The Delhi government on Thursday urged the Commission for Air Quality Management to suspend its order banning the supply of fuel to old vehicles in the national capital, citing several operational and infrastructural challenges, ANI reported.

In a letter to the air quality panel, Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that the “immediate implementation” of the ban may “be premature and potentially counterproductive”.

The ban, which came into effect on Tuesday, was enforced to phase out end-of-life vehicles to tackle air pollution. Under the directive, petrol vehicles over 15 years old and diesel vehicles over 10 years old would no longer be allowed to refuel.

To enforce the ban, automatic number plate recognition cameras were installed at nearly 350 petrol pumps across the national capital to detect such vehicles, The Hindu reported.

On Thursday, Sirsa told the Commission for Air Quality Management that the system was not working properly at several locations, The Indian Express reported.

“There are several technical glitches in the system, which include wrong placement of cameras, faulty sensors, non-functional speakers and improper sound output,” the newspaper quoted the letter as saying.

The minister added that the automatic number plate recognition system needed more testing and correction before it could be implemented.

He urged the air quality panel to put the ban on hold till the system was “seamlessly integrated across the entire NCR and is technologically consistent”.

The letter also said that the system was not integrated with the vehicular data of neighbouring states in the National Capital Region, which made it ineffective in identifying outside vehicles that entered the capital for refuelling, The Indian Express reported.

Several vehicles without High Security Registration Plates were also not being detected by the camera, the minister said. These registration plates are mandatory for all vehicles and feature unique security elements such as a chromium hologram and laser-etched identification number.

Sirsa also noted that implementing the ban only in Delhi would be unfair. “Implementation in only Delhi will dilute the impact and shift the burden unfairly,” the letter said.

There was “public discontent and outcry” due to the “technological inconsistencies of this extremely complex system and lack of integration with neighbouring states”, the minister added.

On Tuesday, 80 end-of-life vehicles were seized and 98 that could not be impounded were issued notices, according to The Indian Express.

Delhi has more than 62 lakh end-of-life vehicles, the Hindustan Times cited data from the government’s VAHAN database as having indicated.

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The Delhi High Court restrained yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved from running allegedly disparaging advertisements about consumer goods company Dabur's Chyawanprash product. The court passed the interim order on a plea filed by Dabur, which alleged that Patanjali Ayurved was disparaging its product by claiming that no other manufacturer had the knowledge to prepare it.

Dabur argued that it was misleading and harmful to label other brands as “ordinary”. The statements misrepresented Patanjali Ayurved’s own formulation, questioned Dabur’s adherence to Ayurvedic tradition and branded Dabur’s product as inferior, the petition alleged.

Dabur also claimed that Patanjali Ayurved was a habitual offender, citing earlier orders in contempt proceedings against the Ramdev-led company for similar advertising conduct. Read on.

The Karnataka High Court asked the state government to justify the continued suspension of Bengaluru’s Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash after the June 4 stampede outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium, which killed 11 persons. The government had suspended Vikash and four other police officers, accusing them of dereliction of duty.

Vikash had challenged the suspension before the Central Administrative Tribunal. On Tuesday, the tribunal quashed the order, saying that the officer had been suspended without sufficient grounds. It had also directed the state government to reinstate Vikash immediately.

The state government moved the High Court challenging the tribunal’s order. On Thursday, the High Court asked whether transferring the police officer would have been a sufficient measure instead. Read on.

The successor to the 14th Dalai Lama will be chosen by the current spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists himself, India has said. “Nobody else has the right to decide it except him and the conventions in place,” said Union minister Kiren Rijiju.

This came after China on Wednesday said that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation needed to be approved by the Chinese government. Beijing said that the succession must follow Chinese laws as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions”.

The statement was in response to the 14th Dalai Lama stating that the Gaden Phodrang Trust held the sole prerogative to decide on his successor, and that no one else had the authority to interfere in the matter.

The trust is a non-profit organisation set up by the current Tibetan spiritual leader in 2015 to support the institution of the Dalai Lama. Read on.

The Mumbai Police told the Bombay High Court that there was no foul play in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Disha Salian had died by suicide on June 8, 2020, reportedly after jumping from the 14th floor of a building in Mumbai. The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found in her death.

However, the celebrity manager’s father, Satish Salian, moved the High Court in March seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into her death and the filing of a first information report against Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray.

Claiming that his daughter had died under suspicious circumstances, Satish Salian alleged that she was gangraped and murdered. He claimed that there had also been a politically-driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”.

The police demanded that the petition should be dismissed. Thackeray on Thursday refused to comment on the matter, saying that he had chosen silence despite attempts to defame him. Read on.

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The Mumbai Police on Wednesday told the Bombay High Court that there was no foul play in the death of Disha Salian, the former manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput, The Indian Express reported.

Disha Salian had allegedly died by suicide on June 8, 2020, after jumping from the 14th floor of a building in Mumbai’s Malad area. Six days later, Rajput was found dead at his residence. The police had closed the case in 2021 and said that no evidence of foul play had been found in her death.

However, the celebrity manager’s father, Satish Salian, moved the Bombay High Court in March seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into her death and the filing of a first information report against Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray, PTI reported.

Claiming that his daughter had died under suspicious circumstances, Satish Salian in his petition alleged that she was gangraped and murdered. He claimed that there had also been a politically-driven cover-up to shield “influential persons”.

Satish Salian said that he initially believed that the investigation was “genuine, but later found it to be a cover-up”, The Indian Express reported.

His petition came up for hearing on Wednesday before a bench headed by Justice AS Gadkari, PTI reported.

In an affidavit seeking the dismissal of the petition, an officer from the Malvani police station told the court that a closure report had already been filed in the case. The Malvani Police had investigated the case first.

The affidavit added that the conclusions of the Special Investigation Team, set up by the Maharashtra government in 2023 to look into the matter, were consistent with the original investigation into Disha Salian’s death, The Indian Express reported.

“I say that in the light of the circumstances and witness statements, the deceased Disha Salian out of her own volition jumped off the window of the flat and died by suicide,” PTI quoted the officer as saying in the affidavit.

The officer also highlighted that the SIT’s inquiry is ongoing, The Indian Express reported.

Satish Salian on Wednesday submitted a rejoinder to the police affidavit, PTI reported. He claimed that the court had directed the state government to file a reply to his petition by April 30 through its chief secretary.

However, an “unauthorised and biased” affidavit was instead submitted by a “conflicted officer” from the Malvani Police, The Indian Express quoted him as having claimed.

Satish Salian also said that the SIT was investigating allegations of gangrape and murder without first registering an FIR, which was grossly illegal.

The court will hear the matter next on July 16.

Meanwhile, Aaditya Thackeray also filed an intervention application seeking to be heard in the matter, claiming that the petitioner had “relied upon false, baseless and hearsay allegations”, The Indian Express reported.

On Thursday, the Uddhav Sena leader refused to comment on the police affidavit that refuted any foul play, saying that he had chosen silence despite attempts to defame him, PTI reported.

In December 2022, Disha Salian’s death was raised in the Maharashtra Assembly by Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs and the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde, who was the chief minister at the time.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who was the deputy chief minister at the time, had told the Assembly that the SIT would be formed to investigate the case.

However, Thackeray alleged that the government was raising the issue to divert attention from the Nagpur Improvement Trust row.

The Opposition had alleged that in April 2021, Shinde, who was the urban development minister at the time, allotted more than 4.5 acres reserved for slum dwellers at a cheap price to 16 private individuals despite the matter being sub-judice.

At the time, Disha Salian’s parents had opposed the setting up of the SIT.

“Will the SIT bring back our daughter?” her parents had asked. “Why is all this being done? The case is already closed by Mumbai Police. A lot of investigations have already been done, then why again?”

India on Thursday affirmed that the successor to the 14th Dalai Lama will be chosen solely by the current spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists himself and in accordance with established religious traditions, the Hindustan Times reported.

“All those who follow the Dalai Lama feel that the incarnation is to be decided by the established convention and as per the wish of the Dalai Lama himself,” Union minister Kiren Rijiju was quoted as saying by PTI. “Nobody else has the right to decide it except him and the conventions in place.”

New Delhi also said that Rijiju, along with Union minister Rajeev Ranjan Singh, would attend the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday celebrations on Sunday, The Indian Express reported.

This came a day after China said that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation needed to be approved by the Chinese government. Beijing said that the succession must follow Chinese laws as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions”.

The statements by New Delhi and Beijing followed remarks from the 14th Dalai Lama, who said on Wednesday that a trust he had founded held the sole prerogative to decide on his successor, and that no one else had the authority to interfere in the matter.

“I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognise the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” the Dalai Lama said.

The Gaden Phodrang Trust is a non-profit organisation that the 14th Dalai Lama set up in 2015 to support the institution of the Dalai Lama.

However, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry said that the Dalai Lama’s successor could be identified only through a system of drawing lots, in which names are drawn from a golden urn. Critics allege that China will misuse this method to exert pressure on the Tibetan community.

The system of drawing lots, which began in 1792, was used to identify three reincarnations of the Dalai Lama. However, it was not used to select the current Dalai Lama.

The current Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 following an uprising against Chinese rule and took refuge in India with around 80,000 followers. He has since lived in Himachal Pradesh’s Dharamshala, where he formed the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The Chinese government has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama of “separatist” activities.

The Dalai Lama had previously said that his successor would be born outside China, and had urged his followers to reject anyone that Beijing would choose.

The Delhi High Court on Thursday restrained yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved from running allegedly disparaging advertisements about a product manufactured by consumer goods company Dabur, PTI reported.

Justice Mini Pushkarna passed the interim order on a petition filed by Dabur, which alleged that Patanjali Ayurved was disparaging its Chyawanprash product by claiming that no other manufacturer had the knowledge to prepare it.

Chyawanprash is an Ayurvedic formulation made from a blend of sugar, honey, ghee, Indian gooseberry jam and several herbs and spices. It is sold as a dietary supplement.

The matter arose after Patanjali Ayurved telecast an advertisement featuring Ramdev, in which he questioned the authenticity of Chyawanprash products sold by other companies, Bar and Bench reported.

In its petition, Dabur objected to references in the advertisements that described a “40-herb” Chyawanprash as “ordinary”. This was a reference to Dabur’s product that advertised itself as using “40+ herbs”, it alleged.

Dabur also noted that it was misleading and harmful to label other brands as “ordinary”.

The petition alleged that such statements misrepresented Patanjali Ayurved’s own formulation, questioned Dabur’s adherence to Ayurvedic tradition and branded Dabur’s product as inferior, Bar and Bench reported.

The advertisements undermined confidence in a category of products governed by strict regulatory standards, the petition said. The advertisements also made “untrue” claims that other manufacturers did not have the knowledge of Ayurvedic texts and the formulae used to prepare Chyawanprash, Dabur added.

The consumer goods company also claimed that Patanjali Ayurved was a habitual offender, citing earlier orders in contempt proceedings against the company for similar advertising conduct.

The court will hear the matter next on July 14.

In April, the Delhi High Court had ordered Ramdev to take down advertisements in which he claimed that food company Hamdard’s drink Rooh Afza was being used to orchestrate “sharbat jihad”.

In May, a day after the court warned Ramdev of contempt proceedings for publishing a new video allegedly targeting Hamdard, the yoga guru said that he will not make statements or publish social media posts targeting Rooh Afza.

Also read: A brief history of Patanjali’s dangerous claims

The Karnataka government has moved the High Court challenging an order by the Central Administrative Tribunal setting aside the suspension of a Bengaluru police officer after the stampede outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium that killed 11 persons, Live Law reported.

On June 5, the state government suspended Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash and four others, accusing them of dereliction of duty. Vikash had challenged the suspension before the Central Administrative Tribunal, which on Tuesday said that the officer was suspended without sufficient grounds.

The tribunal directed the state government to reinstate Vikash immediately.

On Thursday, during the hearing of the state’s plea against the tribunal’s order, the High Court asked the government to justify the continued suspension of the officer, Live Law reported. It also questioned whether a transfer would have been a sufficient measure instead.

Advocate General K Shashi Kiran Shetty, representing the state, informed the court that he would submit records justifying the suspension and sought a stay on the tribunal’s directive. He added that the suspended officer had “gone in uniform to take charge” while the matter was still being heard.

Addressing the counsel for the officer, the bench said that while the suspension order was stayed by the tribunal, a separate reinstatement order is still needed.

The advocate general then requested that the matter be heard on Friday.

In its plea before the High Court, the Karnataka government had alleged that the tribunal made findings about the stampede as if it had already investigated the incident, Bar and Bench reported. It said that this approach was “wholly perverse” and contrary to principles governing judicial governance in matters about suspension.

The government said it had placed on record an analysis of the sequence of events that unfolded on June 3 and June 4. Despite this, the tribunal quashed the suspension order without considering the material on record, the state added.

The stampede had taken place at Gate Number 3 of the stadium on June 4, where fans had gathered to celebrate the Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in the Indian Premier League. Eleven persons were killed and more than 50 were injured.

The toll from cloudbursts and flash flood-related incidents in Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district increased to 11 on Wednesday, after six more bodies were recovered, PTI reported.

Search operations were underway for 34 missing persons amid continued heavy rainfall and a fresh warning from the weather department.

Among those who died was a woman from Pangloor village in Gohar, who, along with eight members of two families, had sought refuge on a rooftop to escape the rising water level but were swept away. While her body has been recovered, others, including her husband, were missing, The Indian Express reported.

Eleven cloudbursts, four flash floods and a major landslide were recorded in the state on Tuesday, with the majority of the incidents taking place in Mandi district.

The cloudbursts were recorded at four locations in Gohar, three in Karsog, two in Dharampur and one in Thunag, the news agency reported.

According to the State Emergency Operation Centre, 148 houses, 104 cattle sheds, 31 vehicles and 14 bridges were damaged in rainfall-related incidents. More than 160 cattle died and 245 roads were blocked across the state, with 151 of them in Mandi.

Additionally, 489 transformers and 465 water supply schemes were disrupted in the district, PTI reported.

The armed forces and disaster response teams are working on the ground and an Indian Air Force helicopter was deployed to deliver essential supplies to inaccessible areas, particularly in the flood-hit Seraj region.

#WATCH | Mandi, Himachal Pradesh | IAF Chopper deployed to deliver food and medicine to flood-affected villages in Seraj Valley pic.twitter.com/3kSBwNbneT

— ANI (@ANI) July 2, 2025

Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Wednesday visited the disaster-hit Syathi village in Dharampur and conducted an aerial survey of the affected areas including Thunag and Janjehli.

He announced a special relief package for rebuilding of damaged homes and enhanced compensation for livestock and cow shed losses, The Indian Express reported.

Sukhu also assured displaced residents that government land, if available, would be allotted for resettlement. “In case the land falls under forests, the matter will be taken up with the Union government,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying.

#WATCH | Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu conducted an aerial survey of the disaster-affected areas of Thunag and Janjehli in Mandi district.

(Source: CMO) pic.twitter.com/SkIxSa1iKr

— ANI (@ANI) July 2, 2025

The chief minister also called for a scientific study to ascertain why landslides were taking place in geologically stable areas.

“Eight to 10 cloudbursts in a single night were never seen before,” Sukhu said. “The central and state governments should collectively study the cause of such incidents.”

Rain continued across parts of the state, with Kasauli receiving the highest rainfall at 55 mm since Tuesday evening. The India Meteorological Department has issued an orange alert for heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated areas from Friday to Sunday.

India and the United States agreed to sign a new 10-year defence partnership framework when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his American counterpart Pete Hegseth will meet later this year, the Pentagon on Wednesday.

The decision was finalised during a telephonic conversation between the two on Tuesday, with both sides reviewing the “considerable progress” made in bilateral defence cooperation since the joint statement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump in February, the statement added.

“Hegseth emphasized the priority the United States places on India as its key defence partner in South Asia,” the statement added.

While the US Department of Defense did not elaborate on specific details, the statement added that the two sides “discussed pending major US defence sales to India”.

India’s defence ministry said that during the call, Singh and Hegseth discussed a broad range of defence cooperation issues, including training, military exchanges and expanding defence industry collaboration.

Singh appreciated the “unwavering support extended by US to India for its fight against terrorism”, the defence ministry said.

The statement came on a day when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said ahead of Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington DC that the world must “display zero tolerance” on terrorism.

“Victims and perpetrators must never be equated,” Jaishankar had said. “And India has every right to defend its people against terrorism, and we will exercise that right. We expect our Quad partners to understand and appreciate that.”

The Quad, a strategic coalition, comprises India, the United States, Japan and Australia.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday said it was deeply concerned about three Indians having been abducted in Mali amid a series of terrorist attacks in the country.

The three Indian men, who were working at the Diamond Cement Factory in the city of Kayes, were taken hostage during a coordinated assault on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said.

On July 1, militants in the west African country carried out a series of simultaneous attacks on military posts, the BBC reported. The Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin, a group linked to the Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Mali’s army said it had repelled the attacks and killed over 80 militants. However, the Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin claimed it had taken control of three barracks, according to the BBC.

India’s foreign ministry said its embassy in Bamako, the capital of Mali, was in contact with local authorities, the management of the Diamond Cement Factory and the family members of those who have been abducted.

Press Release on the recent development in Mali

🔗 : https://t.co/KgWle9Gv7l

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) July 2, 2025

“The Government of India unequivocally condemns this deplorable act of violence and calls upon the Government of the Republic of Mali to take all necessary measures to secure the safe and expeditious release of the abducted Indian nationals,” the foreign ministry said.

The ministry urged Indians in Mali to remain vigilant and stay in close contact with the Embassy of India in Bamako.

Mali, which has been under military rule since 2020, has witnessed violence by insurgent groups linked to the Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State for over a decade.

The coordinated assault on July 1 bore similarities to other similar attacks by militants on military facilities in Mali and neighbouring Burkina Faso, Reuters reported.

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday alleged before a Delhi court that Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi wanted to siphon off Rs 2,000 crore from Associated Journals Limited, the company that once published the National Herald newspaper, The Indian Express reported.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, representing the agency, told a Delhi court that the Congress gave an interest-free loan of Rs 90 crore to Associated Journals Limited for a consideration of Rs 50 lakhs. The agency alleged that the debt was converted into equity in favour of not-for-profit firm Young Indian, in which the Gandhis held a 76% share.

“A company by the name of AJL…was not making profit but it had assets worth Rs 2,000 crores,” Raju told the court, according to The Indian Express. “How come they didn’t have 90 crores to repay the loan? Any prudent person would’ve sold their assets to repay the loans.”

The Enforcement Directorate, which is looking into money-laundering allegations linked to the case, alleged a conspiracy to form Young Indian to illegally take over the Associated Journals Limited’s assets, India Today reported. This was done through “fake transactions” in which several Congress leaders were involved and a Rs 90 crore loan to the company from the party, the Enforcement Directorate added.

Raju further alleged that the Congress aimed to “usurp” Associated Journals Limited. “The conspiracy was the creation of Young India to siphon away Rs 2,000 crore in exchange for a 90 crore loan. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi wanted to take over this company,” India Today quoted Raju as having said.

The Enforcement Directorate filed its chargesheet in the case on April 9. This came after the central agency’s move to seize properties worth Rs 661 crore linked to the case in Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow.

The allegations

In April 2008, the National Herald, which was founded and edited by Jawaharlal Nehru before he became India’s first prime minister, suspended operations as it had incurred a debt of over Rs 90 crore.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy filed a complaint against the newspaper in 2012, alleging that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi set up Young Indian Private Limited to buy the debt using the funds from the party.

Swamy alleged that Young Indian paid only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.2 crore that the Associated Journals Limited owed to the Congress.

The Congress has claimed that there was no money exchange, and that only debt was converted into equity to pay off certain dues including employee salaries.

Eleven INDIA bloc parties on Wednesday told the Election Commission that its decision to undertake a special intensive revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls months ahead of Assembly elections risked disenfranchising more than 2.5 crore voters, as they may not be able to produce the necessary documents.

A delegation of the Opposition bloc met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in New Delhi.

They questioned the exercise’s timing and feasibility and also raised doubts about its methodology given that the process is allotted a “maximum period of only 1-2 months”.

Assembly elections in Bihar are scheduled to be held at the end of the year.

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi noted that the last such revision took place in Bihar in 2003. He said that representatives of the INDIA bloc told the poll panel that four to five elections have been held in Bihar in 22 years since then, and asked whether they were all faulty.

Singhvi added that the 2003 special intensive revision was held a year before the Lok Sabha elections and two years before the Assembly elections in Bihar.

“Today, you are having it in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second largest electoral populated state in India which has roughly under 8 crore voters,” the Congress MP noted.

Singhvi said members of the delegation told the Election Commission that “disenfranchisement and disempowerment is the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution”. He claimed that the exercise would lead to “upwards of 2.5 crore persons, and a minimum of 2 crore people” being disenfranchised.

The Congress leader added that the bloc was not against the revision of electoral rolls. “It can be done with great caution, care, comprehensiveness and time after these elections. Then, you have five years for Bihar.”

Two things we have objected to as preliminary issues:

1. The requirement that only the head or chairperson or president of the political parties could attend.

2. The rather pedantic insistence on two persons per party has no legal basis or sanction, which is most unfortunate.… pic.twitter.com/YBjO7slH9i

— Congress (@INCIndia) July 2, 2025

The Rajya Sabha MP that for the review of the electoral rolls, the poll body had abandoned the documentation process that had been in use for decades, such as Aadhaar cards or ration cards.

“Unless one is already in the electoral roll of 2003, all other names require a birth certificate, and in one category, the birth certificates of both parents are needed,” he said. “How do you expect the backward, flood-affected, poor, and migrant populations to run from pillar to post to obtain birth certificates for themselves or their parents?”

Singhvi noted that if voters fail to obtain the certificates within the time limit, they risk losing their place on the electoral roll. He said that wrongful deletion or addition of voters to the electoral rolls leads to the level playing field in elections being vitiated.

On June 24, the poll body had announced a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state. The Election Commission had said that the review needed to be conducted due to reasons such as rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, fresh voters, non-reported deaths and the “inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants”.

Out of the total 7.89 crore electors in the state, 4.96 crore whose names were already on the rolls on January 1, 2003 will only have to fill and submit a new enumeration form.

The remaining 2.93 crore – or about 37% of the electors – whose names were not on the voter list after the last revision of electoral rolls was conducted in 2003, will need to submit proof of eligibility.

Voters born before July 1, 1987 must show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987 and December 2, 2004 must submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004 will need proof of date of birth for both parents.

Also Read: Bihar voter roll revision: Why having to prove you are an Indian citizenship is a nightmare

The Indian economy has grown fast and poverty has reduced considerably since the “opening up” of the economy and the International Monetary Fund’s bailout in 1991.

Could India have done better? More importantly, should it do better? These were questions Manmohan Singh posed to me when I joined the Planning Commission in 2009.

I was surprised by his invitation to become a member of the Planning Commission and asked him if he might have made a mistake. I pointed out that I was not an economist, nor an academic and I had no experience of working in government – qualifications which seemed necessary for a country’s apex policy-making body.

On the contrary that was why he wanted me, he said. The country already had eminent economists in the Planning Commission and other advisory roles. Moreover, he himself was considered a good economist, he admitted shyly. Yet, the country’s economic policies were failing to create enough employment though its gross domestic product was increasing fast.

My perch in India’s governance cockpit gave me a perspective of India’s complex socio-economic system. I had been a consultant to organisations in many countries on how they could accelerate their learning to reach their aspirational goals.

The special task the prime minister assigned to me required learning how other countries governed their economies. With the World Bank’s support, I was able to consult with the best economists in industrial policy. They also provided me with insights into the economic development processes of other countries, including the United States, China, Japan and other developing countries. Experts in these countries explained the histories of their progress and the evolution of their planning processes.

“Development” and “progress” are processes of learning. Countries, organisations in them, and teams and individuals within those organisations must learn to do what they could not do before.

In a competitive world, those individuals, organisations, and countries who learn fast can catch up with others ahead of them, and if they keep up their pace of learning and progress, even overtake them. I asked the World Bank’s experts who assisted me to compare pairs of countries who were in similar positions in 1991 and whose paths of progress had diverged since then.

An obvious pair was India and China – both their economies were comparable in size and per capita incomes in the 1980s. By 2009, per capita income and GDP was five times higher in China, its manufacturing sector eight times, and its high-tech sector 50 times larger than India’s.

American capitalism, Chinese socialism

The 20th century was a historical test of competing economic ideologies – socialism and capitalism; and competing forms of governance – liberal democracy and authoritarianism.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, victory was declared for the Washington Consensus of free market capitalism and liberal democracy. Washington’s ideology was forced onto socialist Russia with a “big bang”, with disastrous consequences for its economy and society.

China did not yield. It stayed its socialist course with single-party governance. India’s reformers adopted the Washington formula in 1991. They abandoned industrial policies for growing domestic industries, which China continued with, and opened the market for foreign companies without requirements to transfer technology.

The growth of China’s economy is a miracle, economists say. The US has been alarmed by China’s remarkable economic growth and industrial strength, despite China not following Washington’s economic formula. The Washington Consensus is cracking within Washington: ideological divisions have appeared within the US where inequalities have increased and working people have become restive.

The US is threatened by China’s rise. China straddles India’s northern borders where their armies continue to skirmish. The US is pressing India to come closer to it. India is wary. It must become self-reliant and stronger much faster than it has so far. Reforms must increase incomes faster for India’s masses and build stronger domestic industries.

India is at a crossroads. Both, political Left and Right agree the economy needs substantial reform but disagree on what direction it should take. The progressive Left wants more socialism and more liberal democracy; the conservative Right, more free-market capitalism and is willing to tolerate curbs on liberty. The Middle is muddled. India’s leaders should study China for lessons before pushing harder with economic policies based on the West’s failing free market model.

Three recent books offer insights into how socialism and capitalism have been combined to achieve China’s inclusive fast growth.

China’s leaders are good learners, says German political economist Isabella M Weber, in How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. Like Mohandas Gandhi, they kept their minds open, allowing ideas to come in from all directions without being blown off their feet. They listened to Western economists but applied only what suited China.

She says, “The famous Harvard development economist Dani Rodrik represents the economics profession more broadly when he answers his own question of whether ‘anyone [can] name the (Western) economists or the piece of research that played an instrumental role in China’s reforms’ by claiming that “economic research, at least as conventionally understood” did not play “a significant role”.

Chinese economist Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics, who grew up in China and experienced the Chinese system from inside, explains how the socio-economic-political system works in The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism.

She outlines why Western economic models, which strip out cultural and social forces from economics, cannot comprehend how China works – or even how Western economies work. She makes visible the “invisible hand” that free market economists cannot explain. She explains why the Chinese government keeps financial markets and the private sector reined in to ensure the market produces welfare for all, especially the poorer and least powerful citizens.

“The number of financial crises in China is exactly zero. It is also an oddity (from a Western perspective) that despite the nation’s prenatural economic growth, its stock market has been one of the worst performing in the world,” she says.

The Chinese government has added citizen satisfaction and environmental sustainability to GDP to measure its own performance, and as measures of performance of all local governments. Though private firms grew nine-fold in China from 2000 to 2019 (their number now exceeds the US by far), “A more striking fact”, says Jin, “is that private owners with state connections owned about a third of the capital registered by these companies showing how pervasive equity linkages between state and private businesses has become in China’s corporate sector”.

While the government has reduced the numbers of state-owned enterprises and pushed the remainder to add profits to their social objectives, it also demands that private firms comply with societal needs. Large, private, property and technology firms that have strayed from the socialist path have been cut down.

Power to the people

Three distinctive features of China’s governance are:

1. The purpose of the state, throughout China’s long history from Imperial times to the Communist era, has been the provision of welfare to citizens. The best Emperor is the one who provides the most welfare to all citizens, not the one who wins the most wars. The leadership of the Communist Party has continued this role, says Chinese political scientist Zheng Yongnian, in The Chinese Communist Party as Organizational Emperor: Culture, Reproduction, and Transformation. Jin explains (in The New China Playbook) how commitment to this role has shaped the Communist Party’s socio-economic policies, resulting in widespread support for the Communist Party, even from young people born in the 21st century.

2. The governance of China is highly decentralised. Local communities are given freedom to create solutions suited to their needs; the performance of local party officials is measured by the satisfaction of their communities with progress. The Party-government structure is meritocratic, continuing a centuries long Confucian tradition. All who rise to the top of the Communist Party and government must first prove their mettle by managing a large city or state successfully. There are no “professional politicians” in China, unlike other multi-party democracies where citizens are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their political systems and even with liberal democracy.

3. China’s leaders and its economists are “systems thinkers”. They see the economy as only a component of a complex social system. For them the purpose of economic growth is the production of societal well-being, especially for less powerful people. Whenever the economy begins to fail this purpose, reforms are made to bring it back to its socialist moorings.

India is a remarkable country.

It took an unusual path at its birth in 1947. It chose to follow a democratic path for its development. There were concerns inside and outside India whether so diverse a country, formed of peoples with many religions, many languages and many ethnicities, would be able to hold itself together.

Independent India was a very poor country at its birth. The Indian economy, which was the richest in the world in the 18th century, had been exploited by its imperial coloniser to provide resources for its own economic growth and to fight its wars. India had become one of the poorest countries in the world when the British finally left India to Indians to govern themselves.

Some economists believe that development must precede democracy. Poor countries must be managed autocratically initially to build their economic infrastructure, they imply. They also think that when income levels have increased to a higher level (though economists are no longer sure what that level is) democracy will emerge automatically.

History tells another story.

China was equally poor as India 70 years ago. Now, China’s economy is five times larger. This may prove the theory that dictatorship should precede development. But it does not support the thesis that democracy, in the Western version, will follow development. On the contrary, there is increasing concern that rich Western countries are becoming undemocratic.

India’s own path to its destiny

When I joined the Planning Commission, my brief was to suggest ways to accelerate the growth of industry and employment. China’s planners had done much better than India’s. Starting at similar levels 50 years ago, China’s GDP and per capita incomes are now five times higher. I was invited by a Western economic journal to debate a Chinese economist. The subject was, “Should dictatorship precede democracy for economic development?”

The host of the debate contrasted China’s and India’s economic progress. His first question was to me. Did I think India had made a mistake in setting out to be a multi-party democracy when it became independent, and should it have followed the Chinese one-party, authoritarian model instead?

Before I could reply, my Chinese counterpart intervened and told our host he was asking the wrong question. China and India’s journeys could never be the same and should not be compared, he said.

He explained Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping’s metaphor of economic development as a process of crossing a turbulent stream by feeling the stones underfoot. There is no map to follow. A path must be found step by step. Each step should enable one to take the next. Sometimes one will wobble and may have to pause. Development, he said, is a process of experimenting and learning in action.

He contrasted India’s and China’s journeys. Both India and China had entered the same turbulent stream, on the same side, and at the same time. Both wanted to reach the same place on the other side of the stream, to become nations in which the welfare of all citizens is improved, and to become self-confident nations. They had entered the stream from different places on the bank, therefore they would have to find their own paths by feeling the stones their feet will encounter as they step forward.

China and India had acquired their freedoms to chart their own courses in different ways, he explained. China’s independence came with a violent revolution with the power of the gun. He even quoted Mao Zedong – “power springs from the barrel of a gun”. India’s independence was obtained by a non-violent revolution, and with aspirations to progress democratically. If India wants to follow China’s path, it will have to turn back mid-stream to return to shore and start again from the place China started. He would not recommend such a dangerous manoeuvre mid-stream. India and China must evolve in their own ways.

India’s leaders are at a crossroads. India must not slavishly follow Western models any longer. Nor can India be China. The time has come for India to find its own way, a more Mahatma Gandhian way than Western or Chinese way, to create a more equitable society.

This article is based on Arun Maira’s book, Reimagining India’s Economy: The Road to a More Equitable Society, published by Speaking Tiger Books (2025).

Arun Maira is a former Management Consultant and member of the Planning Commission of India. He has written several books including Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs a New Ethical Toolkit and Transforming Capitalism: Improving the World for Everyone.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said that he will stay in office for the full five-year term amid speculation about a change of leadership in the state, PTI reported.

“Yes, I will be [chief minister for the full term],” the news agency quoted the Congress leader as telling reporters when asked about the possibility of him stepping down. “Why do you have the doubt?”

This came amid speculation that Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar could replace Siddaramaiah as the chief minister.

On June 26, state minister KN Rajanna also claimed that a “major political development” in the state was anticipated after September.

However, Randeep Singh Surjewala, who is in charge of the Congress’ Karnataka unit, on Tuesday said that there would be no change in leadership. He had rejected speculation about a possible leadership change on Monday too, claiming that such talks were “only a figment of your imagination”.

On Tuesday, Shivakumar also reiterated that there would be no change of leadership.

“I don’t want anyone’s support,” the deputy chief minister had said. “My priority is for them [party legislators] to win back the Assembly elections.”

He added that there were no groups within the Congress and everyone was united.

Karnataka is expected to head for Assembly polls in 2028.

Earlier on Tuesday, Congress MLA Iqbal Hussain claimed that nearly 100 MLAs were in favour of Shivakumar leading the state government, India Today reported.

“It’s not just about change,” Hussain was quoted as saying. “Most of the MLAs want effective administration.”

After the Assembly polls in May 2023, reports claimed there had been competition between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar for the chief minister’s post.

At the time, some reports claimed that a compromise had been reached based on a “rotational chief minister formula”, under which Shivakumar would take up the post after two and a half years, PTI reported.

The Congress has not confirmed that there had been such an agreement.

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The Delhi High Court granted bail to two persons accused in the 2023 Parliament security breach case. The bench barred Neelam Azad and Mahesh Kumawat from holding press conferences, giving interviews and posting anything on social media about the incident.

The two argued that the police had wrongly invoked the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act against them, and that their actions did not construe an act of terrorism.

On December 13, 2023, two men, Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D, jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery and opened gas canisters. Outside Parliament, Azad and another man, Amol Dhanraj Shinde, opened smoke canisters and shouted “stop dictatorship”. All four were arrested in connection with the breach. A day later, the police arrested Lalit Jha, allegedly the mastermind behind the incident, and Kumawat, a co-accused. Read on.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal sentenced former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to six months in prison for contempt of court over a leaked phone call. She was tried in absentia. In the purported conversation with Shakil Akanda Bulbul, the former leader of her party’s student wing, Hasina had allegedly said: “I have had 227 cases filed against me, so I have received a licence to kill 227 people.”

The tribunal ruled that the comment showed contempt for the judiciary and was intended to undermine legal processes.

This is the first time that the ousted prime minister has been sentenced in any case since she fled the country in August 2024, after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her government.

She has also been charged by the tribunal with crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the protests. Read on.

The Dalai Lama said that a trust he founded had the sole right to decide on his successor, and that no one else had the authority to interfere in the matter. The statement by the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists came in the context of Beijing’s stand that the succession of the 14th Dalai Lama needed the Chinese government’s approval.

The leader said that he had made it clear in 1969 that the people concerned should decide whether the Dalai Lama’s reincarnations should continue.

China rejected the Dalai Lama’s statement, saying that his reincarnation needed to be approved by Beijing. The succession must follow Chinese laws as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions”, Beijing said. Read on.

Seven unidentified persons, believed to be members of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, have been booked for assaulting a shopkeeper in Thane district’s Mira Road for not speaking in Marathi. Babulal Khimji Chaudhary stated in his police complaint that members of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena came to his shop on Sunday. When a worker in the shop spoke to them in Hindi, they got angry. They allegedly abused the worker for not speaking Marathi.

“Two of the men came to me and again said that I need to know Marathi if I have to work and then assaulted me after an argument,” said Chaudhary. He added that the suspects made a video of the incident and uploaded it on social media. Read on.

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The red-crowned roofed turtle or batagur kachuga, which was almost on the verge of extinction in the Ganga river, has made a comeback after 30 years.

In April, 20 turtles were translocated from the Garheta Turtle Conservation Centre – located within and under the supervision of the National Chambal Sanctuary, Uttar Pradesh – and released at the Haiderpur wetland, a Ramsar site located in the state, part of river Ganga.

In collaboration with Namami Gange – the Ganga conservation mission by the Indian government, the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, and the India Turtle Conservation Program, the critically endangered red-crowned turtles have been released and these turtles have been tagged with sonic devices to monitor their safety and migration.

Rehabilitation

Red-crowned roofed turtles were once found in the Ganges river and its tributaries. But in the past 30 years, their numbers have decreased due to excessive hunting, illegal trade, loss of habitat and change in the flow of the river.

The turtle is endemic to India, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is also found in the Brahmaputra river region. Now, the only place in the country where a good number of these turtles are left is the National Chambal Sanctuary. And now, this area which is its natural home, is also in danger. It is estimated that less than 500 female turtles are left here.

In May 2021, a resident of Duhri, a village in UP’s Hapur district spotted a large turtle. When experts examined it, they found that it was the same Batagur kachuga which had not been seen in the Ganga river for 30 years.

Then, in March 2023, two nests were found in another village nearby, where 21 babies were born and released into the river after rearing. This was a clear indication that some turtles are still alive in the Ganges.

For the rehabilitation process, the turtles were divided into two groups – one group was released above a barrage at the Haiderpur wetland, while the other group was released into the mainstream of the Ganga river. The aim was to determine which method is the most effective for the rehabilitation of turtles.

There are 12 species of turtles found in Hastinapur Wildlife Sanctuary, of which four are part of conservation efforts. “Our effort is to conserve flagship species in the Ganga such as gharials, dolphins and turtles,” Rajesh Kumar, former Divisional Forest Officer of Meerut Forest Division, told Mongabay India.

“Twenty red-crowned roofed turtles were brought from Chambal and divided into two groups. Out of this, five males and five females were released in the Haiderpur Barrage and the same number of pairs were released in the (mainstream) Ganga river,” he added.

Telemetry study

“This study is the first telemetry-based monitoring effort of these turtles in the Ganga river,” said Pawan Shantiprakash Pareek, a researcher with the Turtle Survival Alliance Foundation India, who is coordinating the project and monitoring the movement of turtles.

Explaining the technology to Mongabay India, he said, “The transmitter fitted on each turtle gives information to the scientists about which direction the turtle is moving in, which place it is adopting to and how it is behaving. From this data, it will be analysed how this species is adapting itself to the circumstances after entering the Ganga and what threats it is facing.”

The turtles that were released were carefully selected based on health, sex and body parameters. Scientific procedures such as rehydration, stress reduction, and transporting during the night to avoid heat, were followed during the translocation.

Elaborating on the precautions taken in attaching the transmitter, Pareek said, “It has plates made of keratin on its back, which are similar in structure to human nails, making it easier to attach the tag. Our team, very carefully, glued these transmitters in a way that the turtle does not suffer any injury or discomfort. We ensured that the device is well attached and the chances of any kind of harm are minimal.”

The acoustic tags used in this study were attached externally to the back (dorsal carapace) of these turtles which essentially are hard-shelled freshwater turtles. He explained, “Conservation work on three turtle species in the Ganga has been going on with the World Wide Fund for Nature-India since 2010. Earlier, we used to do soft release – turtles were released into the water from time to time.”

He added, “Apart from Meerut, a hatchery has also been built in Bulandshahr for three species of turtles. However, this time, the Batagur (kachuga) turtle will be monitored with the help of technology, which will help in conservation.”

Real-time monitoring

All turtles have been fitted with a transmitter that emits signals at a specific frequency. This has made it possible to identify each turtle individually and track its activities.

“This system allows us to continuously monitor each turtle’s movement, habitat choice and behavioural patterns,” explains Pareek. “This process will help understand how the turtles are responding after their reintroduction, adapting to the new environment, and dealing with ecological challenges. Future conservation and management strategies will be formulated based on these data,” he added.

A special team is monitoring these turtles daily to understand how many turtles are alive and how they are spreading in the new environment. This monitoring focuses particularly on the turtles’ habitat preferences, their movement patterns, and potential threats that may affect their survival and movement. “This information will help us plan for the future and understand what is working and what is not while rehabilitating these turtles,” says Pareek.

Today, human activities as well as climate change are emerging as the biggest threats to these turtles. Pareek elaborates, “In all turtles, the sex is determined by the temperature of the eggs. If the temperature is high, then more of the same sex, ie, females will be born. This can disturb the balance of the entire population.” Additionally, changes such as unseasonal rains and sudden water releases can destroy nests and disrupt the breeding cycle.

Public participation

Sadhus and saints living on the banks of the Ganga have also been included in conservation efforts. “People listen to these sadhus. If they say that the turtles are sacred, people will stop fishing and hunting. Currently, more than 20 sadhus are helping in this work. Illegal activities have reduced considerably in the areas around their ashram,” says Pareek.

Kumar says, “There is a lot of awareness among the local people about these aquatic creatures. Our efforts with WWF-India involve creating awareness among farmers to save turtle eggs in the fields. Farmers are so aware that they have started protecting turtle nests. Sadhus, saints and school children are also cooperating in this effort.”

“AI cameras and drones are also used for monitoring, but sonar technology is very effective for underwater creatures. These were also used in the dolphin surveys,” Kumar said.

Raman Kant Tyagi, a river expert and the director of Neer Foundation that works on grassroots level activities for environmental awareness, told Mongabay India, “The return of the red-crowned roofed turtle to the Ganga after 30 years is not just a biological event, but it is a sign of the success of river conservation efforts. The health of any river can be judged by the aquatic life living in it.”

He added, “Thanks to government efforts like Namami Gange, crocodiles and turtles are being released. Sewage Treatment Plants are being built, biodiversity parks and awareness campaigns are also being initiated. However, the impact of these efforts on the ground is limited because there is a lack of proper engagement with society. There is a need to encourage the participation of saints and students.”

He elaborated and said, “Organisations such as the Bhartiya Nadi Parishad are acting as a bridge between society and the government. In the future, obstacles like corruption, bureaucracy and lack of public participation will have to be overcome to make river rejuvenation successful at the grassroots level.”

Commenting on the quality of the water in Ganga, Kumar said that since Meerut is a rural area, there is less pollution in the river here. “Cities like Banaras have the problem of sewage but here, the water of Kali river, a tributary of Ganga, is received indirectly. This area is protected, so sewage is not received directly.”

He added, “Two sewage treatment plants of 220 megalitres per day and 65 MLD are proposed in the city, due to which, in the near future, the drain water will reach the Ganga river only after being cleaned.”

This article was first published on Mongabay.

Eight residents of West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, who were detained in Delhi on the suspicion of being “illegal” Bangladesh migrants, were released on Tuesday. They were members of families who had relocated to India in the 2015 enclave exchange between India and Bangladesh.

All eight were detained by the police on Monday from a brick kiln in Haryana during a drive against undocumented migrants, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northwest Delhi) Bhisham Singh told The Indian Express.

They were released on Tuesday, their family members told Scroll.

The release came after the eight migrants produced their resident cards issued by the West Bengal government and other relevant documents, Singh added.

Those who were detained were identified as Samsul Haque and his brother Rejaul Haque, Muhammad Rayhan Haque, Muhammad Rabiul Haque, and his wife Rashida Begum, the newspaper reported. Rabiul’s three children were also detained.

Their family members told The Indian Express that all eight are from Dashiar Chhara, a former Indian enclave in Bangladesh. They had moved to an apartment complex in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata area made exclusively for enclave dwellers who had come to India after the exchange in 2015.

Their release came the police in Cooch Behar district police contacted their counterparts in Delhi.

Samirul Islam, chairperson of the West Bengal migrant welfare board, claimed that such detentions were happening daily to migrants from the state. He alleged that police in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states and in Delhi do not bother to inform the state government about such cases.

“We, on our own, have made verifications and sent them the requisite documents,” The Indian Express quoted Islam, also a Trinamool Congress MP, as having said. “In this case, the district administration got in touch with the Delhi Police authorities.”

He added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had welcomed the families to India after the enclave and exclave exchange in 2015.

“Now they are being detained as illegal Bangladeshi citizens,” he was quoted as saying. “And that too in the national capital.”

The exchange of enclaves and exclaves took place on August 1, 2015. Under this agreement, 111 Indian enclaves covering 17,160 acres inside Bangladesh were transferred to Bangladesh, while 51 Bangladeshi enclaves occupying 7,110 acres in India became part of India.

The residents of these enclaves were given the option of accepting citizenship of either country. At least 921 residents opted to move to the Indian side.

The incident came as Indian authorities have been pursuing a policy to force individuals claimed to be undocumented migrants into Bangladesh. In June, four men from West Bengal, who were forced into Bangladesh on allegations of being undocumented migrants, were brought back.

India has pushed back more than 2,000 persons into Bangladesh since the country launched “Operation Sindoor”, a military operation in May against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The legality of the “push back” policy has been debated in India and internationally. Experts have told Scroll that the policy violated India’s obligations under international law and customary international law.

The Assam Police have apprehended 196 persons under the state’s Cattle Preservation Act since Tuesday for alleged illegal cattle slaughter and unauthorised sale of beef in eateries.

One hundred and seventy-eight eateries have been searched so far and 1,732 kg of meat, which the police suspect is beef, was seized, Assam Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Akhilesh Kumar Singh told Scroll on Wednesday.

He added that the crackdown will continue in the coming days.

While consumption of beef is not illegal in the state, the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 2021, bans its slaughter and sale in areas predominantly inhabited by Hindu, Jain and Sikh communities or in areas that fall within a 5 km radius of a temple or satra (Vaishnavite monastery), or other religious institutions belonging to Hindu religion or any other institution or area as “may be prescribed by the competent authority”. It also places tight restrictions on cattle transportation.

On Tuesday, a drive was initiated in the state to check reported incidents of illegal cattle slaughter and sale of beef in restaurants without authorisation, PTI quoted Kumar as saying.

“The main intention of the drive is to stop violation of the Assam Cattle Preservation Act,” Kumar told the news agency.

However, Gauhati High Court advocate Oliullah Laskar told Scroll that several reports suggest that the recent arrests were based on “false allegations” of the sale of beef in violation of the 2021 Act.

“These actions disproportionately target minority communities, particularly Muslims, under the guise of legal enforcement,” he added.

In December, public consumption of beef, including at restaurants and community gatherings, was banned by the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state. A legislation or legislative amendment to this end has not been passed yet.

The crackdown on Tuesday came against the backdrop of more than 150 persons being arrested in Dhubri after animal remains alleged to be of a cow were recovered near a Hindu temple, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has claimed that the incident was part of an attempt to create unrest “since Eid-ul-Zuha”.

The India Meteorological Department on Tuesday issued an alert for very heavy rainfall in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan for the next four to five days.

Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Chhattisgarh are expected to receive isolated heavy rainfall until July 7, while eastern states – Bihar, West Bengal, Sikkim, Odisha and Jharkhand – are expected to receive very heavy showers until Saturday.

The weather agency has also warned of heavy to very heavy rainfall in areas along the western coast, including Konkan, Goa, coastal areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat until July 7. Saurashtra and Kutch may also see significant rainfall during this period, according to the IMD.

Northeastern states are expected to get isolated spells of heavy to very heavy rain, while parts of coastal Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Karnataka may receive heavy rain on some days until July 7.

On Monday, the IMD had forecast above-normal rainfall for July and urged residents and authorities in central India, Uttarakhand and Haryana to remain cautious due to the possible risk of flooding.

IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra highlighted that central India and parts of the southern peninsula are likely to witness substantial rainfall. This includes eastern Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Vidarbha, Telangana, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

“We should monitor the catchment areas of rivers such as the Godavari, Mahanadi and Krishna,” Mohapatra said. “Our models show a high probability of above-normal rainfall in the upper Mahanadi catchment, which includes Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. There are several other rivers in the region. We must closely watch rainfall activity and the water levels in reservoirs.”

Mohapatra also noted that Uttarakhand and Haryana will likely experience good rainfall.

“This region includes several cities and towns, including Delhi,” he added. “Many south-flowing rivers originate in Uttarakhand. We must take precautions for all these river catchments, cities and towns.”

The Maharashtra government on Tuesday said that 767 farmers died by suicide in the state between January and March this year, The Indian Express reported.

Of these cases, 373 families were found eligible for financial compensation, while 200 were declared ineligible, state Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Makarand Patil said in a written reply to a question in the Legislative Council about farmer suicides.

The inquiry in the remaining 194 cases was pending, Patil said.

The minister stated that financial aid of Rs 1 lakh each had been given to the families of 327 eligible farmers, and efforts were being made to complete the compensation process in the remaining cases.

All divisional commissioners had been directed to clear the dues quickly, he added.

The minister was replying to a question raised by Opposition Congress MLCs Pradnya Rajeev Satav, Satej Patil and Bhai Jagtap about delays in compensation and the rising number of farmer suicides in the state, Deccan Chronicle reported.

In 2024, Maharashtra saw 2,635 farmers die by suicide, while this number stood at 2,851 in 2023, Deccan Chronicle reported.

Since 2001, Maharashtra has recorded 39,825 farmer suicides, according to The Times of India. Of these, 22,193 were related to the agrarian crisis in the state.

The crisis is a result of low crop yields, debt burdens and inadequate means of irrigation.

The Madras High Court on Wednesday held that the law does not allow for telephonic conversations or messages to be tapped for the purposes of covert operations aimed at crime detection.

The law permits phone tapping only in public emergencies or in the interest of public safety, the court said.

Justice N Anand Venkatesh was hearing a petition by P Kishore, the managing director of a company in Chennai named Everonn Education. The Central Bureau of Investigation had in 2011 filed a corruption case against three persons, including Kishore and an Income Tax official named Andasu Ravinder.

The agency alleged that the official demanded a bribe from the company to help it evade taxes, after which Kishore paid him Rs 50 lakh.

The Union home ministry had in August 2011 passed an order allowing Kishore’s mobile phone to be tapped. Kishore challenged the order before the High Court.

The court on Tuesday quashed the home ministry’s order, holding that phone tapping would violate the right to privacy unless it was authorised under a procedure established by law.

The home ministry had authorised the tapping of Kishore under Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act.

However, the court noted that the provision only allows for the interception of telephones in public emergencies or in the interest of public safety.

When such a situation exists, the authorities may pass an order directing interception of messages “after recording satisfaction if it is necessary or expedient to do so in the interest of sovereignty or integrity of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence”, the court said.

The judge noted that the case at hand was one involving a covert operation for detecting a crime.

“As the law presently stands, a situation of this nature does not fall within the four corners of Section 5(2) of the Act…” the court said.

The judge referred to a 1996 Supreme Court judgement on a petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, in which the court laid down guidelines for telephone tapping. It also noted that these principles had been approved by the court in its 2017 judgement in the Puttaswamy versus Union of India case, in which it held that the right to privacy was a protected fundamental right under the Constitution.

The High Court on Wednesday also held that the authorities had contravened Rule 419A of the Indian Telegraph Rules by not placing the intercepted material before a review committee in time.

“As a consequence... the impugned order dated August 12, 2011, must necessarily be set aside as unconstitutional and one without jurisdiction,” Justice Venkatesh said.

Seven unidentified persons, believed to be members of the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, have been booked for assaulting a shopkeeper in Thane district’s Mira Road for not speaking in Marathi, The Times of India reported on Wednesday.

Babulal Khimji Chaudhary (48) has stated in his police complaint that members of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena came to his sweet shop at 10.30 am on Sunday. When a worker in the shop spoke to them in Hindi, they got angry.

They allegedly abused the worker for not speaking Marathi, the newspaper reported.

“Two of the men came to me and again said that I need to know Marathi if I have to work and then assaulted me after an argument,” the newspaper quoted Chaudhary as saying.

He added that the assailants made a video of the incident and uploaded it on social media.

“I had told them that my workers are from other states and not fluent in Marathi,” he said. “But, they insisted that all should know Marathi in Maharashtra.”

A first information report has been filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

An unidentified Maharashtra Navnirman Sena member was quoted as saying by The Times of India that an “argument” had taken place at the shop because the owner was “arrogant”.

“Our party workers were celebrating the withdrawal of the GR [government resolution] by the state government on the language issue at the Balaji Park and went to buy water at this sweet shop,” the member was quoted as saying. “The owner was arrogant and said that all languages are spoken in Maharashtra which resulted in some arguments.”

On Sunday, Maharashtra withdrew its government resolution to teach Hindi as the third language to students from Class 1 to Class 5 in Marathi and English medium schools.

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has been at the forefront of the campaign against the implementation of the three-language policy in state schools, alleging it was an attempt to impose Hindi in the Marathi-speaking state.

Earlier this year, workers of the party had launched a campaign demanding that bank employees in the state speak to customers in Marathi. The campaign has reportedly now been suspended.

In April, two women, one of whom was holding a baby, were assaulted in the city of Dombivli in Maharashtra’s Thane district, allegedly for saying “excuse me” instead of speaking in Marathi.

Three Maharashtra Navnirman Sena members were booked on April 1 for allegedly slapping a watchman in Mumbai’s Powai area for not speaking in Marathi. A similar incident occurred at another bank in the city, where an official was threatened for not speaking in Marathi.

In December, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena members had slapped a shopkeeper at Girgaon in South Mumbai after he allegedly asked a woman to speak to him in Marwadi instead of Marathi, the Deccan Herald reported.

A man who had been injured in a Pakistani drone strike in Punjab’s Ferozepur district during the four-day conflict between India and Pakistan on May 9 died on Tuesday evening.

Lakhwinder Singh succumbed to his injuries at the Dayanand Medical College in Ludhiana, his relative Ramandeep Singh told Scroll.

Singh is the second civilian casualty of drone strikes outside Jammu and Kashmir during the India-Pakistan conflict. His wife, Sukhwinder Kaur, was also injured in the drone strike and died on May 12.

Singh was first admitted to the Anil Bhagi Hospital in Ferozepur. Saurabh Bhagi, the chief executive officer of the hospital, told Scroll that Singh had suffered 60% burns.

In the afternoon of May 10, Singh was referred to Dayanand Medical College in Ludhiana.

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‘We are very afraid’: Hours before ceasefire, Punjab village hit by drone filled with dread

Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad had escalated on May 7 when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

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

The Pakistan Army had retaliated by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

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

Twenty-one civilians, including four children, lost their lives in Jammu and Kashmir in the conflict. Five members of Indian armed forces were also killed in action.

Pakistan claimed that 11 of its military personnel and 40 civilians were killed in the conflict.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted bail to two persons accused in the 2023 Parliament security breach case, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar allowed petitions filed by Neelam Azad and Mahesh Kumawat for bail in the case, which was reserved on May 21, Live Law reported.

The bail was subject to Azad and Kumawat furnishing a bail bond of Rs 50,000 each and two sureties. The two were also barred from holding press conferences or giving interviews, and posting anything on social media about the incident.

The matter pertained to two men, Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D, jumping into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery and opening gas canisters on December 13, 2023.

Outside Parliament, Azad and a man – Amol Dhanraj Shinde – had opened smoke canisters and shouted “stop dictatorship”. All four were arrested in connection with the breach.

A day later, the police arrested Lalit Jha, allegedly the mastermind behind the incident, and Kumawat, a co-accused.

The police charged all six under provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Azad moved the High Court in September 2024 against a city court denying her bail, while Kumawat also filed an appeal in November against the rejection of his bail petition, the Hindustan Times reported.

During earlier proceedings, Azad and Kumawat told the court that the police had wrongly invoked the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act against them, adding that their actions did not construe an act of terrorism.

Azad said that her conduct did not amount to an act of terror as she had entered the premises using a valid pass and without weapons, the Hindustan Times reported. Kumawat said that his intention was to draw attention towards issues having democratic and political importance.

However, the police argued that the breach coincided with the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament attack. This proved that they intended to strike terror or threaten the security of the country.

On December 13, 2001, terrorists entered the Parliament complex and began shooting with AK-47 rifles. The attack had left nine persons dead.

The police also submitted that those accused in the case wanted to bring back “haunted memories” of the 2001 attack to the “majestic” new Parliament building, Live Law reported.

The bench, however, asked whether an offence under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act could be made out against those accused. It added that if using smoke canisters were a terrorist act, then every Holi and Indian Premier League match would also attract such provisions, Live Law reported.

The Dalai Lama said on Wednesday that a trust he founded had the sole prerogative to decide on his successor, and that no one else had the authority to interfere in the matter.

The Tibetan spiritual leader’s statement came in the context of Beijing’s stand that the succession of the 14th Dalai Lama needed the Chinese government’s approval.

“I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognise the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,” the Dalai Lama said. The Gaden Phodrang Trust is a non-profit organisation that the 14th Dalai Lama set up in 2015 to support the institution of the Dalai Lama.

The statement came ahead of a three-day Tibetan Buddhist Conference which will begin on Wednesday at Himachal Pradesh’s McLeodganj, just days before the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday on July 6.

In a statement released by his office on social media, the leader said that as far back as 1969, he had made it clear that the people concerned should decide whether the Dalai Lama’s reincarnations should continue in the future.

“I also said: When I am about 90, I will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism to re-evaluate whether or not the institutions of the Dalai Lama should continue,” he said.

The Dalai Lama stated that while he had held no public discussions on the matter, over the last 14 years, he received requests from different groups seeking the continuation of the institution of the Dalai Lama. “In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,”

Statement Affirming the Continuation of the Institution of Dalai Lama

(Translated from the original Tibetan)

On 24 September 2011, at a meeting of the heads of Tibetan spiritual traditions, I made a statement to fellow Tibetans in and outside Tibet, followers of Tibetan… pic.twitter.com/VqtBUH9yDm

— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) July 2, 2025

China rejected the Dalai Lama’s statement on Wednesday, saying that his reincarnation needed to be approved by the Chinese government, the BBC reported. Beijing said the succession must follow Chinese laws as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions”.

A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry said that the Dalai Lama’s successor could be identified only through a system of drawing lots, in which names are drawn from a golden urn. Critics allege that China will misuse this method to exert pressure on the Tibetan community, according to the BBC.

The system of drawing lots, which began in 1792, was used to identify three reincarnations of the Dalai Lama. However, it was not used to select the current Dalai Lama.

The current Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 following an uprising against Chinese rule and took refuge in India with around 80,000 followers. He has since lived in Dharamsala, where he formed the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The Chinese government has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama of “separatist” activities.

The Dalai Lama had previously said his successor would be born outside China, and had urged his followers to reject anyone that Beijing would choose, Reuters reported.

A Swiss civil court’s decision last fortnight to initiate an assessment of evidence regarding the use of the pesticide Polo in a lawsuit against the agrochemical giant Syngenta sends a message to Indian farmers that it is possible to challenge a huge company and hold it accountable, representatives of individuals poisoned by pesticides said.

The cases were brought in 2021 under the Swiss public liability law by the wives of two farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region who died in a wave of “pesticide poisoning” in 2017 along with a survivor of the poisoning. Polo, manufactured by Syngenta, was widely used in Vidarbha in 2017.

Pesticide poisoning is said to occur when a chemical intended to control insects is ingested or breathed in by a human or absorbed through the skin.

“This indicates that the court in principle considers that Syngenta could be held liable for harm caused by its hazardous products abroad, and paved the way for victims and their families to seek justice before the Swiss court,” said the Pesticide Action Network India in a statement.

The court will treat these three cases separately because different questions regarding evidence may emerge in each of them.

Deadly cocktail

A deadly cocktail of pesticides including Polo is alleged to have caused the deaths of more than 20 farmers in Vidarbha, through contact poisoning and left hundreds affected in 2017 and 2018. The Basel civil court in July 2022, ruled that it had jurisdiction in the case and permitted free legal aid for the complainants, according to a press statement on Monday from PAN India.

The complainants are supported by three organisations: Pesticide Action Network India, Public Eye, which works to make Swiss companies accountable. and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights.

A spokesperson for Public Eye said that the court will now go into the evidence that the parties have submitted during the written submissions and most likely conduct witness hearings and party interviews. The court will see whether it is well enough established that the claimants or their deceased husbands have used the pesticide in question. No new evidence can be submitted at this point.

This phase of the court case is likely to take a while, the Public Eye spokesperson said. If the court decides that this fact is established, the proceedings will continue and the court will decide what the next step should be. If not, the court can reject the case.

The case seeks to hold Syngenta accountable for selling Polo in India, though this is not allowed for sale in the European Union. Polo’s active ingredient, diafenthiuron, was banned in the European Union in 2002 to protect the environment and human health.

In 2009, it was taken off the market in Switzerland. In March 2017, diafenthiuron was added to the list of substances that are banned because of their effects on health and the environment, according to Public Eye.

The European Chemicals Agency has said that diafenthiuron is “toxic if inhaled” and stated that it “may cause damage to organs through prolonged or repeated exposure”. However, Polo is available freely in countries like India.

Reports by PAN India and Public Eye have documented the large-scale pesticide poisonings in Vidarbha, a European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights statement said. It said that while Syngenta still denies any responsibility for the events, police records from local authorities in Vidarbha state that 96 cases of poisoning, two of which led to fatalities, were linked to a Syngenta insecticide going by the name of Polo.

This lawsuit was filed after a compulsory mediation procedure in Switzerland had ended without an agreement. It sends a clear message that the Swiss judicial system will deal with cases brought by victims of corporate harm abroad but caused by Swiss companies, according to PAN India.

It added that as the first civil lawsuit from the Global South against an agrochemical company over pesticide poisonings, this case breaks new legal ground.

Earlier, in September 2020, on behalf of 51 affected families, PAN India, the Maharashtra Association of Pesticide Poisoned Persons, Public Eye and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights had filed a complaint against Syngenta with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Swiss National Contact Point in Bern in September 2020. This is a complaint mechanism under the OECD framework.

While initially the complaint was accepted in December 2020, and four mediation meetings were held with Syngenta in 2021, the proceedings ended in 2022 without a positive outcome or any steps to ensure accountability from the company.

The outcome of the OECD complaint was disappointing for farmers, but this case could set a benchmark in corporate accountability globally. During the mediation, it was emphasised that it was important for the farmers that Syngenta provides remedies to the 51 farmers and farm workers allegedly impacted in Vidarbha in 2017.

However, Syngenta repeatedly asserted that it could not comment on issues that were being dealt with in the proceedings before the Swiss civil court, in particular the question if Polo had caused the poisonings alleged in the complaint.

The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights contended that Syngenta’s position contradicts the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which ensures that businesses are held accountable and also provide access to effective remedy for victims.

This forms an important part of the state’s duty to protect against business-related human rights abuses, according to a United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in a 2018 report.

“The group of 51 farmers and their families should not be deprived of their right to access remedy through a non-judicial process simply because another group of victims chose to file a civil lawsuit,” said Marcos Orellana, UN Special Rapporteur on Toxics and Human Rights. “This is setting a bad precedent that underscores the weaknesses of national contact points for the OECD Guidelines”.

In addition the complaint had demanded that the provisions of the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management be implemented by Syngenta to prevent future cases of poisoning in India. Even this demand was not conceded.

The European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights stated that the code required that companies avoid selling hazardous products such as Polo, whose handling and application require the use of personal protective equipment that is uncomfortable, expensive or not readily available to small-scale users and farm workers in countries with hot climates such as India.

One of the problems that emerged in the increased pesticide poisoning cases in 2017 and 2018 was that few farmers wore any sort of protective clothing. It was only in 2018 that some sort of protocol to use pesticides and treat the severe cases was established.

Deaths confirmed

In an Right to Information application filed by this correspondent in 2017-’18, the police records confirmed 22 deaths and 349 affected by pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal district alone in 2017 and 20-odd more deaths in other districts of Vidarbha region.

Only in five deaths in Yavatmal did the police file cases against pesticide dealers under section 304(a) of the Indian Penal Code (causing death by negligence and the Insecticide Act).

Most of those who died had used monocrotophos as one of the chemicals they sprayed and a mixture of toxic pesticides. The first farmer who was killed, Devidas Madavi, used Profex Super, a combination of profenofos and cypermethrin, that other farmers also did. At least 80 of those affected and who survived, reported using Polo, according to police records, sometimes along with other chemicals.

A state government Special Investigation Team report said that in 2016-’17, treatment for pesticide poisoning had been sought by 434 patients. In 2017-’18. the number doubled to 886. There is continuing cause for concern as pesticides like Polo continue to be used for cotton, posing a grave threat to farmers and the environment.

Meena Menon is a freelance journalist and a postdoctoral visiting fellow at the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds, UK.

Four persons were arrested in Karnataka’s Belagavi district on Monday for allegedly assaulting members of a Hindutva group after they reportedly intercepted a vehicle transporting cows and later forcibly entered the home of the cattle’s owner, The Indian Express reported.

Belagavi Superintendent of Police Bhimashankar Guled told the newspaper that those who were assaulted were members of the Sri Rama Sene.

“While Sri Rama Sene activists broke the law by barging into a house without permission, some villagers did the same by assaulting them,” Guled said.

The police took cognisance of the case after a video of the incident, which took place last week, was shared on social media, PTI reported. The video purportedly shows five men being tied to a tree and attacked by a group.

The police said that on June 26, members of the Sri Rama Sene stopped a vehicle, alleging that it was transporting cattle for slaughter. They later took the driver to a police station, where he maintained that the cows were being taken for dairy and taming purposes, The Indian Express reported. The cows were later taken to a cattle shelter.

On June 28, members of the outfit allegedly barged into the house of Babasav Ramjan Multani, the cattle owner, after he brought the cows back from the shelter. Only women were reportedly present inside the home at the time.

An unidentified police officer told The Indian Express that the villagers mistook the men for thieves and assaulted them.

However, Sri Rama Sene leader Vithal Gaddi claimed that five of the outfit’s members were attacked when they tried to stop the illegal transportation of cattle.

Villagers, meanwhile, have claimed that the assault was unrelated to cattle transport and that the members had allegedly “misbehaved with a woman”, PTI reported.

When the monsoon arrived in Delhi last year, it brought welcome respite from the relentless heat. But for Rahish, this comfort was short-lived.

With just a short spell of rain, the street in front of his tailoring shop in South Delhi’s Tigri was waterlogged with about a foot of rainwater. It took around four hours for it to subside.

But Rahish was expecting it. After all, he had seen the pattern repeat year after year for the last 30 years. This year, the water even entered his shop and damaged some of his cloth material. “I am still paying for the losses,” he said, as he finished the final stitches on a pair of trousers for a customer.

“The biggest problem is that there is no exit for the water that collects,” said Rahish.

Tigri is adjacent to Sangam Vihar, one of Delhi’s largest unplanned colonies, where waterlogging occurs frequently.

Excess rainwater is meant to flow into the Barapullah stormwater drain here, but most of the smaller drains that connect to it are blocked with solid waste. As a result, water seeps through manholes and flows into the sewerage system under the roads.

“But since the pipes are small, very soon it starts giving out backflow,” Rahish said. When this happens, rainwater, mixed with sewerage, flows out and contributes to the waterlogging.

This is what happened last year when water entered his home in Tigri. “We could not even use the toilet because we have an Indian-styled one, and it was covered with sewage water,” he said.

It isn’t just low-income neighbourhoods like Tigri that are affected by waterlogging. During the monsoon last year, rainwater also stagnated in Defence Colony, an upscale residential colony around eight kilometres north.

“Numerous basements flooded here, and people lost about Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh worth of furniture and other things they had stored,” said Bhavreen Kandhari, a resident of the colony.

The story is a familiar one across Indian cities and towns, most of whose stormwater drains are proving inadequate for increasing bouts of heavy rainfall. Last month was Mumbai’s wettest May in more than a hundred years – rains left roads waterlogged and commuters stranded, and even gushed into a newly inaugurated metro station. Media reported that the rains revealed 80 new places that were prone to flooding, and municipal corporation officials stated that they were planning to increase drainage capacities of vulnerable areas.

Similar scenes of flooding played out in Bengaluru, where three people were also killed in rain-related accidents.

While part of the reason for frequent flooding in Indian cities is the changing rainfall patterns – more rain tends to fall in shorter periods – another key factor is poor drainage. The pattern across cities is common: poorly planned expansion means that existing drains typically lack adequate capacity; and even these are poorly maintained, almost guaranteeing their failure during days of high rainfall.

In Delhi, both Defence Colony and Tigri are adjacent to the Barapullah drain. This is a naturally occurring seasonal stream that is a tributary of the Yamuna, and earlier came alive only with the monsoon, thereby acting as a natural stormwater drain. It originates from Mehrauli in south Delhi, and flows past congested homes in Chirag Dilli, the localities of Defence Colony and Jangpura, and the busy Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, shortly after which it meets the Yamuna.

Numerous smaller, local drains constructed by the Public Works Department are connected to this natural drain – they are supposed to collect rainwater and feed it to Barapullah, which should then carry it to the Yamuna. With these smaller drains included, Barapullah has a vast catchment area – it covers 91% of South Delhi and 95% of Central Delhi.

Other stormwater drains carry out similar functions in other parts of the city – Najafgarh drains out West Delhi, while across the Yamuna, the Shahdara and Ghazipur drains carry out the same function. In all, 201 natural drains flow through Delhi.

However, Scroll’s ground reporting found that in numerous places, like Tigri, the local drains that connect to main stormwater drains are frequently blocked with solid waste, restricting the flow of water through them.

“The drains are all connected to each other, but because of such blocks the water does not reach the main drain,” said another Tigri resident Prem, pointing to a blocked drain next to the road on which a gift shop she runs is situated. She explained that the road gets waterlogged every year.

The Delhi Traffic Police has identified over 260 hotspots that face frequent waterlogging in the city. This urban flooding occurs even during short spells of rain.

In Sangam Vihar, for instance, a Centre for Science and Environment report found that with sewage lines also working as stormwater drains, flooding and sewage spillover occurs “even in a short 15-minute rainfall episode”.

In response, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has focused on desilting the network of stormwater drains to ensure that they function at optimum capacity. As of early July, the corporation still had to complete 25% of this work.

But experts told Scroll that while desilting is important, long-term answers to Delhi’s waterlogging would involve taking into account the natural topography of the city, delinking sewage with waste water, reviving old ponds and finding alternate exit routes for rainwater that exceeds the carrying capacity of drains.

“The administration is not looking at the issue as a system,” said AK Gosain, former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, who has worked extensively on problems of water resources engineering. Without such a holistic approach, he added, tackling individual issues through strategies such as desilting was unlikely to produce the desired results.

This story is part of Common Ground, our in-depth and investigative reporting project. Sign up here to get the stories in your inbox soon after they are released.

Delhi sees broadly two kinds of flooding.

The first results when there is a rise in the level of the Yamuna, on whose banks Delhi is situated. When this occurs, usually in the monsoons, water from the river flows into the stormwater drains, creating a backflow into the city.

“In such cases, the irrigation and flood department shuts the gates that connect the drains to the Yamuna, so that the river’s water does not go into the city,” said Rajender Ravi, founding member of the People’s Resource Centre, which researches infrastructure, rivers and urban agriculture. But, he added, this also prevents water in the city from draining into the Yamuna, leading to waterlogging anyway.

Low-intensity floods of this kind, where the river does not rise above its warning level of 204 metres, occur almost every monsoon.

Occasionally, these floods can also occur at a much greater intensity. This is what happened in the 2023 monsoon, when the Yamuna flowed at a level of 208.66 metres above sea level, breaking the earlier record of 207.49 metres in 1978. The irrigation and flood control department’s website notes that the city saw eight such floods between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Such floods have also occurred when water levels rise in manmade tributaries of the Yamuna. One such tributary begins in the Najafgarh lake, which is fed by the Sahibi river, a natural tributary of the Yamuna. In 1865, the British drained this large lake out to create more arable land – to do this, they created a new channel to the Yamuna, which came to be known as the Najafgarh drain. In 1967, this channel as well as the lake itself flooded.

But a far more frequent kind of flooding is the waterlogging that occurs within localities even when the Yamuna is not in spate.

These floods are primarily caused by unplanned construction as the city has expanded. “Because of so much concretisation, there is a lot of surface flow of rainwater which is not percolating into the ground naturally, because there is no soft space for the water to enter,” said Manu Bhatnagar, who heads INTACH’s natural heritage division, and has led work on rejuvenation of drains in Delhi.

He added that there was also a lot of “poor engineering” of drainage systems – for example, the openings of several engineered drains are higher than the grounds they are supposed to drain.

A major impediment to tackling this problem is the fact that administrative authority over stormwater drains is currently spread out between ten institutions, including the flood and irrigation department, the Delhi Jal Board, municipal corporations and public works department.

The Delhi government has attempted to tackle the problem. To start with, it asked Gosain and his team at IIT Delhi to consolidate data from various government departments on the existing capacity and function of stormwater drains, and then indicate points at which there were problems. The government also asked the team to suggest possible solutions. They were to compile the information and recommendations in a drainage masterplan – the first such to be drawn up since 1978.

When the team began gathering available data, they came up against stark limitations.

In some instances, “We found only a line was made on a GIS map,” said Gosain.

“There were no dimensions, no invert levels,” he added, referring to measurements that are essential to ascertain the capacity of the stormwater drains. “These are the basic data that have to be used to understand why water is not being evacuated.”

The team also struggled because several departments delayed providing information to them. Gosain suggested that in some instances, team members could themselves collect data from the ground, and submit it to departments for vetting.

For the next 18 months, his team collected this data, both from the ground and from different departments, analysing the functioning of stormwater drains and identifying areas that faced the most waterlogging. They also made recommendations, such as correcting the slopes of artificial drains to prevent stagnation. In 2018, they put together a new masterplan.

But the report noted that though government departments had agreed beforehand to vet the data that the team compiled, not all departments had done so. It stated that “It was unfortunate that various departments passed on the survey data without vetting the data properly.” Some departments, like the Delhi Development Authority, did not even send the data the team had sought.

Though the government itself was responsible for some of these shortcomings of the report, a government committee that reviewed the master plan put the master plan on hold in 2021, citing “discrepancies in data”.

It was only this April that the Public Works Department announced that by June this year, it would finalise a detailed project report for the drainage masterplan.

Gosain hinted that he was disappointed with the delay in implementing his team’s solutions, “We prepared this huge scientific database,” he said. “It is possible to reduce the extent of flooding by implementing the recommendations made by our study and accepted by the government, as long as they do it with proper intent and effort.”

Among the major measures that the government undertakes each year to try and tackle flooding is the desilting of stormwater drains.

In May, across Delhi, workers with large spades were seen entering manholes and clearing wet mud from the manmade drains. Along the larger natural drains, like Barapullah, large bulldozers did the same work. This work, typically done before the monsoon, is aimed at increasing the capacity of the drains.

But experts pointed out that poor planning has made it impossible for desilting to be carried out to the extent needed. Specifically, in many areas of the city, long stretches of these drains have been covered over in ways that leave them inaccessible. “When we were analysing the data and preparing the master plan, we found many stretches of drains around 1 km to 2 km, where there is no access to the drain and desilting is not possible,” said Gosain.

“Stormwater drains are only supposed to be covered temporarily so as to gain access whenever required,” he added. “But now, most are permanent. Unless you break them you won’t know if the drain is silted or not.”

In Defence Colony, the Delhi Development Authority covered large portions of Kushak drain – a part of the Barapullah drain – to create a park. Kandhari said that residents had raised their voices “for years to not cover the drain since it prevented routine inspection, desilting and maintenance which caused silt to build up, stagnate, and lead to foul odour”.

This year, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is attempting to rectify this mistake. An official told Scroll that they had broken large rectangular tracts of the covered portions of this drain so that bulldozers could scoop out silt.

“It is such a waste of resources,” said Kandhari, who recorded a drone video along the Kushak drain where these bulldozers can be seen at work.

Kushak Drain Saga ⬇️ #DefenceColony

*Started covering: 2009
*Stalled: 2013
*Abandoned: 2014
* @rsuri54 moved NGT: 2015 → SC twice over→ Yamuna Committee (till 2021)
*2025: Back to NGT

Citizens suffer for decades while absurd decisions go unchecked.

Video as on 2/6/25 ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/abzwQvHmZh

— Bhavreen Kandhari (@BhavreenMK) June 3, 2025

It was not only residents who opposed this work. In 2015, the National Green Tribunal noted that work of covering drains had begun in Defence Colony and other parts of south Delhi, but that this would have “very adverse impacts upon the environment and ecology of Delhi”. It added, “This would result in more flooding, explosion of diseases and clogging of drains.”

Many smaller drains within colonies have also been covered, such as with footpaths, or with extensions of shops.

“In most of the colonies, rooftop water is connected to the sewer line, which is not designed to get the stormwater,” said Gosain.

Elsewhere, drains have temporary coverings. In Tigri for example, Prem pointed to a few shops that had covered the naalas running outside their shops with cemented slabs, but ensured that they had iron handles that would allow them to be lifted. But allowing this access has not helped residents.

“These can be opened,” she said. “If the MCD comes tomorrow to clean these drains, no one will say no. But they should at least come.”

It was not just silt that hindered the flow of water in the drains. Prem also pointed towards a cave-like cemented structure on one side of Tigri’s market – this was an opening to a stormwater drain, towards which the ground around was intended to slope, so that water would flow into it.

The opening to this drain had not been cleaned for years, she said. It was choked with plastic packets and other waste, and had no water in it. During rains, too, residents said, this drain did not carry any water at all.

While in many places, rainwater enters the sewer system and causes floods, elsewhere, sewerage is directly released into stormwater drains, polluting them and choking their capacity.

On an early June morning, a portion of the Barapullah flowing in Chirag Dilli was a muddy green channel with plastic waste and cloth material on its banks. But experts noted that up to the monsoon period, which typically begins at the end of June, the drain should technically be empty.

“Over a period of time as urbanisation surrounded them, stormwater drains have been used as a substitute to sewer systems,” INTACH’s Bhatnagar said. “Earlier in the non-monsoon period there was never any flow. Now around the year the flow is there and that is basically sewerage.”

During the rains, since stormwater drains are already carrying sewage, they have limited capacity to take on excess rainwater.

A court-appointed Yamuna Monitoring Committee flagged this problem in 2020 – it found that sewage was mixing with stormwater in 144 places in the city. The IIT Delhi Master plan found that at least 50% of the capital territory does not have access to the engineered sewer system, and that “sewage generated from these areas is inevitably discharged into the storm water system”, which leads to “overflows and sluggish movement of the storm water within the drainage network”.

Not just sewage, even industrial waste flows in these drains. When the Yamuna Monitoring Committee did a random survey of industries in Bawana and Narela between 2019 and 2020, they found that 29 industries were discharging their wastewater into stormwater drains.

The National Green Tribunal also issued directions to the Delhi Jal Board in 2015, 2017 and 2019 to ensure that stormwater drains do not carry sewage. In 2017, the board claimed that it had indeed stopped the entry of sewage into 11 out of 17 drains where it had been mixing with stormwater. But upon ground verification, the committee found that a number of these drains were still carrying sewage.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi official agreed that sewage and industrial waste continues to flow into nalas. “But that is anyway the responsibility of Delhi Jal Board,” he said.

Scroll emailed Delhi government authorities, seeking their responses to criticisms of poor planning and management of the the city’s stormwater drain system. This story will be updated if they respond.

In some parts of Delhi, the Public Works Department has proposed that it will lay drains of a larger width to prevent waterlogging. But experts argue that this would not be practical because it would entail digging up large parts of the city.

“The other option we have is to use and rejuvenate all the existing waterbodies, induce infiltration through rainwater harvesting, create retention storages in the city to reduce the stormwater and flooding to some extent,” said Gosain.

Indeed, in the master plan, Gosain and his team created simulations based on the data of slopes and drains they collected, to see if waterbodies in Delhi could naturally absorb the rainwater run-off. After mapping existing lakes and ponds in the three major drainage basins – Najafgarh, Barapullah, and Trans Yamuna – they found that waterbodies “could store a considerable volume” of water.

In Budhela, an urban village in south-west Delhi, residents explained that up till about two decades ago, an old pond or johad, played exactly this role. “This is where we used to take cows and goats for a swim, and we would swim ourselves,” said Ramniwas, a resident of the village. He explained that the natural incline of the area was such that during rains, runoff from the interiors of the densely laid streets of Budhela would flow into this rainfed lake. The village is part of the Najafgarh drainage basin, and the main Najafgarh drain flows less than a kilometre from Budhela.

But in 2002, Delhi Development Authority acquired the pond from the gram sabha and handed it over to Delhi government’s cultural wing to develop a building to host cultural events. To make the ground stable, the Delhi government filled the pond completely in the years following it.

“Since that time, we have started seeing waterlogging issues in a few of our streets like this one,” said another resident Harmohan, as we walked on a street adjacent to the boundary of the pond.

Budhela’s waterlogged street in the rains has also presented a health hazard – Harmohan explained that numerous mosquitoes breed on the still water, raising the risk of diseases spreading among residents.

It was only in late 2023 that the construction of the building began on the land where the pond had been. In 2024, a resident challenged the project in the Delhi High Court, arguing that the court had set precedent in 2013, when it directed the Delhi Development Authority to cancel all allotments of land on waterbodies wherever the land was still vacant – the court had also ordered the authority to revive these water bodies.

This March, the Delhi High Court stayed the construction of the building.

When Scroll visited the johad on a hot June morning, a half constructed two-storey building stood in the depression of the dry pond. “We want the pond to be used as a pond, so that it can be used for the village residents,” said Ramniwas.

Experts also suggest other methods to tackle excess water that do not rely on stormwater drains – though they cautioned that the authorities had delayed acting on the problem. “Public parks also might have certain depressed areas where the stormwater can collect and recharge acquifers,” said Bhatnagar. He explained that rainwater being collected from roofs in homes around those localities could be directed into these depressions, rather than into into stormwater drains.

For now, residents are unsure of how much the desilting work in the city will help during the monsoon. Tigri’s Rahish said that he had been writing to different authorities for years to pay attention to the waterlogging in their locality, but that nothing had changed. “When it rains, the water stops, our lives stop for a few hours,” he said.

In mid-June, as the first monsoon clouds arrive over Odisha, the Raja Parba festival marking the fertility of the earth begins. The three to four-day celebration, primarily observed by Odia Hindus, is rooted in the belief that the Earth, like a woman, undergoes a menstrual cycle.

Raja is derived from “rajaswaalaa”, which means a menstruating woman in Odia. Like the menstrual cycle, which marks the fertility of the human body, monsoon rain makes the soil fertile.

Agricultural activity is halted during the festival, partly in line with the belief that the earth is “impure”, like a woman during her menstrual cycle. Women, especially young, unmarried girls, are relieved of household chores. They wear new sarees and clothes, apply altaa, a red dye, to their feet and gather under mango and banyan trees to swing, sing and celebrate.

The belief of “impurity” carries the weight of stigma, but it is also tied to broader cultural practices that recognise the Earth’s need for rest.

Doctoral researcher Laxman Majhi writes that the festival acknowledges menstruation as a life-affirming process that symbolises the connection between womanhood, fertility and the Earth’s cycles.

Today, Raja Parba is observed across Odisha, including urban areas, where it has gained renewed visibility. The Odisha government officially recognises Raja and the first day, Pahili Raja, is a public holiday. This year, it fell on June 14.

With its deep cultural resonance, Raja Parba offers an opportunity to challenge stigmas and taboos about menstruation. It symbolically celebrates womanhood and fertility, foregrounding the need for dignity and respect in menstrual discourse.

Three days of rest

Historical records are scant, but the festival is likely to have emerged in Odisha’s indigenous society where nature and femininity were deeply intertwined in daily life and ritual.

Speaking over the phone on June 10, media academician Rathindra Mishra said that “Adivasi communities, with their more balanced relationship with nature, observe Raja through rituals focused on fertility, seasons, and collective well-being, rather than purity and pollution.” In contrast, dominant castes often frame the festival around ritual restriction and bodily control.

Raja Parba is similar to the Ambubachi Mela in Assam, which marks the menstruation of the Kamakhya deity, during which temple activities are temporarily suspended.

In the coastal and northern Odisha districts such as Cuttack, Puri, Khordha, Kendrapara and parts of Jajpur, rituals such as earth worship and preparing pitha, a sweet dish made of coconut, jaggery and rice flour, are central to Raja Parba.

Largely, Raja Parba takes place in stages.

Sajabaaja is the preparatory day when homes are cleaned and meals are cooked. Pahili Raja, the first day, marks the end of summer and invites pause. Mithuna Sankranti, the second and most sacred day, celebrates the arrival of the monsoon.

Baasi Raja, or Bhudaaha, follows with games and leisure. In many households, Sila Silipuaa, the grinding stone, is treated as Basumati, or Earth Mother, and offered turmeric, milk and flowers as part of the Basumati Snana.

Traditionally, during the festival, girls do not cut vegetables, sew, grind grains, or walk barefoot. Any action that might metaphorically or physically disturb the Earth is paused.

After Raja Parba, many villages are known to observe maajanaa, a ritual involving the ceremonial cleaning of village goddesses. After three days of festivity, the final day, Sesa Raja, includes the tradition of baateibaa or “seeing off”. This marks a shift from celebration to work, signalling the beginning of the agricultural season.

Menstruation stigma

The menstruation stigma against women and girls has persisted alongside Raja Parba’s celebration of the earth’s fertility.

Through the mid-20th century, menstruating women were kept secluded in the aatu, a room at the top of a mud house, and given boiled food, according to oral histories and ethnographic accounts referred to by a sociology student in a research paper published in 2022.

This practice has reduced, writes Majhi, with increased access to education, health awareness, and urban migration.

But nearly half of India’s adolescent girls still consider menstruation shameful. According to a research paper that involved a survey of around 1,000 women in Odisha, one-fifth of the respondents keep menstruation a “secret” and nearly two-thirds of women report fear or anxiety during their menstrual cycle.

Many also face restrictions such as being confined, barred from religious activities, or subjected to food taboos. This aligns with the findings of the fifth National Family Health Survey, conducted from 2019-’21, which show socio-economic disparities in menstrual hygiene practices.

As a festival with cultural recognition across the state, Raja Parba has the potential to start a conversation and help challenge the stigma against menstruation.

Raja Parba offers an opportunity to ask if menstruation is to be respected only in the garb of tradition and not in the everyday lives of girls and women.

Aniruddha Jena teaches at Indian Institute of Management, Kashipur.

Sriyanka Sahoo is a Mukhyamantri Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Since mid-April, Maharashtra became the centre of a major linguistic storm. The state government’s decision to make Hindi a compulsory third language in Marathi- and English-medium schools from Classes 1 to 5 sparked a sharp backlash. Protests came from teachers, students, civil society groups and political parties across the spectrum.

Although the government on Sunday eventually withdrew the policy, the episode exposed a deeper anxiety: is India drifting from its pluralistic roots toward a homogenised national culture?

At the heart of the debate lies the question of who decides which languages matter in India’s classrooms, and by extension, in its public life.

This question has been asked before by the architect of the Indian Constitution BR Ambedkar, by Dravidian leader EV Ramaswamy “Periyar” and even by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, each offering insights into how language relates to identity, democracy, and power.

What Ambedkar knew

BR Ambedkar, a native of Maharashtra, argued powerfully in favour of primary education in the mother tongue. Speaking in the Constituent Assembly on 2 September 1949, he said that education in a child’s native language is not just pedagogically sound, but it is essential for democratic participation.

This view finds echo in a 2025 Unesco report titled Languages Matter: Global guidance on multilingual education. It confirms how children learn best in their first language.

In Maharashtra, where Marathi is the mother tongue for nearly 70% of the population (according to the 2011 census), imposing Hindi from the Class 1 risks disrupting that learning process – particularly for rural and marginalised students already struggling with access to education.

Ambedkar also cautioned against making Hindi the national language. On September 14, 1949, during heated Constituent assembly debates, he warned that Hindi speakers, while a significant group, were still a “minority of the population”. He pointed out that privileging one language over others risked alienating vast regions of India and fracturing its federal spirit.

His later writings, especially Thoughts on Linguistic States (1955), championed the idea of reconstituting Indian states on linguistic lines to ensure administrative efficiency and cultural autonomy. The formation of Maharashtra in 1960, after the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement demanded a separate state for Marathi sapeakers, reflects this principle.

Today, policies like compulsory Hindi in schools can take away the pride and dignity that past language movements fought hard to earn.

The illusion of choice

The National Education Policy 2020 reaffirms the old three-language formula (previously proposed by Kothari Commission in 1966): regional language, Hindi or English, and a third Indian language. On paper, this seems fair.

In practice, however, it disproportionately burdens non-Hindi states. Tamil Nadu has long rejected the formula, sticking to its own two-language policy, which was a result of decades of anti-Hindi agitations.

Paradoxically, in many Hindi-speaking states, schools do not actually offer any non-Hindi Indian languages. The result is an asymmetry: non-Hindi states must accommodate Hindi but not vice versa. This contradicts Ambedkar’s idea of cooperative federalism, where cultural decisions like language policy should be made with consent and context, not by default.

Maharashtra’s rollback was thus not just political damage control, but it was a reassertion of federal balance. But as long as the New Education Policy eaves room for interpretation, the risk of cultural overreach remains.

What Periyar fought against

While Ambedkar believed in institutional safeguards, Tamil leader Periyar waged a more direct war against what he saw as linguistic oppression. In the 1930s, Periyar led massive protests in Tamil Nadu against the compulsory teaching of Hindi. For him, this was not about curriculum, but it was about cultural dominance.

He warned that compulsory Hindi would lead to “linguistic slavery”. His fear was not hypothetical. It was grounded in the lived reality of Tamil speakers who saw their language, literature, and identity sidelined by an increasingly Hindi-centric nationalism.

Periyar’s critique resonates in Maharashtra today. Many there view the push for Hindi as an attempt to dilute regional identity and cultural autonomy. His message remains urgent: language policy is rarely neutral; moreover, it often reflects the power of some to define the identity of others.

The language of power

Italian philosopher and political theorist Antonio Gramsci never wrote about India, but his theory of “cultural hegemony” helps us understand how language operates in complex societies. Gramsci argued that dominant groups do not just rule through laws or violence, but they shape what people see as “common sense”. Language is one of the most powerful tools in this process.

When a Marathi-speaking child from Vidarbha or Marathwada region is told to learn Hindi from Class 1, without any reciprocal push for Hindi speakers to learn Marathi, that child absorbs more than grammar. She internalises the idea that some languages (and by extension, cultures) matter more than others.

This is the slow, often invisible work of hegemony. It does not always come from diktats. Sometimes, it arrives as curriculum reform.

Beyond Maharashtra

The controversy in Maharashtra is not unique or isolated. In 2017, Bengaluru witnessed the #NammaMetroHindiBeda campaign, opposing Hindi signage in the city’s metro system. In Tamil Nadu, resistance to Hindi remains a political mainstay. West Bengal saw students protesting Hindi-only policies in scientific institutions. In Punjab, Panjab University students demanded respect for Punjabi in official communication.

Even the North East – India’s most linguistically diverse region – has pushed back. In 2022, the central government mandated Hindi up to Class 10 in all North Eastern states, prompting fierce objections from local cultural groups who saw the move as cultural erasure.

Each of these movements’ points to a deeper struggle: the protection of linguistic identities in a centralised nation-state.

Who gets to decide?

India’s strength lies not in any single language or culture, but in its ability to hold many together. Ambedkar reminds us that language should be a tool of empowerment, not exclusion. Periyar shows that resistance is necessary when institutions fail. Gramsci teaches us to look beneath the surface of policy and ask: who benefits?

The Maharashtra controversy is not just a local educational dispute. It is a national moment of reflection. Should language be used to unify, or to dominate? Should it reflect our diversity, or override it? And most crucially, who gets to decide?

Aniruddha Mahajan is a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research interests include caste inequalities, student activism, nationalism, regional and linguistic politics, and the intellectual history of South Asia.

The Central Administrative Tribunal on Tuesday set aside an order by the Karnataka government suspending Bengaluru’s Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash after the stampede outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium that killed 11 persons.

A bench comprising Judicial Member Justice BK Shrivastava and Member Santosh Mehra said that the suspension order had been passed “in a mechanical manner” and without sufficient grounds. It directed the state government to reinstate Vikash immediately.

The tribunal also said that prima facie it appeared that Royal Challengers Bengaluru was “responsible for the gathering” outside the stadium after it “suddenly posted” about the event without seeking permission from the police.

“It cannot [be] expected from the police that within a short time of about 12 hours the police will make all arrangements required in the Police Act or in the other rules, etc,” the tribunal said in its order. “Police personnel are also human beings.”

Sufficient time should be given to the police to control and make arrangements for such large crowds, it added.

The stampede had taken place at Gate Number 3 of the stadium on June 4, where fans had gathered to celebrate the Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in the Indian Premier League. Eleven persons were killed and more than 50 were injured in the incident.

On June 5, the state government suspended Vikash, along with Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayananda, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Shekhar Tekkanavar, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Cubbon Park Division) Bala Krishna and Cubbon Park Police Station Inspector Girish.

Vikash had challenged the suspension order before the Central Administrative Tribunal.

The tribunal is a quasi-judicial body to resolve the grievances of government employees.

During the proceedings, the counsel for the police officer told the bench that he had been suspended without a show cause notice or granting him an opportunity to present his case, Bar and Bench reported.

The suspension was an extreme measure, the counsel argued, adding that it was unjustified because the magisterial inquiry was pending in the matter and there were no preliminary findings against the police officer.

However, the counsel for the state government argued that the primary responsibility of the police was to prevent crime, adding that the circumstances around the stampede prima facie indicated a failure of the police, Bar and Bench reported.

There was a substantial dereliction of duty on Vikash’s part and that of others, the state had argued.

However, the Central Administrative Tribunal in its order on Tuesday said that the basis for such a conclusion was unclear as the order suspending the police officer did not explain how it came to the finding before the inquiry was completed.

The state government was not in a position to determine who was responsible for the stampede until the magisterial inquiry and the inquiry commission were ordered, the bench said.

It also urged the state government to extend relief to other police officers who were suspended after the incident.

On Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s role in the events that led to the stampede, the bench said that the team had not applied for permission to undertake the victory procession under the necessary provisions.

“Without obtaining the permission from the police or without the consent of concerned police officers, the franchise of RCB placed the information to the public on social media platforms,” the order said.

The cricket team was prima facie responsible for the gathering of about three lakh to five lakh persons at a stadium that had a capacity of 35,000, it added.

Karnataka issues SOPs for gatherings

The Karnataka government had on Thursday released standard operating procedures to manage crowds at mass public events including festivals, rallies and “sports celebrations”, ANI reported.

The SOPs said that it aims to establish clear guidelines with an “emphasis on minimising risks, enhancing coordination and ensuring quick response to emergencies”.

The key measures include pre-event risk assessment, venue safety audits, coordination between police and organisers and detailed crowd management plans.

The guidelines also mandate trained personnel at important points, entry screening with metal detectors, QR code scanning and biometric tools, clear evacuation routes and strict queue management using barricades and signage.

The guidelines highlighted that “modern gatherings are often spontaneous and influenced by social media, necessitating adaptive strategies”.

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The Central Administrative Tribunal quashed a Karnataka government order suspending Bengaluru’s Additional Commissioner of Police Vikash Kumar Vikash following the stampede outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium on June 4. The suspension order had been passed without sufficient grounds, it said.

It appeared that Royal Challengers Bengaluru was “responsible for the gathering” outside the stadium after it “suddenly posted” about the event without seeking permission from the police, the tribunal said.

Sufficient time should be given to the police to make arrangements for such large crowds, it added.

The stampede took place at one of the gates of the stadium where fans had gathered to celebrate the Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in the Indian Premier League. Eleven persons were killed and more than 50 were injured in the incident. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court asked the West Bengal government why candidates accused of wrongdoing in an alleged cash-for-jobs teacher recruitment scam were being allowed to apply again. The state’s school education department had published a gazette notification on May 30 regarding the fresh appointment of assistant teachers in upper primary, secondary and higher secondary classes in government-run and government-aided schools.

The court asked why there was “no express bar to debar the tainted candidates from applying” in the notification.

In April, the Supreme Court upheld the High Court’s 2024 order terminating the appointment of about 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by West Bengal’s School Service Commission after observing that the recruitment process was “vitiated by manipulation and fraud”. Read on.

Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s former Tamil Nadu chief K Annamalai and organisers of an event held in Madurai in June were booked for allegedly inciting communal hostility and violating Madras High Court restrictions.

A complaint alleged that speeches and resolutions at the Lord Murugan Devotees Conference incited communal discord and violated conditions set by the High Court. The court had permitted the gathering while imposing limitations on political and religious commentary. Read on.

The toll from a fire at a chemical factory blast near Hyderabad increased to 37. The explosion on Monday at Sigachi Industries’ drying unit the Pashamylaram industrial area, triggered the fire, causing a portion of the building to collapse and trapping workers under the debris.

Chief Minister Revanth Reddy announced a compensation of Rs 1 crore for the families of the workers who died and Rs 10 lakh for those injured. A five-member committee has been appointed to review the accident. Read on.

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A “conflict of interest” in the Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee could compromise the outcome of cases challenging the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, a group of retired bureaucrats and diplomats told Chief Justice BR Gavai on Monday.

In an open letter, the Constitutional Conduct Group stated that the four-member committee, set up by the court in 2002 to flag cases of official non-compliance with its environmental conservation orders, initially comprised former officials from the Ministry of Environment and independent experts.

The letter said that this ensured impartiality and prevented a conflict of interest.

However, since the ministry “seemingly had complete autonomy” in selecting the members of the Central Empowered Committee in 2023, it nominated three retired Indian Forest Service officers and a retired scientist, who had also previously worked with the Union government, it said.

Two of the members had also recently retired as director general of forests and special secretary in the Ministry of Environment, it added. “There are no independent experts on the committee,” the Constitutional Conduct Group said.

The letter said that a Central Empowered Committee consisting of officers who had held top positions in the ministry and were also closely involved in policy-making could “hardly be expected” to provide independent advice to the court.

The Constitutional Conduct Group also noted that a writ petition was filed before the Supreme Court in 2023 against the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, which claimed that the legislation would hasten the decline of forests in India.

The Act amending the 1980 Forest Conservation Act that provided legislative support for conserving forest land and its resources, came into force on December 1, 2023. Experts have claimed that the amendments were an effort to open forest land for commercial purposes.

During the hearings on the writ petition, the court had already issued four landmark orders that upheld the definition of “forests” laid down by it in the 1996 case of TN Godavarman Thirumalpad vs Union of India, the Constitutional Conduct Group said.

In the 1996 judgement, the court held that a deemed forest would not only include “forests” as understood by the dictionary meaning of the word – a large area with significant tree cover – but also any areas recorded as forests in government records, irrespective of ownership.

Noting that the writ petition was pending before the court, the letter said that the outcome of this case, along with others filed against the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, could “possibly be compromised considering the conflict of interest” of the Central Empowered Committee.

It also noted that the 2023 Forest Conservation Amendment Bill was prepared and defended before a Joint Parliamentary Committee by a Central Empowered Committee member, who was at the helm in the environment ministry at the time.

“The Forest Conservation Amendment Act 2023 which is being challenged in the Supreme Court, was also notified at that time, as were the rules under the Act and the consolidated guidelines,” it added.

The letter said that the advice of the committee in any case against the Act “will in all probability be biased in favour” of the legislation as it was passed and will “thus be a clear conflict of interest”.

The Constitutional Conduct Group noted that this concern was already reflected in a recent court order on the “zudpi”, or scrub forests, in Maharashtra.

This order issued on May 22 had relied on the advice of the Central Empowered Committee, which recommended the untrammelled use of the forests for “compensatory afforestation” after considering them ecologically inferior because they could not support dense forest cover.

In its letter, the former bureaucrats urged the court to ensure that the committee was composed not just of experts who were retired government officials but of renowned experts from outside as well.

“We request the CJI to ensure that such a CEC is not allowed to advise the honourable court in the FCAA 2023 cases before it, or be part of other such important cases in the interest of the country’s forests, wildlife and ecological security,” the letter added.

The signatories to the statement include Punjab’s former police chief Julio Ribeiro, Delhi’s former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and former Indian Administrative Service officer Harsh Mander.

Also read:

• Amendment to forest conservation act leaves 28% of India’s forest cover vulnerable

• In India, the law that is meant to protect forests is being used to open them up for development

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has upheld the deportation of a Pakistani couple who had been living in Srinagar since 1988.

Justice Sindhu Sharma on May 9 dismissed a petition filed by the couple in 1990, saying that they had voluntarily acquired Pakistani citizenship. She noted that as per the Citizenship Act, an Indian national who voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country ceases to be an Indian citizen.

The petition was filed by Mohammad Khalil Qazi and his wife Arifa Qazi. Khalil was born in Srinagar in 1945 and Arifa in 1962. However, after the partition of the country, Khalil, who was a four-year-old child, was stranded along with his parents in Pakistan due to the 1948 India-Pakistan war, and the family acquired Pakistani citizenship.

The couple told the court that they got married in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 1986. Arifa said in her petition that after the marriage, she faced cruel treatment from her in-laws, although her husband remained sympathetic to her.

The couple returned to Srinagar on Pakistani passports in July 1988 along with their minor son. They were issued residential permits by the police, which were extended three times for thirty days each.

While applying for a fourth extension, the couple also approached the authorities seeking to revive their Indian citizenship. However, in the meantime, an order for deportation was issued against them in 1989.

Khalil and Arifa challenged the deportation order in the High Court, which granted a stay on April 25, 1990, till their petition was decided. The two had been living in India since then on the basis of the stay order.

The petitioners told the High Court that they had been forced to acquire Pakistani citizenship due to circumstances beyond their control, and so, should not be deported. However, the judge rejected this contention, and said that they had acquired the citizenship of a foreign country of their own volition.

“Their passports and the residential permit issued in their favour are cogent, unequivocal evidence of the fact that the petitioners are not citizens of India and, as such, orders to deport them were valid,” Sharma said in her order.

The judge said that Khalil and Arifa had been staying in Srinagar since 1988, and had not placed anything on record to show that they were Indian citizens.

The Gujarat High Court on Friday issued a contempt notice to former Junagadh Municipal Commissioner Om Prakash and Senior Town Planner Vivek Kiran Parekh for allegedly acting in defiance of a Supreme Court order and a state government policy by demolishing an old dargah in April.

The court asked the officials to respond to the notice by July 28, when the matter will be heard next.

The Jok Alisha Dargah in Junagadh was demolished on April 17 despite a pending legal case and submissions by the dargah’s trustee citing the site’s historical and religious significance, The Indian Express reported. The shrine is claimed to be 300 years old.

A division bench of Justices AS Supehia and RT Vachhani observed that the civic officials appeared to have acted in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2018 order regarding the handling of unauthorised religious structures as well as a subsequent policy of the state government.

The High Court pointed out that the Supreme Court had ordered that no unauthorised religious structure should be allowed on public property and that existing ones should be reviewed on case-by-case basis. A 2024 state government policy requires officials to form committees and appoint nodal officers to handle such cases properly, the petitioner had argued.

Despite this, the senior town planner issued a notice on January 31, demanding documents to prove the shrine’s ownership within three days. The petitioner had submitted the records on February 3 along with references to the 2018 Supreme Court order and pending proceedings before the High Court.

A final notice was issued on April 9, asking for the removal of the structure within five days. The trustee responded to the notice on April 15, reiterating the historical value of the shrine.

However, the structure was demolished on April 17.

The court was hearing a contempt plea filed by the shrine’s trustee under the 1971 Contempt of Courts Act.

The dargah, located at Gandhi Chowk, is registered under the Gujarat State Waqf Board. It was registered in 1964, the petitioner said.

“Further, annual Urs celebrations have also been held with prior permissions, including the use of loudspeakers,” The Indian Express quoted the petition as saying.

According to the plea, the Junagadh civic body ignored the Supreme Court’s directive and a pending civil petition before the High Court while proceeding with the demolition.

The Supreme Court on Monday granted anticipatory bail to Tamil Nadu MLA Poovai M Jagan Moorthy in a case pertaining to the abduction of a 17-year-old boy.

A bench of Justices Manoj Misra and NK Singh said that the case needed further review.

The court said that if the police arrest Moorthy, he should be released on a personal bond of Rs 25,000, as long as he cooperates with the investigation and does not threaten witnesses or tamper with evidence.

Earlier, the Madras High Court had rejected his anticipatory bail plea citing initial evidence suggesting his involvement, Bar and Bench reported. Moorthy had challenged the High Court order in the Supreme Court.

The case stems from a police complaint filed by one Lakshmi, whose elder son married a woman from Theni district against the wishes of her family. Fearing retaliation, the couple went into hiding. To trace them, members of the woman’s family, with the help of men they had hired, allegedly abducted Lakshmi’s younger son from their home.

The 17-year-old boy was later found near a hotel with visible injuries.

After a police complaint, several persons were taken into custody. Some of them reportedly mentioned Moorthy as being allegedly connected to the incident.

The MLA is accused of being involved in the abduction and is also alleged to have later prevented the police from questioning him by having party supporters gather around his home.

Moorthy is the chief of the Puratchi Bharatham party. He was elected as an MLA from the KV Kuppam Assembly constituency in 2021 on ally All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s ticket.

Moorthy’s counsel argued before the Supreme Court that the MLA had been falsely implicated simply based on a co-accused’s confession, without direct evidence.

Describing the case as being politically motivated, the counsel said: “The relevant facts were omitted to be considered by the court and instead the High Court had drawn adverse remarks against the petitioner,” The New Indian Express reported.

Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan, former chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Tamil Nadu unit K Annamalai and organisers of the Lord Murugan Devotees Conference held in Madurai in June were booked for allegedly inciting communal hostility and violating Madras High Court restrictions, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The complaint, filed on Monday at Chennai’s E-3 Annanagar Police Station, alleged that speeches and resolutions at the spiritual event incited communal discord and violated conditions set by the Madras High Court. The court had permitted the gathering while imposing limitations on political and religious commentary.

Hindutva organisation Hindu Munnani claimed that the conference, held on June 22, saw the participation of more than a lakh devotees, according to The Indian Express. Despite the court’s restrictions, several speakers, including Kalyan, allegedly made veiled political comments during the event.

The conference passed six resolutions. One reportedly urged Hindus to vote en bloc in the upcoming 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections and another demanded that the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government stop “treating temples as revenue sources”.

The first information report also alleged that public remarks and actions at the venue were “intended to provoke disharmony under the guise of spiritual assembly”, The Indian Express reported.

The police have registered the case under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between different groups, acts intended to outrage religious feelings and uttering words with the deliberate intention of wounding religious feelings, among other provisions.

The others named in the first information report are Kadeshwara Subramaniam, president of Hindu Munnani and S Muthukumar, its state secretary. The first information report also mentions unidentified members of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, BJP and allied Sangh Parivar groups.

On June 23, an audio-visual presentation of the history of the Hindu Munnani played at the gathering, reportedly depicting Dravidian stalwarts Periyar EV Ramsamy, CN Annadurai, and M. Karunanidhi in poor light, had sparked a controversy, The Hindu reported.

A Delhi court on Monday accepted a closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case about the disappearance of Jawaharlal Nehru University student Najeeb Ahmed.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Jyoti Maheshwari of the Rouse Avenue Courts said that the agency had looked into all plausible avenues available.

The judge, however, expressed hope that Ahmed would be found soon. She said that the CBI can reopen the investigation if it finds credible information about his whereabouts.

“This court expresses its regret that while the proceedings in the present case end with this closure report, a closure for Najeeb’s mother and other loved ones, still eludes us,” the judge said.

She added: “The quest for truth is the foundation of every criminal investigation. Yet, there are cases where the investigation conducted cannot achieve its logical conclusion, despite the best efforts of the investigating machinery.”

Ahmed, a Masters student at JNU, went missing on October 15, 2016. He was spotted getting into an autorickshaw on the campus the morning after he was allegedly beaten up by a group of students belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

About a month later, the police claimed that Ahmed had been seen getting out of an autorickshaw near the Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi. The trail then went cold. The case made no headway even though it was passed on from the local police to the Delhi police’s Crime Branch and, eventually, to the CBI.

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday asked the West Bengal government why candidates accused of wrongdoing in an alleged cash-for-jobs teacher recruitment scam were being allowed to apply again, Live Law reported.

West Bengal’s school education department published a gazette notification on May 30 regarding the fresh appointment of assistant teachers in upper primary, secondary and higher secondary classes in government-run and government-aided schools, The Hindu reported.

Justice Saugata Bhattacharya on Tuesday asked the government why there was “no express bar to debar the tainted candidates from applying” in the notification.

“This is troubling me…the Supreme Court has said tainted candidates will not be permitted; where is such indication in [state’s] notification...let the issue be sorted by filing a clarification before the SC,” the judge said, according to Live Law.

The counsel for the state government urged the court not to make any remarks on record, and claimed that the fresh appointments were being carried out in line with the Supreme Court’s directions. The state government sought time to clarify the matter, after which the court adjourned the case to a later date.

On April 3, the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court’s April 2024 order terminating the appointment of about 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by West Bengal’s School Service Commission. The bench passed the order after observing that the recruitment process was “vitiated by manipulation and fraud”.

The top court on April 17 permitted “untainted” teachers to be retained until the end of the academic year or until fresh appointments are made, whichever is earlier. However, it did not grant relief to Group C and Group D employees, or non-teaching staff, whose appointments were also cancelled.

In April 2024, the High Court issued its direction on the termination of the appointments based on the findings of a re-evaluation of the Optical Mark Recognition sheets from the 2016 recruitment examination in the case.

The re-evaluation found that the selected teachers had been recruited against blank Optical Mark Recognition sheets.

Also read: How a hiring scam and a court order drove thousands of Bengal’s teachers into joblessness

The toll in the chemical factory blast near Hyderabad in Telangana rose to 37 on Tuesday, The Hindu reported.

The explosion, which occurred on Monday at a drying unit of the Sigachi Industries’ plant in the Pashamylaram industrial area, triggered a fire. Due to this, part of the building collapsed and workers were trapped under the debris.

Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy visited the accident site on Tuesday and announced compensation of Rs 1 crore for the families of the workers who died in the blast. In a social media post, the chief minister’s office also said that Rs 10 lakh will be given to those injured in the accident.

On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an ex gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the families of those who died. Those who suffered injuries will be given Rs 50,000 each, he said.

Around 90 employees were in the factory at the time of the blast, Telangana Health Minister Damodar Rajanarasimha was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.

Rescue operations by the National Disaster Response Force, Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency and Telangana Fire Disaster Response teams continued on Tuesday, the newspaper reported.

Live: Hon’ble Chief Minister Sri A. Revanth Reddy visits the industry site at Pashamylaram, Patancheru. https://t.co/FmyUG29VQi

— Revanth Reddy (@revanth_anumula) July 1, 2025

The chief minister on Tuesday also appointed a five-member committee to review the accident. The panel comprises the chief secretary, special chief secretary (disaster management), principal secretary (labour), principal secretary (health) and additional director general of police (fire services).

The committee will also submit recommendations to prevent similar accidents in the future, the chief minister’s office added.

Sigachi Industries had said that production at its Hyderabad plant would be paused for around 90 days to restore affected equipment and structures, PTI reported.

The company specialises in pharma excipients, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and food ingredients. Following the blast, Sigachi Industries’ stock on the Bombay Stock Exchange fell sharply by over 9%, trading at Rs 47.89 by 1 pm.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has arrested 67 persons and detained eight minors in Prayagraj for vandalism after Azad Samaj Party chief and MP Chandrashekhar Azad was stopped from visiting Isota village, PTI reported on Monday.

On Sunday, police prevented Azad from going to the village to meet the family of Devishankar, a man who died of burn injuries on April 13. The police had cited security concerns. Devishankar's family has alleged that he was murdered.

According to the police, a group that had gathered at the village to meet the MP became agitated upon learning he would not be arriving. They started throwing stones and damaged two police vehicles.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Yamunapar) Vivek Chandra Yadav told PTI that action would be taken against the accused under the National Security Act and the Gangster Act. Compensation for damage to public property would also be recovered from the culprits as per legal provisions, the agency quoted him as saying.

Police are trying to ascertain the identity of other individuals involved in the incident using closed-circuit television footage, Yadav added.

The National Security Act allows the Centre or state government to order the detention of a person “with a view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the defence of India, the relations with foreign powers, or the security of India”.

It may also order detention to prevent them from acting in any manner prejudicial “to the security of the State”, the “maintenance of public order” or the “maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community”. The police and district magistrates have the power to issue detention orders, subject to approval by the state government within 12 days.

Four persons, including a leader of the Kuki National Army and a 72-year-old woman, were killed on Monday by unidentified gunmen in Manipur’s Churachandpur, said the police.

The firing occurred near Mongjang village in the district around 1 pm as the victims were travelling in a car.

Among those who died was Thenkhothang or Thahpi, the deputy commander-in-chief of the Kuki National Army, which is a faction of the Kuki National Organisation. The Kuki National Organisation is one of two umbrella groups that signed a Suspension of Operations agreement with the Centre in 2008 – the other being the United People’s Front.

Under the agreement, the security forces as well as the militant groups are prohibited from launching operations. The militant groups must abide by the laws of the land and are also confined to designated camps identified by the Central government.

The other victims of Monday’s shooting were identified as 72-year-old Phalhing, who was a resident of Koite village, 35-year-old Seikhogin, who was from Teiseng, and 35-year-old Lengouhao of Chengkon.

Over 12 empty shells were recovered from the spot, PTI reported.

“Preliminary investigation suggests that the Hyundai Creta car was ambushed leading to the death of those inside the vehicle,” the Manipur Police stated on Tuesday. “An FIR has been registered in connection with the case at Churachandpur police station for further investigation.”

It added: “Security measures have been taken up in order to prevent any escalation of violence. Operations have been launched by security forces to arrest the culprits involved in the incident.”

The United Kuki National Army, a group that has not signed the Suspension of Operations agreement with the Centre, claimed responsibility for the attack. It alleged that Thahpi had been responsible for the killings of two of its members.

Manipur has been mired in ethnic clashes between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities that have killed at least 260 persons and displaced more than 59,000 persons since May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024.

President’s Rule was imposed in February after Chief Minister N Biren Singh resigned.

A group of men on Monday assaulted a municipal official in Bhubaneswar and dragged him out of his office during a weekly grievance hearing session, The Indian Express reported.

The official, Additional Commissioner Ratnakar Sahoo of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, alleged in his police complaint that six to seven unknown men entered his chamber and aggressively asked him if he had spoken to a Bharatiya Janata Party leader named Jagannath Pradhan.

Sahoo told the men he had spoken to Pradhan on the phone earlier in the day. He alleged that the group then tried to drag him by his shirt collar into a vehicle, demanding that he go to the BJP leader and apologise, The New Indian Express reported. It was not clear what the attackers wanted the official to apologise for.

I am utterly shocked seeing this video.

Today, Shri Ratnakar Sahoo, OAS Additional Commissioner, BMC, a senior officer of the rank of Additional Secretary was dragged from his office and brutally kicked and assaulted in front of a BJP Corporator, allegedly linked to a defeated… pic.twitter.com/yf7M3dLt9C

— Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) June 30, 2025

“They beat me brutally in full public view with an attempt to murder, in the presence of public representatives, i.e. corporators of the BMC, BMC officers, staff, and citizens,” Sahoo said in his complaint, according to The Indian Express. He alleged that the assailants also snatched his mobile phone and uploaded scandalous content on his WhatsApp status.

Bhubaneshwar Municipal Corporation officials held a day-long protest at the corporation office, seeking that the culprits be immediately arrested.

Municipal Commissioner Rajesh Prabhakar Patil urged Police Commissioner S Dev Datta Singh to take stringent action against those involved. He said that the assault on a senior bureaucrat without provocation was demoralising.

“The officer was chairing grievance hearing on my behalf,” the municipal commissioner said, according to The New Indian Express.

The police have arrested three persons – a corporator named Jeevan Rout and his associates Rashmi Mahapatra and Debashis Pradhan. Rout had been arrested in January 2024 as well for allegedly attacking an assistant sub-inspector.

Pradhan said that the assault on Monday was unfortunate and that he knew two persons involved in the attack, The Indian Express reported. He said that the state’s BJP government would not shield anyone and action would be taken against all those involved.

Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik said on X that he was shocked on seeing the video of the attack. He urged Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi to take exemplary action not just against the perpetrators, but also against the political leaders who allegedly orchestrated the attack.

“The people named by the officer in his FIR have behaved like criminals,” Patnaik said. “If a senior officer is not safe in his own office, then what law and order will ordinary citizens expect from the Government?”

On April 26, four days after the Pahalgam terror attack, Liyakat Ali was sleeping at his home in Ahmedabad’s Chandola Talav slum when a posse of policemen knocked on his door. It was 4 am.

Ali and five other members of his family were asked to step out. For the next four hours, they were made to sit in a football ground nearby.

Hundreds of other residents in the neighbourhood had been similarly rounded up as a part of a drive to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

Around 8 am, the women were let go. The men were paraded on the streets and made to walk to a police station 3 km away.

That was the last time Hamida bano, Ali’s sister-in-law, saw him. The 51-year-old native of Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district has been missing since.

Ali’s family members fear that he might have been deported to Bangladesh as he has not turned up in two months.

On May 8, as Scroll had reported, around 78 undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, all detained in Ahmedabad, were allegedly flown out of India in a military aircraft and then “pushed” across the water into Bangladesh, a police report in Bangladesh’s Satkhira town claimed.

“He is mentally ill and keeps to himself,” said Muzaffarali Shaikh, his elder brother. “We fear he may not have been able to identify himself [as an Indian] before the police.”

On May 5, Liyakat’s elder brother Muzaffarali Shaikh filed a habeas corpus petition with the Gujarat High Court, seeking information from the police on his whereabouts. But a single-judge bench dismissed the plea on June 24.

The court based its decision on an affidavit submitted by police that they “never detained or arrested” Ali. However, the family submitted news footage from TV9 Gujarati news channel, dated April 26, that showed Liyakat Ali as one of the detainees sitting on the ground. Scroll spoke with two eye witnesses who last saw Ali at a police station.

The police produced a video in court, showing a man walking out of the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli on May 1, five days after Ali was detained. The police claimed that the man in the CCTV footage was Ali – and it was on this basis the court struck down Shaikh’s plea.

However, Shaikh’s advocate Aum Kotwal contested the claim. He told Scroll that the police had not submitted the footage to the family and that the prosecutor merely showed Kotwal the video in court.

“We don’t know if he is still detained, or in Bangladesh or wandering on the streets in Ahmedabad,” said Shaikh.

If he had been released from the police station, Shaikh said, Ali would have made his way back home.

The family will now approach the Supreme Court against the Gujarat High Court’s order.

When contacted, Ahmedabad police commissioner GS Malik told Scroll he “does not know much about this case”.

Since the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor, Indian authorities have carried out a nationwide crackdown on alleged illegal immigrants.

In a recent anti-foreigner drive in Mumbai’s Mira Road, seven Bengali Muslim men from West Bengal were branded Bangladeshi and “pushed out” of India. They were then brought back.

Many have been summarily “pushed back” into Bangladesh by the Border Security Force, or in the case of Rohingya Muslims, forcibly cast into international waters, in contravention of international law.

A migrant from UP

Ali is a native of Krishnapur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district. He moved to Ahmedabad 20 years ago to live with his elder brother.

At first, he took up a job at the Jay Bharat Textiles mill but had to quit because of his mental health challenges.

He was unemployed and spoke very little with others, his family said. “He would mutter to himself,” Shaikh said. “His mental health worsened after his wife left him.” The family took him to various dargahs or shrines to find a cure but a medical diagnosis of his condition was never done.

On April 26, Shaikh said he was in Barabanki when the police turned up at their door.

“My wife, daughter-in-law and my granddaughter were also picked up but they were released in four hours,” Shaikh, an auto rickshaw driver, said. “They were asked to submit identification proof while the men, including my two sons and Ali, were detained.”

According to Ali’s nephew, Akbar Ali, they were first made to sit in the open ground near their home till 8.30 am. “Then we were asked to walk for about 3 km to the Behrampura police station,” he said. “No food or water was given to us till then.”

Hozefa Ujjaini, activist and advocate from Ahmedabad, alleged that the manner in which the police carried out detentions was illegal. “People were paraded in public, including children,” Ujjaini said. “This is a violation of human rights.”

From there, the detainees were driven less than 2 km away to the crime branch office in Gayakwad Haveli. “We all sat there till 2 pm. Then they began to shift us to different police stations in groups,” Ali said. “My brother and I were taken to Juhapura police station. I saw my uncle at the crime branch before I left. He was quiet and kept to himself. We did not get a chance to convince the police to let us take him with us.”

Shaikh’s wife Hamidabanu said that on April 26, after being released she gathered all the documents of her family members and went to the crime branch office.

She waited there until 2 am before returning home. The next afternoon, both her sons were released by the police. “We looked for my uncle, but we had no idea where he was,” Ali said.

According to his family, Ali was last seen – sitting by himself – by their neighbour Mohammed Shah, who was released by the police on April 28. “He was in the Gaikwad Haveli crime branch office. I was amongst the last to leave from there,” Shah told Scroll.

Houses demolished

The detention of the family’s members was followed by the demolition of their home.

On April 28, the family was told by municipal officials to remove all their belongings from the hutment in Chandola.

The next morning, Shaikh’s house along with hundreds of other homes were demolished by the Ahmedabad municipal corporation. The officials claimed that they were targeting illegal encroachments made by suspected Bangladeshi immigrants.

“It was chaotic,” Akbar Ali said. “We were running around to look for my uncle and our house was getting destroyed.” The family moved to a relative’s house for the next three days.

Ujjaini, the activist, said that several families, including the Shaikhs, received no notice before their houses were demolished.

On May 1, Shaikh returned from Barabanki. With him, he brought land papers in the name of Liyakat Ali, and his ration card. “We went to the Gayakwad Haveli crime branch. There, the police told us to check with Juhapura police. The Juhapura police asked us to go to Sahibaug police. We kept running from one station to another,” he said. The family visited at least six police stations, where those detained had been kept.

A week later, the family finally filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court.

On June 10, the public prosecutor showed a video in court claiming that Ali was released on May 1.

Shaikh said they did not get to see the video. “All we know is that the police took him from his home,” Shaikh said. “If he is mentally ill, it is their responsibility to ensure he returns back safely.”

Shaikh said Ali remembers where he lives and would have come home on May 1. “Others whose houses were not demolished would have told him where we went,” Shaikh said. “We all know each other. But he never came to Chandola.”

The family’s only hope now is in the Supreme Court.

A trade deal between India and the United States is close to being finalised and will be announced soon, ANI quoted White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as having said on Monday.

The statement came days before the 90-day suspension of tariffs announced by United States President Donald Trump is set to end on July 9.

“I just spoke to our secretary of commerce about it [India-US trade deal],” Leavitt said during a press briefing. “He was in the Oval office with the president. They are finalising these agreements.”

She added that an announcement from Trump and his trade team is expected “very soon”.

Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs imposed on several countries, including a 26% “discounted” levy on India, took effect on April 9. Hours later, however, Trump had reduced the rates on imports from most countries to 10% for 90 days to provide time for trade negotiations.

The US president had repeatedly said he intended to impose a reciprocal tax on India, among others, citing high tariffs the countries impose on foreign goods.

The tariffs had led to concerns of a broader trade war that could disrupt the global economy and trigger recession.

The Indian government has said that it is in talks with Washington to finalise a bilateral trade agreement between September and November.

An Indian team led by Union Minister of Commerce Piyush Goyal had visited the US in May to negotiate a trade agreement. Following this, a US team of negotiators was in India for a week earlier this month.

On Friday, Trump had said that New Delhi could sign a “very big” trade deal with Washington.

Leavitt on Monday called India a “very strategic ally” of the US in the Indo-Pacific region.

Responding to a question about China’s influence in the area, Leavitt said: “India remains a very strategic ally in the Asia Pacific and the President [Donald Trump] has a very good relationship with Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi and he will continue to have that.”

‘Would love a big trade pact with US’

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, reacting to Trump’s statement on the announcement of the bilateral trade agreement, said on Monday that India would “love to have an agreement, a big, good, beautiful one”, reported The Indian Express.

“At the junction we are in, and given our growth goals and ambition to be Viksit Bharat by 2047, the sooner we have such agreements with strong economies, the better they will serve us,” she told the newspaper.

Sitharaman added that agriculture and dairy have been among the “very big red lines”, where a high degree of caution has been exercised, during the talks with the US.

Denying a transgender woman the status of a “woman” is unconstitutional, the Andhra Pradesh High Court has held.

Justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa in an order on June 16 said that a trans woman married to a man is entitled to file a criminal complaint of cruelty and harassment against her husband and his relatives under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

This section addresses cruelty inflicted upon a married woman by her husband or his relatives.

The High Court made the observation while hearing petitions to quash a criminal case filed by a trans woman against her husband, his parents and a relative.

“To deny a trans woman the status of a ‘woman’…solely on the ground of her reproductive capacity is to perpetuate discrimination and to violate Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution,” the order said.

The High Court called such an argument “deeply flawed and legally impermissible.”

While Article 14 ensures equality before the law, Article 15 prohibits discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Article 21 guarantees the protection of life and personal liberty.

The order also stated that a narrow view of womanhood based on the ability to reproduce “undermines the very spirit of the Constitution, which upholds dignity, identity, and equality for all individuals, irrespective of gender identity.”

The trans woman married the man in 2019 according to Hindu rites. She later filed a complaint with the Ongole Police, alleging that her husband left her and that she received threatening messages.

The police filed a chargesheet against the husband and his family for cruelty under Section 498A and for offences under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.

In their petitions to quash the criminal case, the husband and his family argued that the complainant, being a trans woman, could not be considered a “woman” under the anti-cruelty law. They claimed that since she cannot bear a child, she could not be seen as a woman in the “complete sense”.

In its order on June 16, the High Court drew support from several landmark Supreme Court judgements. It cited the 2014 National Legal Services Authority v Union of India verdict, which had recognised the right of transgender persons to self-identify their gender.

The order also referred to the 2023 Supreme Court judgement on same-sex marriage. It noted that while the top court did not grant a universal right to marry, it unanimously affirmed that transgender persons in heterosexual relationships have the right to marry under existing laws.

Pratapa concluded that the complainant, being a trans woman in a heterosexual marriage, could not be deprived of her right to lodge a complaint against her husband and his relatives.

However, while ruling on the substance of allegations of cruelty made by the woman, the High Court said that the claims were “bald and omnibus” and lacked specific details. It held that allowing criminal proceedings against the man and his parents to continue would amount to abuse of the legal process.

The court went on to quash the criminal proceedings against the accused persons. However, it clarified that a trans woman in a heterosexual marriage would have protection under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code.

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A blast and the resulting fire at a chemical factory near Hyderabad has left 12 dead and 35 injured. The explosion took place in a drying unit at Sigachi Industries Private Limited, located in the Pashamylaram industrial area in the Sangareddy district.

The fire caused part of the building to collapse, trapping workers under the debris.

Emergency teams, including 11 fire department vehicles, were deployed and efforts were underway to locate any persons who have ben traipped.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that an ex gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh will be paid from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to the next of kin of those who died. Those who suffered injuries will be given Rs 50,000 each, he said. More on Scroll.

Unidentified gunmen in Manipur’s Churachandpur have shot dead at least four persons, including a 60-year-old woman. The firing reportedly occurred near Mongjang village in the district around 2 pm as the victims were travelling in a car.

Initial reports suggested that they were shot at point-blank range, the police said.

Manipur has been mired in ethnic clashes between the Meiteis and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities that have killed at least 260 persons and displaced more than 59,000 persons since May 2023. There were periodic upticks in violence in 2024. More on Scroll.

Telangana MLA T Raja Singh has quit the Bharatiya Janata Party, expressing shock at reports saying that former Member of Legislative Council N Ramachander Rao was set to be the next state party chief. Singh, the MLA from Goshamahal in Hyderabad, said that the decision disappointed party workers, leaders and voters.

The MLA, however, said he remained committed to the ideology of Hindutva, and that he would “continue to raise my voice and stand with the Hindu community with even greater strength”.

Singh has frequently made inflammatory remarks targeting Muslims and has been booked in several criminal cases.

In August 2022, he was briefly arrested for allegedly making disparaging remarks about Prophet Muhammad. The BJP had suspended him for the remarks, but reinstated him in October 2023. Even when he was suspended from the party, Singh had engaged in hate speech against Muslims several times.

Singh went on to contest the 2023 Telangana election, winning his third term from Goshamahal. More on Scroll.

The Supreme Court has declined to entertain a petition seeking directions to hand over the control and management of Bihar’s Mahabodhi Mahavira temple in Bodh Gaya to Buddhists. The bench, however, said that the petitioner could approach the Patna High Court instead.

The petition was filed by former Maharashtra minister Sulekha Kumbhare, who sought amendments to the Bodh Gaya Temple Act 1949. The Act states that a committee constituted by the Bihar government will look after the “management and control” of the Mahabodhi temple and its property.

The law says that the committee should include eight members nominated by the state government and four of them should be Hindus. The district magistrate will double as the chairman of the committee, provided the official is a Hindu.

From Bodh Gaya to Mumbai, protests to ‘free’ Buddhist temple gather steam

In February, several Buddhist monks began an indefinite hunger strike in Bodh Gaya, demanding full control of the Mahabodhi temple.

This was followed by rallies organised in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, culminating in a massive rally in Bodh Gaya on March 18 and 19. Read more.

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Over 350 tonnes of 40-year-old chemical waste from the defunct Union Carbide factory in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal has been completely incinerated at a waste management facility in Pithampur, The Hindu reported.

The incineration process was safely completed at around 1 am at the Ramky Group’s Pithampur Industrial Waste Management plant, Sriniwas Dwivedi, a regional officer at the state Pollution Control Board, told the newspaper on Monday.

The process to bury the ash and other residue at scientifically designed landfill sites will begin soon, he said, adding that the waste residue was currently packed in sacks and kept in a leak-proof storage shed at the plant.

The landfill cells for the burial are being constructed and will be completed by November, Dwivedi said.

“If everything goes well, these residue will also be disposed of by December,” The Hindu quoted the officer as saying. “Before this, the residue will be treated scientifically so that their burial does not cause any harm to the environment.”

Initially, 30 tonnes of waste was incinerated during three trial runs after directives from the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The remaining waste was then burnt between May 5 and the early hours of Monday.

Real-time monitoring of the emissions during the process confirmed that all levels of gases and other particles remained within safe and permissible limits, Dwivedi said.

“We have no information about any adverse effect on the health of people living in the surrounding areas during the incineration of the waste,” he added.

The three trial runs took place on February 28, March 4 and March 10, with burning rates of 135 kg/hour, 180 kg/hour and 270 kg/hour, respectively. The government then stated that the remaining waste could be disposed of under the supervision of the central and state pollution control boards at a rate of 270 kg/hour.

The waste is the result of an accident that occurred on December 3, 1984, when methyl isocyanate and other toxic gases leaked from the pesticide plant of Union Carbide India Limited in Bhopal.

Over five lakh persons were exposed to the toxic gases and at least 4,000 were killed as a result in the ensuing days. Government data suggests that there have been 15,000 deaths as a result of the disaster over the years.

On December 3, the High Court had set a four-week deadline to shift the waste from Bhopal to Pithampur, criticising the authorities for not clearing up the accident site despite directions from the Supreme Court.

On January 2, about 337 tons of hazardous waste from the Union Carbide factory were delivered to the Pithampur industrial area in Dhar district, in 12 leak-proof and fire-resistant containers.

The arrival of the waste in Pithampur was met with outrage by residents and activists. On January 3, two men sustained injuries after immolating themselves in protest.

On March 27, the High Court granted the state government 72 days to dispose of the waste.

On June 4, the Supreme Court declined to halt the incineration process after a social activist approached it challenging the High Court order.

Also read: Why a town in MP is resisting the plan to treat toxic waste from Bhopal’s Union Carbide plant

At least 12 persons were killed and 35 others were injured on Monday after an explosion at a drying unit triggered a fire at a chemical factory near Hyderabad, The Hindu reported.

The blast took place at Sigachi Industries Private Limited, located in the Pashamylaram industrial area.

The fire caused part of the building to collapse, trapping workers under the debris.

The explosion was reported to the fire control room at 9.37 am, The Hindu reported.

Emergency teams, including 11 fire department vehicles, were deployed to the scene. Efforts are underway to locate any remaining trapped persons.

Fire department officials said all the injured workers have been taken to hospitals in the vicinity.

A major reactor blast at Sigachi, a chemical unit in Pasamailaram, Patancheru, left several feared dead and many seriously injured. The injured have been shifted to hospital as fire and medical teams continue rescue efforts. @NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/J5g4DWchM1

— TNIE Telangana (@XpressHyderabad) June 30, 2025

Initial reports suggested that the blast occurred inside a reactor at the factory. However, the Director General of the Telangana State Disaster Response and Fire Services Y Nagireddy later told ANI that the fire occurred at a drying unit of the plant.

A detailed investigation has been launched to determine the exact cause of the incident and to assess whether safety norms were followed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that an ex gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh will be paid from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to the next of kin of those who died. Those who suffered injuries will be given Rs 50,000 each, he said.

Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy told officials to ensure that the injured persons receive appropriate medical treatment, and said that the government was committed to supporting the affected families.

Sigachi Industries specialises in pharma excipients, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and food ingredients. Following the blast, the company’s stock on the Bombay Stock Exchange fell sharply by over 9%, trading at Rs 47.89 by 1 pm.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition seeking directions to hand over the control and management of Bihar’s Mahabodhi Mahavira temple in Bodh Gaya to Buddhists, reported Live Law.

The petitioner, former Maharashtra minister Sulekha Kumbhare, had sought amendments to the Bodh Gaya Temple Act 1949.

The act states that a committee constituted by the Bihar government will look after the “management and control” of the Mahabodhi temple and its property.

According to the act’s provisions, the committee should include eight members nominated by the state government and four of them should be Hindus. The district magistrate will double as the chairman of the committee, provided the official is a Hindu.

In February, several Buddhist monks began an indefinite hunger strike in Bodh Gaya, demanding full control of the Mahabodhi temple.

This was followed by rallies organised in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu, culminating in a massive rally in Bodh Gaya on March 18 and 19.

On Monday, a bench of Justices MM Sundresh and K Vinod Chandran ruled that a plea under Article 32 of the Constitution could not be directly entertained by the court on the issue, Bar and Bench reported. The bench instead directed the petitioner to approach the Patna High Court.

Article 32 grants every individual the right to move the Supreme Court for the enforcement of their fundamental rights.

The petitioner had argued that fundamental rights under Articles 25, 26 and 29 would be violated unless the temple’s management was handed over to Buddhists.

The three articles of the Constitution deal with fundamental rights related to religion.

Article 25 grants freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practice, and propagate religion.

Article 26 allows religious denominations to manage their own affairs.

Article 29 protects the interests of minorities by ensuring their right to conserve their language, script or culture and prohibiting discrimination in educational institutions based on religion, race, caste or language.

The Mahabodhi temple, one of the four shrines associated with the Buddha and revered by followers of the religion, is located where Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment. Buddhism was born in the 6th century BC as an alternative to the emphasis on ritual and caste hierarchy in Hinduism.

Also Read: From Bodh Gaya to Mumbai, protests to ‘free’ Buddhist temple gather steam

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a petition filed by former Indian Premier League chairperson Lalit Modi seeking directions to the Board of Control for Cricket in India to pay a Rs 10.65 crore penalty imposed on him by the Enforcement Directorate for violating the Foreign Exchange Management Act, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices PS Narasimha and R Mahadevan said that Modi could pursue civil remedies seeking indemnification. The bench was dealing with an appeal filed by the former IPL chairperson against a Bombay High Court order dismissing his plea, Bar and Bench reported.

Modi has been under investigation by Indian authorities for alleged foreign exchange violations and a Rs 425-crore television rights deal for the 2009 edition of the IPL with World Sports Group. He fled India after attending only one interrogation session with the Income Tax Department and Enforcement Directorate officials in Mumbai.

In 2018, the Enforcement Directorate imposed a fine of Rs 121.56 crore on several entities, including the BCCI, its then chairperson N Srinivasan and others. Out of this amount, Modi had been ordered to pay Rs 10.65 crore, Bar and Bench reported.

The penalty, which was part of the larger Enforcement Directorate investigation into the 2009 edition of the IPL, was imposed after it was alleged that over Rs 243 crore was allegedly transferred outside India in contravention of Foreign Exchange Management Act regulations.

On December 19, the High Court had dismissed a petition filed by Modi seeking an order to the BCCI to pay the penalty, calling it “frivolous” and “wholly misconceived”, PTI reported. It also imposed a Rs 1 lakh fine on Modi.

In his petition, Modi had said that he served as the BCCI vice president and the chairperson of the IPL governing council when the alleged violations took place. He argued that on this account, the BCCI was obligated to indemnify him under its bylaws.

However, the High Court, citing a 2005 Supreme Court ruling, said that the BCCI was not considered a “state” under Article 12 of the Constitution and hence no writ could be issued against it, PTI reported.

Modi subsequently filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court against the High Court’s decision.

In the Supreme Court on Monday, the bench reiterated that the BCCI was not a “state” under Article 12 and hence not directly amenable to writ jurisdiction under Article 226, except in certain limited functional public duties like organising sports events, Live Law reported.

Article 226 pertains to the power of High Courts to issue certain writs for enforcing fundamental rights and for any other purpose.

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