesh,” Jaiswal said. “Our officials remain in touch with Bangladesh authorities and have conveyed to them our strong concerns at the attacks on minorities. We have also urged that the perpetrators of the barbaric killing of Das be brought to justice.”

Das, 25, was lynched by a mob in Mymensingh on Thursday night after being accused of blasphemy. He was beaten to death, after which his body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire, according to police. Das was a factory worker living in the area.

The killing took place amid widespread unrest in Bangladesh following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, who succumbed to gunshot injuries at a hospital in Singapore on Thursday. Hadi was a prominent figure in the 2024 student protests that led to the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government.

Following his death, protests erupted in Dhaka and several other cities, during which offices of newspapers and properties linked to the Awami League were attacked. Security was heightened outside the Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi as the situation in Bangladesh remained tense.

#WATCH | Delhi | Security deployed outside the Bangladeshi embassy amid widespread violence erupting in Bangladesh over the death of Osman Hadi and the mob lynching of Dipu Chandra Das. pic.twitter.com/NtwZ8gHUvr

— ANI (@ANI) December 21, 2025

Also Read: Opinion: What India must do to help restore stability in Bangladesh

The West Bengal government on Friday officially renamed its rural job guarantee scheme, Karmashree, as “Mahatma Shree”, amid a dispute with the Union government over its decision to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act with a new legislation.

The Union government this week introduced the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee For Rozgar And Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, which seeks to replace MGNREGA.

The @narendramodi government may want to erase Mahatma Gandhi’s memory and the Sangh Parivar may prefer Nathuram Godse over Gandhiji. But the @MamataOfficial government in Bengal will ensure that Bapu and his legacy are never forgotten. The newly re-named ‘Mahatma Shree’ scheme… pic.twitter.com/XMcRm9lJbQ

— Sagarika Ghose (@sagarikaghose) December 20, 2025

Introduced in 2005 by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, MGNREGA guarantees 100 days of unskilled work each year to rural households across the country to enhance livelihood security. While the Centre bears wage costs under the scheme, states share expenses related to materials and administration.

The new bill proposes increasing guaranteed workdays from 100 to 125 while raising states’ share of costs to 40%.

Despite protests by Opposition parties, the legislation, introduced in Parliament on Tuesday, was passed by both Houses on Thursday, a day before the Winter Session ended.

West Bengal launched the Karmashree scheme in 2024 to provide at least 50 days of employment per financial year to job card-holding households through works implemented by various state departments. The scheme, funded entirely by the state government, has generated 101.5 crore person-days of work for over 90 lakh job card holders, according to the state government.

The amended state scheme also promises to increase guaranteed workdays to 100 from 50.

On the day that the VB-G RAM G bill was passed in Parliament, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the renaming of the state scheme saying the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name from MGNREGA filled her with “deep shame”

“Are we now forgetting even the Father of the Nation?” the Trinamool Congress chief asked. “We seek nothing except respect. If some do not know how to honour Mahatma Gandhi, we will demonstrate what true respect means.”

.@BJP4India struck Mahatma Gandhi's name from MGNREGA; Bengal strikes back with leadership that refuses to kneel. Smt. @MamataOfficial doesn’t just defend icons, she celebrates them. Where they erase, she restores; where they insult, she honours.

Under her leadership, the legacy… pic.twitter.com/pKIeX1LYKb

— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) December 19, 2025

On Saturday, Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose said the Banerjee-led government in the state “will ensure that Bapu and his legacy are never forgotten”.

Ghose alleged that the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre wanted to erase Gandhi’s memory and claimed that the Sangh Parivar preferred Nathuram Godse over Gandhi.

Banerjee said West Bengal had started the rural job guarantee scheme when the Centre blocked funds to the state under MGNREGA, India Today reported.

“Even if central funds are stopped, we will ensure people get work,” she said. “We are not beggars.”

In March 2022, the Union government suspended MGNREGA funding to West Bengal, citing widespread irregularities and alleged violations of the scheme’s implementation rules by the state government.

West Bengal received Rs 7,507 crore in the financial year 2021-’22 under MGNREGA but has received no funds in the following three financial years.

On December 5, the Union government told Parliament that it was in the “process of reworking and refining the necessary modalities and procedures” to resume the scheme under the Act in West Bengal.

Also read:

• BJP chief ministers wanted MGNREGA to include farm work. Modi government’s bill goes another way
• ‘A bill to destroy MGNREGA’: Why experts fear the worst from new job guarantee bill

A dispute over a Christian burial in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region triggered communal violence in Kanker district on Thursday, leaving several persons injured and a prayer hall vandalised, The Hindu reported.

At least 20 police personnel, including Additional Superintendent of Police Ashish Banchhor, were among those injured while trying to control the clashes, The Indian Express quoted officials as saying.

The tensions began on Tuesday in Bade Teoda village after the sarpanch Rajman Salam buried his 70-year-old father a day after his death. In a video released the same day, Salam said that he had converted to Christianity, while his father had not.

Salam claimed that he sought permission from village elders to bury his father according to tribal customs, but was told that the burial could not take place in his presence because he is a Christian.

He then went ahead with a Christian burial on his private land, after which the clashes were reported, according to The Wire.

“Everybody should be allowed to bury their dead,” Salam told the news outlet. “We are ready to compromise and bury him again as per local traditions, but they have to allow our presence.”

Salam also alleged that his political rival mobilised Hindutva workers from neighbouring villages and demanded that his father’s body be exhumed, The Indian Express reported.

“The police also asked me to give permission to exhume the body to prevent tensions from worsening, but I refused,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Clashes broke out on Tuesday and Wednesday, after which the police cordoned off the area. On Thursday, tensions escalated when a mob armed with sticks breached the police barricades and entered Bade Teoda village, triggering fresh violence.

Salam alleged that the police did not stop the mob and instead pressured his family to withdraw from the dispute, The Wire reported.

“They only intervened when their own were assaulted,” the news outlet quoted him as saying.

Meanwhile, acting on complaints from residents, an executive magistrate later ordered the exhumation of the body under legal provisions, The Indian Express quoted the Kanker police as saying.

“The inquest and post-mortem examination will be conducted, and necessary legal action will be taken thereafter,” the newspaper quoted the police as saying. “This issue led to a tense situation in the village.”

Despite heavy police deployment, mobs attacked churches and homes of Christians in the area, a local journalist told The Wire.

“The body was taken away without our permission,” Salam told the news outlet. “Churches were torched and my home was set on fire.”

The Badetevda village in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district had been on edge for the past four days over a dispute between a Christian family, local villagers, and Hindutva groups. The dispute had to do with the burial of a Christian man’s father. pic.twitter.com/351piAlTYl

— Alishan Jafri (@alishan_jafri) December 21, 2025

Also read:

• Why a Christian pastor was denied a burial in his own village by India’s Supreme Court
• House churches in Chhattisgarh face an informal ban, say pastors

The Himachal Pradesh government has ordered pharmaceutical companies to recall 47 medicines from the market after samples manufactured in the state failed quality tests, PTI reported.

Notices have been issued to the concerned firms, seeking explanations and directing them to withdraw the affected stock, State Drug Controller Manish Kapoor said.

The failed samples were part of a larger batch of drugs tested nationwide during routine regulatory surveillance, of which 200 were found to be substandard.

Of these, 47 were manufactured in Himachal Pradesh, including medicines used to treat fever, heart conditions, diabetes, epilepsy and muscle spasms, the Hindustan Times reported.

The medicines that failed quality tests include paracetamol, clopidogrel, aspirin, metformin, ramipril, sodium valproate and mebeverine hydrochloride.

Twenty-eight of the substandard samples originated from Solan district, 18 from Sirmaur and one from Una, unidentified officials were quoted as saying by PTI.

State Health Minister Dhani Ram Shandil had earlier stated that companies with recurring failures would be blacklisted.

The Congress on Saturday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “bulldozing” through Parliament the new bill that opens up the nuclear sector to private players in order to restore peace with United States President Donald Trump.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh claimed that the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Bill, acronymised as SHANTI, was passed “to restore SHANTI [peace] with his once good friend,” referring to US President Donald Trump.

Ramesh noted that Trump on Thursday signed the United States’ National Defence Authorization Act for 2026, which contains a reference to a joint assessment between the US and India on nuclear liability rules.

The Congress leader remarked that this was the reason why the SHANTI Bill, passed by Parliament on December 18, removed key provisions of the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act. “The SHANTI Act may well be called the TRUMP Act - The Reactor Use and Management Promise Act,” he quipped.

The bill proposes to grant licenses to private companies, joint ventures and government companies to construct, own, operate or decommission nuclear power plants or reactors.

Among the bill’s contentious provisions was one that removed a clause that was part of the 2010 Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act which allowed the operator of a nuclear power plant to file legal proceedings against suppliers if their equipment was found to have been in an accident.

The provision was believed to be a reason for the lack of foreign participation in the country’s nuclear sector despite the Indo-US nuclear deal.

President Trump has just signed the National Defence Authorization Act for the US Fiscal Year 2026.

The Act is 3100 pages long. Page 1912 has a reference to the joint assessment between the United States and India on Nuclear Liability Rules.

Now we know for sure why the Prime… pic.twitter.com/bGdAOXh9pA

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) December 20, 2025

Bilateral ties between New Delhi and Washington deteriorated in August after Trump doubled the tariffs on goods imported from India to 50% for purchasing Russian oil amid the war in Ukraine.

The US president has repeatedly alleged that India’s imports were fuelling Russia’s war on Ukraine.

India, however, has maintained that its oil imports are based on market factors and are aimed at ensuring India’s energy security. The foreign ministry said in August that it was unfortunate that the US was imposing additional tariffs on India “for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest”.

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday arrested a lieutenant colonel working under the defence ministry and another individual on allegations of bribery.

Those arrested have been identified as Lieutenant Colonel Deepak Kumar Sharma, a Deputy Planning Officer (International Cooperation and Exports) with the Department of Defence Productions, and a private individual named Vinod Kumar.

The CBI filed a case in the matter on Friday based on “reliable source information” against Sharma, his wife Colonel Kajal Bali – who is the Commanding Officer of 16 Infantry Division Ordnance Unit in Rajasthan’s Sri Ganganagar – and others, including representatives of a Dubai-based company.

The agency alleged that Kumar delivered a bribe of Rs 3 lakh at the behest of the company to Sharma on December 18.

The CBI said that two Bengaluru-based persons named Rajiv Yadav and Ravjit Singh were looking after the India operations of the company. It alleged that Yadav and Singh were in regular contact with Sharma, and were, in connivance with him, pursuing “various undue favours by illegal means for their company from various government departments and ministries”.

CBI ARRESTS LT. COL. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE PRODUCTIONS, MINISTRY OF DEFENCE IN A BRIBERY CASE pic.twitter.com/hZIqDnM2y3

— Central Bureau of Investigation (India) (@CBIHeadquarters) December 20, 2025

“It is alleged that Lt. Col. Sharma habitually indulges in corrupt and illegal activities in criminal conspiracy with representatives of various private companies dealing in defence products manufacturing, export, etc, by obtaining undue advantage/bribe from them in exchange of providing undue favours to them,” the CBI alleged in a press release.

Sharma and Kumar were produced before court on Saturday and were remanded to police custody till December 23.

A woman doctor whose niqab was pulled down by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at an event on December 15 did not join duty on Saturday, PTI reported.

Kumar had pulled down the niqab of the woman, Nusrat Parveen, at an event at the chief minister’s secretariat in Patna during which appointment letters were distributed to newly-recruited AYUSH, or Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy, practitioners.

After a video of the incident was shared on social media, Opposition leaders sharply criticised the Janata Dal (United) leader, and Peoples Democratic Party leader Iltija Mufti filed a police complaint against him in Srinagar.

Amid the row, Parveen did not join work till 7 pm on Saturday and the "possibility window for the day" was closed, PTI quoted Patna Civil Surgeon Avinash Kumar Singh as saying.

“I have been informed that the last date of joining has been extended beyond December 20,” he said. “It remains to be seen whether Parveen joins on Monday or not.”

Vijay Kumar, a surgeon at the Sabalpur public health centre in Patna Sadar – where Parveen was slated to join – also said that she had not joined duty, PTI reported.

“Around five-six people have joined today, and Parveen is not among them... Her name is in the list but we have not received her appointment letter from the civil surgeon office in Patna,” he said.

In neighbouring Jharkhand, state Health Minister Irfan Ansari offered Parveen “a government position in Jharkhand with a monthly salary of Rs 3 lakh, along with government accommodation and a preferred posting”, The Indian Express reported.

“I am a doctor first, and then a minister,” Ansari said. “What happened has hurt the entire medical fraternity and will send the wrong message to India.”

On December 16, human rights organisation Amnesty International had issued a statement against Kumar, describing his actions as an “assault on this woman’s dignity, autonomy, and identity”.

“When a public official forcibly pulls down a woman’s hijab, it sends a message to the public that this behaviour is acceptable,” the human rights organisation said.

Also read:

Pity, contempt and identity: The difference between the hijab and the ghoonghat

The killing of Bangladeshi student leader Osman Hadi has pushed Dhaka-New Delhi relations to their most dangerous moment in decades.

A relationship that was already strained after the fall of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August has now entered a phase of open hostility, driven not only by diplomatic missteps but by the reckless role played by Indian media and political discourse.

At a moment that demands restraint, clarity and responsibility, large sections of India’s public sphere are instead pouring fuel on a rapidly spreading fire of anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh.

Relations between Dhaka and New Delhi were fragile long before Hadi was shot on December 12. India was widely perceived in Bangladesh as having placed a political bet on Sheikh Hasina’s continued rule and as being slow, reluctant and awkward in adjusting to her fall.

That perception hardened further when New Delhi allowed Hasina to remain in India after she fled and as many of her political allies and supporters also found shelter across the border. For many Bangladeshis, this reinforced the belief that India was no longer acting as a neutral neighbor but as an interested political actor deeply entangled in Bangladesh’s internal power struggles.

Hadi’s killing has magnified those suspicions into something far more explosive. He was not simply another activist. He symbolised a generation that had mobilised during the July mass uprising, demanding accountability, dignity and political change. His death has become a focal point for anger not just against domestic actors but against what is widely perceived as external complicity.

The widespread belief that the accused fled to India, regardless of the ongoing legal process, has created a powerful narrative of impunity. The reciprocal summoning of high commissioners by Dhaka and New Delhi this week reflects more than diplomatic irritation. It signals a collapse of trust and decency at a moment when both are desperately needed.

Hadi wanted elections. He believed in the electoral process. He believed in democracy. He was running for election in Dhaka-8. He believed in the slow, painstaking process of building a new Bangladesh and knew there could be no short-cuts.

We Cannot Let Osman Hadi's Killers Win…

— Zafar Sobhan (@ZafarSobhan) December 19, 2025

Yet the most destabilising force at work is not diplomacy but discourse. That is reflected in the coverage of the lynching of a Hindu man in Bangladesh, which has further inflamed emotions on both sides of the border. The victim, 27-year-old Dipu Chandra Das from Mymensingh, was beaten to death by a mob on Thursday night over allegations of blasphemy, his body tied to a tree and set on fire.

Bangladeshi authorities intervened quickly and arrested seven suspects. The interim government strongly condemned the killing, pledging that those responsible would be held accountable.

However, the reporting in large sections of the Indian media choose not to highlight accountability or the swift arrests but to portray Bangladesh as descending into communal chaos. Graphic details were amplified. A criminal act was transformed into a sweeping civilisational indictment.

Such reporting neither protects minorities nor advances justice. Instead, it hardens communal identities, deepens fear and reinforces hostile narratives at a moment when restraint and accuracy are most urgently required.

Since Hasina’s fall, large sections of the Indian media have responded to Bangladesh’s turmoil not with analysis but with alarmism. Instead of recognising the July protests as a broad-based, youth-driven democratic movement, many Indian television channels and online platforms have uniformly branded Bangladeshi protesters as Islamists, radicals or extremists.

This framing is not only inaccurate. It is incendiary. It imports India’s own domestic political anxieties into a neighboring country undergoing political transition and delegitimises popular dissent by casting it as religious fanaticism.

This narrative erases the political and social roots of Bangladesh’s unrest and replaces them with a simplistic and threatening caricature. It tells Indian audiences that what is unfolding next door is not a struggle over justice and governance but a security menace. And it tells Bangladeshis that India does not see them as citizens with grievances but as a problem to be managed.

"I am right next to the Dhaka University..., where a protest is going on... There are rumours that the [Hadi] gunman apparently escaped to India through the border, although it has not been proven... There’s a strong anti-India sentiment in the crowd." https://t.co/J4W6v0Qfkp

— Christopher Clary (@clary_co) December 19, 2025

Equally dangerous is the tendency within pro-government Indian media and right-wing political commentary to project Bangladesh as a territorial and security threat to North East India. Commentators casually invoke fears of infiltration, instability and cross border disorder, often without evidence and without context.

This is not journalism. It is securitisation. Once Bangladesh is framed primarily as a threat, every political development there is read through a lens of fear. Cooperation becomes suspect. Restraint is portrayed as weakness. Escalation begins to look inevitable rather than avoidable.

The consequences are visible. Protests in Dhaka and Chattogram, and demonstrations even near India-Bangladesh border posts, show how quickly bilateral tensions are spilling onto the streets. Public anger is no longer confined to political elites or activist circles. It is becoming mass sentiment. When that happens, governments lose room for quiet diplomacy.In Bangladesh, any authority seen as soft on India risks losing legitimacy. In India, media-driven narratives push policymakers toward hardened positions that leave little space for nuance or compromise.

This is precisely why responsibility matters. India is the larger power in this relationship. Its media ecosystem is louder, more influential and more capable of shaping narratives across borders. With that influence comes obligation. To treat Bangladesh’s crisis primarily as a security problem is not only analytically flawed but strategically self-defeating. It guarantees deeper resentment, longer-term mistrust and a neighbour that increasingly defines itself in opposition to India.

History’s warning

History offers a clear warning. Anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh has ebbed and flowed over the decades, often rising during moments of perceived interference or arrogance and receding when engagement felt respectful and balanced.

What makes the current moment different is the speed and scale at which hostility is spreading. Social media amplification, sensationalist television debates and inflammatory headlines are turning episodic anger into something closer to structural alienation.

India can still choose a different path. That begins with cooperating transparently in the investigation surrounding Hadi’s killing. Even more importantly, it requires confronting the media narratives that are distorting reality. Indian political leaders and institutions cannot pretend that television studios and digital platforms operate in a vacuum. Silence in the face of reckless framing is itself a form of endorsement.

Responsible behavior does not mean shielding Bangladesh from criticism or ignoring genuine security concerns. It means recognising the difference between analysis and agitation. It means acknowledging that a neighbour’s political transition is not a threat by default. And it means understanding that regional stability is not preserved through suspicion but through credibility.

The tragedy of Osman Hadi’s death should have been a moment for empathy and restraint. Instead, it is becoming a catalyst for deeper division. If India continues to allow its media and political discourse to inflame rather than inform, it risks locking the relationship with Bangladesh into a cycle of hostility that will endure far beyond the current crisis.

What is at stake is not just bilateral goodwill but the basic architecture of trust in South Asia. Once that collapses, rebuilding it may take not months or years but generations.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden.

The Congress will fight the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections on its own, the party’s Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala was quoted as saying by The Hindu on Saturday.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is the governing civic body for Mumbai.

On Monday, the State Election Commission announced that the elections for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra, including the BMC, will be held in a single phase on January 15. The results will be declared on January 16.

“We will fight against the BJP, we will fight against the Shiv Sena Uddhav group,” Chennithala was quoted as saying on Saturday. “We appeal to all the secular, democratic Mumbaikars to support us.”

The Congress is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which also includes the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), on the state level.

The alliance had fought the Maharashtra Assembly elections held in November 2024 together. It was defeated by the Mahayuti coalition, which comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party faction of Ajit Pawar.

Chennithala’s announcement came two days after Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that the party would contest the civic polls in Mumbai on its own if the Uddhav Sena joins hands with Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

“If we go with MNS, who will vote for us?” Sawant was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “Will the North Indians, the Muslims, vote for us? The ideology of MNS and Congress are different, we cannot have any alliance with them.”

In August, Uddhav Sena MP Sanjay Raut said that his party and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena will contest the municipal elections in the state, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls, in alliance.

In addition to Mumbai, talks were underway to contest the municipal polls together in Thane, Nashik, Kalyan Dombivali and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Raut had said, adding that “no one can break the unity of the Thackerays”.

On Saturday, Chennithala said that the Congress decided to go solo in the BMC elections as the party’s “local cadres want it”, reported The Hindu.

“We have given them the permission to do so,” he was quoted as saying. “We are preparing our manifesto. We will bring it to the people of Mumbai.”

In 2005, Raj Thackeray quit the undivided Shiv Sena and formed the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena a year later.

The Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena were political rivals for the past two decades.

However, on July 5, Uddhav Thackeray held a rally with his cousin Raj Thackeray, during which he said that they had “come together to stay together”.

“We have united to protect Marathi,” Uddhav Thackeray had told supporters of his Shiv Sena faction and those of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena at a joint rally in Mumbai. “I want to tell you all that us coming together is just a trailer. This is just the beginning.”