From upma and poha to idlis, parathas and puris, meals across India comprise carbohydrate-rich food, each with its ritual and regional identity. In the northern states wheat is the staple cereal, while the southern and northeastern states prefer rice. India’s food is inextricably intertwined with the cultural and the nutritional.

But increasingly, evidence indicates that these food habits have trapped Indians in a cycle of poor health. The Indian Council of Medical Research-India Diabetes study, published in Nature Medicine in October, quantifies how India’s diets are dangerously imbalanced: across states, over 60% of calories come from carbohydrates, mostly refined rice and wheat, while protein and healthy fats make up only a fraction of the intake about 12%, and animal protein just about 1% of total caloric intake, far below recommended levels.

The conventional food that most Indians eat broadly consisting of refined cereals like white rice and wheat, along with potatoes and added sugars in the form of roti, upma, puri, parathas with vegetables and dal is stripped of diversity that is undermining public health.

This carbohydrate overload correlates strongly with the increase in non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity. The Nature Medicine study found that those consuming the highest proportion of refined carbohydrates had markedly higher odds of developing type 2 diabetes and abdominal obesity.

Researchers, in an article titled “The Double Burden of Malnutrition and Diabetes in India” published in the Diabetes Asia Journal in July, say this diet has created a paradox where 43% of India’s population is overfed yet undernourished, suffering from the “thin-fat” phenomenon where high caloric intake masks severe nutritional deficiencies. This reflects in what is causing Indians to fall sick, with the National Institute of Nutrition estimating that unhealthy diets are causing 56.4% of the country’s total disease burden.

These findings indicate a marked shift where India’s food security challenge is no longer about inadequate calories but what kind of food makes up a meal.

Dietary advice alone cannot correct this trajectory: it requires institutional redesign and cultural renewal, where indigenous food can be rebranded as nutritional alternatives. A combination of policy measures, such as the Odisha Millet Mission, cultural intervention, like celebrity chefs, and institutional cooperation, through schools and canteens, can make indigenous and nutritional food a symbol of modern consciousness rather than backwardness.

Cultural excess, nutritional neglect

Carbohydrates have long been a cultural anchor. The bigger and more elaborate the carbohydrate-based dish, the more it signals prosperity. This is possibly the result of cultural attachment as well as colonial hierarchies, or even sociological emulation, where, for instance, lower castes follow the lifestyle practices of upper castes. Cultural and religious taboos around meat, particularly beef and pork, have narrowed cheap sources of nutrition. In many homes, even eggs are contentious. Children grow up eating rice or chapati with dal, which is comforting but nutritionally narrow. These eating are instilled early, missing out on the opportunity to shape taste and habit.

Agricultural policy can also alter food habits, like the Green Revolution which led to the mechanisation of farming while high-yielding wheat and rice varieties. India’s agricultural as well as public food distribution system has deepened this dietary monoculture. Public procurement and subsidies overwhelmingly favour rice and wheat.

Millets, pulses and oilseeds that once formed the backbone of local diets are marginal. Yet, these are precisely the grains that are best suited for a climate-stressed world: they are drought-resilient, nutrient-dense and have a low glycemic index, which means they digest slowly, causing a gradual and steady rise in blood sugar levels rather than a dangerous spike.

Millets and pulses once dominated Indian diets because they fit the soil, the climate and the stomach. Historically, these grains accounted for nearly 40% of all cultivated grains in India and were the staple diet for much of the population.

But following the green revolution, the country locked itself into rice and wheat monocropping. Those choices made sense in the 1960s, when India had to import food to feed its growing population, but today they are untenable – environmentally, economically and nutritionally.

Millets such as ragi, jowar, bajra, kodo, foxtail, little and barnyard should make up at least a quarter of national grain consumption, but is less than 10% right now, according to government consumption data. Changing eating habits will benefit farmers too, as a mixed system of millets, pulses, oilseeds and livestock crops is more climate-resilient than the rice-wheat treadmill.

Reimagining public meals

The Centre’s Integrated Child Development Services and mid-day meal schemes, aimed at improving child nutrition and reducing malnutrition, could be frontline instruments of change. Instead of just rice and dal, children should eat millet rice/rotis, porridge, mixed-grain khichdi, pulses, oilseeds and protein-rich food such as eggs, meat and fish. Early exposure normalises food variety and establishes lifelong dietary diversity.

Procurement norms could follow this shift: states should be mandated to source a proportion of millets and pulses locally for school and anganwadi kitchens, which provide mid-day meals to children. Linking kitchen gardens and small livestock to these programmes can close the loop between local production and nutrition.

But changing the food on the plate will also mean confronting stigma. Millets need to be rebranded from being the poor man’s food to being positioned as climate-smart heritage food. Campaigns led by nutritionists, public figures and community kitchens could help drive change.

Similarly, nuanced messaging can normalise the sustainable consumption of animal-source proteins where acceptable, recognising that nutritional adequacy must precede moral absolutism.

Initiatives such as the introduction of ragi into the Integrated Child Development Services and public distribution system by the Karnataka government, and the revision of anganwadi menus by the Kerala government show how there can be a shift toward diversity. Yet, such examples are not the mainstream forces shaping India’s food system.

For farmers, crop diversification can be a livelihood insurance. A cropping mix of millets, pulses, oilseeds and small or large livestock builds ecological and income resilience. Agricultural policy must support crop diversity through assured procurement, price support and water and energy incentives that will move farmers away from paddy-wheat dependence.

Finally, the meaning of food security must reflect nourishment, rather than mere survival, rooted in culture, climate and community. The re-engineering of public food systems and cultural imagination must value variety over volume, offering a healthier alternative to India’s dietary path.

Ashima Chaudhary is Managing Partner, Rural Futures at WELL Labs, a water systems transformation centre based in Bengaluru.

IndiGo told the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Thursday that it expects its operations to return to normal only by February 10 and has sought temporary exemptions from parts of the stricter flight duty-time norms amid severe disruptions and widespread cancellations, Reuters reported.

The airline also said it will begin reducing its flight schedule from Monday to stabilise operations until then, The Indian Express reported.

“The disruptions have arisen primarily from misjudgement and planning gaps in implementing Phase 2 of the (Flight Duty Time Limitations), with the airline accepting that the actual crew requirement exceeded their anticipation,” the aviation regulator said on Thursday after speaking with airline officials.

IndiGo told the regulator that its Airbus A320 fleet requires 2,422 captains and 2,153 first officers to maintain stable operations, compared with its current 2,357 captains and 2,194 first officers, The Indian Express reported.

On Thursday alone, at least 550 IndiGo flights were cancelled while hundreds more were delayed.

The airline’s on-time performance, which is expected to be at least 80%, fell to 35% on Tuesday and dropped further to 19.7% for much of Wednesday, The Telegraph reported.

Major airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Lucknow experienced long queues, overcrowding and staff shortages, with passengers reporting last-minute cancellations and limited communication from airline staff.

At Lucknow airport, passengers raise slogan of "Indigo Murdabad" following cancellation of flights. Similar chaos was seen at several airports over cancellation of more than 200 Indigo flights in the country. pic.twitter.com/Inqh0Fo2Rs

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) December 4, 2025

The disruptions come amid stricter crew rostering and duty-time norms introduced in November.

The revised rostering norms issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in January 2024 after concerns about pilot fatigue were meant to take effect on June 1. However, airlines asked for delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually introduced on November 1.

The new rules require longer weekly rest, restrict night landings, extend the definition of night hours and limit consecutive night duties, The Indian Express reported.

Civil aviation minister K Ram Mohan Naidu instructed all airports to support stranded passengers and directed the regulator to monitor airfares during the disruptions. He also told IndiGo to proactively inform travellers about any expected cancellations, The Telegraph reported.

The airline, which operates more than 2,000 flights daily and holds about 60% of India’s civil aviation market domestically, has been more affected by the new rules than other carriers. Its share price has fallen around 6% this week, Reuters reported.

On Thursday, IndiGo issued a public apology to all customers and industry stakeholders and claimed it was working to “reduce the cascading impact of these delays and restore normalcy”.

The last two days have seen widespread disruption across IndiGo’s network and operations. We extend a heartfelt apology to all our customers and industry stakeholders who have been impacted by these events. IndiGo teams are working diligently and making all efforts with the…

— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) December 4, 2025

The Life Insurance Corporation of India had invested Rs 48,284.62 crore in industrialist Gautam Adani’s Adani Group companies till September 30, the Union government has told the Parliament.

This came over a month after The Washington Post reported that LIC had invested nearly $3.9 billion, or about Rs 33,000 crore at the time, in the Adani Group following directions from the Union government.

The newspaper had claimed that the Union government directed the investments at a time when Adani’s businesses were facing financial and legal challenges.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha on Monday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that the public sector company had invested Rs 5,000 crore in secured non-convertible debentures issued by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone in May.

This took LIC’s total investment in the conglomerate to Rs 38,658.85 crore in equity and Rs 9,625.77 crore in debt, showed the reply.

Non-convertible debentures are used by companies to raise capital without giving investors the option to convert them into equity. Investors get returns through regular interest payments and a fixed principal repayment at maturity.

Sitharaman’s reply came on questions by Congress MP Mohammad Jawed and Trinamool Congress’ Mahua Moitra.

The MPs had asked the Union government if it had issued directions to LIC or other public sector companies to invest in Adani Group companies and whether the Centre had reviewed the potential implications of such decisions for policyholders, market integrity and institutional independence.

In her reply, Sitharaman stated that the Ministry of Finance does not issue directions to LIC in matters related to its investments.

“The investment decisions of LIC are taken by LIC alone following strict due diligence, risk assessment and fiduciary compliance and are governed by the provisions of Insurance Act as well as regulations issued by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, Reserve Bank of India and Securities and Exchange Board of India,” stated the finance minister.

In its report, The Washington Post claimed that it had obtained internal documents showing how the Union Ministry of Finance fast-tracked a proposal in May to direct nearly $3.9 billion in investments from LIC India to the Adani Group despite being aware of the risks.

The investments came at a time when the conglomerate needed funds to refinance its dollar debt obligations, the report claimed

In 2024, a United States court indicted Adani for his alleged role in a $265 million, or nearly Rs 2,236 crore, bribery and fraud scheme related to solar projects in India. The indictment had led to reluctance among global banks and financial institutions to extend loans to the conglomerate.

The report had claimed that officials at the Department of Financial Services, a department under the Union Finance Ministry responsible for overseeing the financial sector, working in coordination with LIC India and NITI Aayog, developed the investment plan that had been approved in May.

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

“LIC invests across multiple corporate groups – and suggesting preferential treatment for Adani is misleading,” the conglomerate said in response to questions from The Washington Post. “Moreover, LIC has earned returns from its exposure to our portfolio.”

LIC India had stated that its investment decisions were taken “independently as per board-approved policies after detailed due diligence”.

It added that no government body had any role in its investment process.

In March 2025, the Ministry of Railways had stated that most of its divisions maintain “over 90% punctuality”. Behind the headline figure lies the everyday reality of passengers, with the punctuality index actually declining. Reliance on diesel locomotives, signal failures and congestion lead to most delays, data show and experts say.

In 2023-’24, Indian Railways carried 6.9 billion passengers overall, or an average daily footfall of about 19 million, across its 69,000-kilometre network.

Since April 2023, diesel locomotives have led to a “punctuality loss” in over 4,400 cases, or an average of five each day, data from the Railway Board show. In cases of diesel engine failure, the train halts at the point of failure – sometimes on a bridge or mid-section, blocking the entire line.

“The lack of alternate traction power means the train cannot move until a relief engine is brought in,” Sushil Luthra, former chief administrative officer at Indian Railways and editor of Rail Business Magazine, says. “In contrast, trains like Vande Bharat use distributed power across multiple coaches, so even if one unit fails, others can keep the train moving.”

This is alongside other major lapses – signal failures, track damage, congestion, and rolling stock issues – where no recent data are available on the delays they caused.

In 2019, Piyush Goyal, who was then railway minister, in a Lok Sabha reply attributed punctuality loss to internal factors including “equipment failures related to locomotives, Over-Head Electrical cables, track, signals, coaches and wagons; and saturated line capacity”.

The Punctuality Index for the railways has declined, as per latest data – from 94.17 in 2020 to 73.62 in 2023. The index considers a train punctual if it arrives within 15 minutes of its scheduled time – a far more lenient standard than Germany’s 5 minutes, Britain’s 10 minutes, or Japan’s few seconds.

Strain on infrastructure

“Indian Railways is still relying on British-era infrastructure, and not enough new track capacity has been added,” Verma said. “For the past 15 years, the Railways has acknowledged network congestion, but the situation remains largely the same today.”

Over 80% of India’s busiest rail routes – the High-Density Network connecting major cities – are running over capacity. At least 22% are so congested that their capacity utilisation exceeds 150%, as per the National Rail Plan. Nearly half of the Highly Utilised Network routes are also strained beyond capacity.

Overall, while 45% of the entire network remains underutilised at below 70% capacity, 1% of the network is burdened with more than 150% utilisation.

Former director of IIM Bangalore G Raghuram says that in congestion at major junctions like the Bengaluru City Railway Station, “covering the last 30 km may even take up to two hours”.

The number of electric locomotives has increased 26% in two years to 2023-’24, but the number of diesel locomotives fell 7%.

Railway ministry data show that since 2023-’24, over 4,400 cases of punctuality loss were recorded due to diesel locomotive failures.

By October 2025, broad gauge electrification cover grew to 99.1%, with complete electrification in every Indian state except for Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Goa and Assam.

During 2023-’24, the latest year for which data are available, the Railways covered over 800 million train kilometres on passenger trains, and 513 million train kilometres on freight trains. Yet, of this, 15% and 20%, respectively, was on diesel locomotives.

In a 2024 performance audit, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India noted that the increase in electrification was not accompanied by a proportionate decrease in diesel consumption “mainly due to non-completion of electrification project on end to end route, missing links and non-availability of traction change facility at interchange points etc.”

The process of replacing diesel locomotives with electric has been slow, noted Alok Verma, a retired Indian Railway Service of Engineers officer. This shows a “lack of long-term planning in implementing the project”, he added, explaining that closing or replacing diesel sheds, repair workshops and production units suddenly is not feasible.

“Diesel locomotives have a codal life of around 35 years, and although fresh production largely stopped in 2016-’17 due to rapid electrification, a limited number are still being produced,” Luthra added. “While the diesel fleet is gradually being phased out, the Ministry of Railways has decided to retain about 2,500 diesel locos as a strategic reserve for emergencies, power outages, and defense needs. Electric loco production has since accelerated, adding around 1,600 units last year. Yet, some diesel haulage (known as diesel under the wire) under electrified routes will continue, reflecting a transitional but sub-optimal phase in India’s rail electrification drive.”

Signalling lapses are also a major cause of delays and accidents. The Ministry of Railways warned in September 2025 that “repeated signal failures” pose a “serious threat to the safety and reliability”. In a recent inquiry, the Commission of Railway Safety also flagged frequent signalling failures in automatic systems.

Since 2020-’21, Railways recorded 187 cases of Signal Passed At Danger, where a train passes a red signal due to equipment failure or human error.

Mission Raftaar

As of April 2025, around 80,000 km tracks had speed potential of 110 kmph and above and 23,000 km tracks had speed potential of 130 kmph.

“India’s passenger trains rarely achieve an average speed above 90 kmph, with most operating between 55-70 kmph despite maximum speeds of 130-160 kmph on some sections,” Raghuram says. “Increasing the average speed of trains would have more benefits than focusing only on raising maximum speed. To increase average speed, it requires minimising halts, reconfiguring station layouts to allow mainline overtakes, grade separation at major junctions, and targeted removal of speed restrictions.”

The average speed of Mail or Express trains have increased from 50.3 kmph in 2017 to 51.1 kmph in 2023, and the speed of Goods trains has improved by 0.3 km per hour, the Ministry of Railway told the Rajya Sabha in December 2023.

This comes despite Mission Raftaar, launched by Indian Railways in 2017 to double freight train speeds from 25 kmph to 50 kmph and increase Mail and Express train speeds from 50 kmph to 75 kmph by the end of 2022.

A 2020 CAG audit noted that Permanent Speed Restrictions are a major bottleneck in achieving the objectives of the Mission Raftaar and result in financial losses. Permanent speed restrictions are based on the conditions of the track. The audit found Western Railway had the most restrictions at 685, while Southern Railway had the fewest at 56.

In June 2025, the government said 31,000 km of new tracks had been laid and 45,000 km renewed since 2014. In August, the parliamentary standing committee on railways flagged a disparity between fund utilisation for doubling of tracks and the physical progress, noting that “doubling is a long-term asset essential for improving train speeds and serving as a significant revenue multiplier”.

Poor maintenance

The railway network is so congested that there is not enough time to shut down tracks for essential maintenance and inspections, pointed out Verma. “This creates a cycle of inadequate maintenance and asset failures. Without timely maintenance and inspections, you see more accidents, loss of passenger trust, and an unreliable transport system.”

A 2022 CAG audit on Indian Railways derailments found a 57% shortfall in deploying advanced sleepers – rectangular supports for rails – during planned track renewals since 2019. Between 2017 and 2021, the audit found that over half of the track-recording car inspections were missed and track maintenance machines remained idle 16% of days due to poor planning.

The 2021 CAG audit, the most detailed on asset failures, reported a 400% surge in locomotive failures over four years, hitting 24,147 in 2018. During the same period, Overhead Equipment failures jumped sevenfold to 2,759.

The report said maintenance practices are “directly linked” to asset failures, which contributed to an average 22.2% of overall punctuality loss in 2018. These included rail, weld, and signal failures. It also noted that deep screening work, a railway track maintenance process, was overdue up to 20 years.

Indian Railways’ spending on safety has seen a rise in recent years. In 2025, it allocated Rs 1.2 lakh crore to safety works. Luthra said accidents persist despite higher capital spending due to lack of proper staff training, especially in new technologies like electronic signalling and interlocking, and an inefficient administrative setup. “Many Railway Standard Operating Procedures still date back to the British era.”

IndiaSpend wrote to the Ministry of Railway for comments on the Indian Railway’s punctuality, safety measures, and passenger experience. This story will be updated when we receive a response.

This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

The Congress in Kerala on Thursday expelled Palakkad MLA Rahul Mamkootathil, who has been accused of rape and sexual abuse by two women, ANI quoted the party’s state chief Sunny Joseph as saying.

The decision came after a Kerala court on Thursday refused to grant anticipatory bail to Mamkootathil in the rape case, reported Bar and Bench.

The MLA was booked on November 28 after a woman accused him of rape, obtaining sexual consent through deceitful means and coercing her to terminate her pregnancy.

He was also accused of verbal abuse, giving death threats to the complainant and violating the Information Technology Act.

On Tuesday, another woman accused Mamkootathil of sexual abuse that allegedly took place in 2023, reported The Indian Express. She had emailed her complaint to the Congress’ state leadership.

The complaint was handed over to the police, leading to the registration of a second first information report against the MLA.

Mamkootathil had sought anticipatory bail after the first case, stating that the allegations against him are false, politically motivated and intended to tarnish his public standing, reported Bar and Bench.

He admitted that he had a physical relationship with the complainant but claimed that it was consensual.

On Thursday, Joseph stated that the Congress leadership had been consulted regarding Mamkootathil’s expulsion.

“It is better that he quits as a legislator,” the Kerala Congress chief was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “The Congress has never protected him.”

He added that Mamkootathil’s continuation in the party had become “ethically untenable”, reported The Hindu.

The Congress had suspended Mamkootathil from its primary membership in August following multiple allegations from women of misconduct. Following this, he resigned from his post as the Kerala Youth Congress chief.

In the first FIR, provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act have also been invoked.

The police are investigating allegations that Mamkootathil procured miscarriage-inducing medicines without a prescription, asked an acquaintance to deliver the pills to the woman, and pressured her to consume them while he allegedly remained on a video call to ensure that she took them.

The acquaintance, Joby Thomas, a businessperson from Pathanamthitta, has been named as the second accused person.

The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act allows only registered medical practitioners to administer abortion pills after required tests, including an ultrasound.

The Bombay High Court has granted bail to former Delhi University Professor Hany Babu in the Bhima Koregaon case. Babu spent more than five years in jail, after being arrested in July 2020 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The case pertains to violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon.

The National Investigation Agency has alleged that the Elgar Parishad was part of a larger Maoist conspiracy to stoke caste violence, destabilise the Union government and assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It accused Babu of being a member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and being involved in the alleged conspiracy to assassinate Modi.

Seven years on, the trial in the case is yet to begin. Read more.

The rupee has fallen to an all-time low of 90.4 against the United States dollar amid the continued outflow of foreign capital from the equity market. The Indian currency has come under pressure because of punitive tariffs by the United States and uncertainty about a trade deal between New Delhi and Washington.

The rupee had breached the 90-mark on Wednesday. It has fallen about 5% in 2025, putting it on track to record the sharpest decline in a year since 2022.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that the rupee was weakening because of the policies of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. However, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said that he was “not losing sleep” as the fall in rupee’s value was not impacting inflation or exports. Read more.

The Supreme Court has issued directions to redress problems faced by booth-level officers during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. It asked the state governments to deploy additional staff so that the working hours of the booth-level officers can be “proportionately reduced” to alleviate their hardship.

The revision exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories. At least eight suicides by booth-level officers and at least seven deaths have been reported in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan.

The court said that if officers are overburdened with their routine and additional duties assigned by the Election Commission, state governments can take steps to “obviate such hardships”.

It added that when an employee has specific reasons to seek exemption from duties assigned by the poll panel, the state government should assess the request on a case-to-case basis and assign another employee in their place. Read more.

The United States has directed all foreign workers applying for H-1B visas and their dependents to keep their social media profiles public so be that they can be reviewed. In June, the Donald Trump administration issued similar directions for student visa applicants, stating that the government would conduct a “comprehensive and thorough vetting”, including of their online presence.

H-1B visas allow US companies to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. Over the past few years, Indians have constituted the majority of H-1B visa holders. Indians comprised 72.3% of all H-1B visas issued by the US in the financial year 2022-’23.

The new rules will apply to new applicants and those requesting a renewal of their visas. Read more.

The Trinamool Congress has suspended Debra MLA Humayun Kabir after he said that he would “build a Babri Masjid” in Murshidabad district. The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished on December 6, 1992, by Hindutva extremists because they believed that it stood on the spot on which the deity Ram had been born. In January 2024, the Ram temple was inaugurated at the site in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Earlier this week, Kabir had announced that he intended to lay the foundation stone for a mosque modelled on the Babri Masjid in Beldanga on December 6.

Announcing the TMC’s decision to suspend Kabir, party leader Firhad Hakim said the legislator had already been warned several times before for his remarks. The party alleged that his comments were aimed at fuelling communal tensions and encouraged by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Read more.

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The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to former Delhi University Professor Hany Babu, one of those accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, Live Law reported.

Babu spent more than five years in jail, after being arrested in July 2020 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The bail was granted by a division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale. The detailed order is awaited.

The case pertains to the violence that broke out near Pune on January 1, 2018, a day after a conclave called the Elgar Parishad was organised to mark the 200th anniversary of the battle of Bhima Koregaon.

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

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

The agency has accused Babu of being a member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and being involved in the alleged conspiracy to assassinate Modi.

In June 2022, an article in the Wired magazine said that the Pune Police had allegedly hacked electronic devices owned by Babu and two other persons accused in the matter – Wilson and Varavara Rao – and planted fake evidence on them.

In May 2024, Babu withdrew his bail petition before the Supreme Court, saying that he would approach the High Court with a fresh plea on account of changed circumstances. He noted that eight persons accused in the case had been granted bail by the Supreme Court and the High Court.

During the hearing before the High Court, Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh contended that Babu had not spent a substantial period in prison like co-accused persons Rona Wilson and Sudhir Dhawale.

Singh argued that the former Delhi University professor could not be granted bail merely because he had been incarcerated for a long time, Live Law reported.

Seven years on, the trial in the case is yet to begin. One person accused in the case, Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, died in prison in 2021.

So far the Bombay High Court has granted bail to Wilson, Sudhir Dhawale and Sudha Bharadwaj, while the Supreme Court has granted bail to Rao on medical grounds and to Shoma Sen, Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira on merits. In November, the Supreme Court also granted interim bail to Jyoti Jagtap.

Also read:

‘Tell the judge he has done no crime’: The struggles of Hany Babu’s family

The Trinamool Congress on Thursday suspended Debra MLA Humayun Kabir from the party after he claimed that he would “build a Babri Masjid” in Murshidabad district, India Today reported.

The Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished on December 6, 1992, by Hindu extremists because they believed that it stood on the spot on which the deity Ram had been born. On January 22, 2024, the Ram temple was inaugurated at the site in a ceremony led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On Tuesday, Kabir had stirred a controversy after declaring that he would lay the foundation stone for a mosque modelled on the Babri Masjid in Beldanga, Murshidabad on December 6, PTI reported.

On Thursday, Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim announced the party’s decision to suspend Kabir for his remarks about the Babri Masjid, saying that the legislator had already been issued warnings several times before.

“We noticed that one of our MLAs from Murshidabad suddenly declared that he would build the Babri Masjid,” The Indian Express quoted Hakim as saying. “Why suddenly Babri Masjid? We already warned him.”

The Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal, has claimed that Kabir’s remarks were made with the intention of fuelling communal tensions. It alleged that he was being encouraged by the Bharatiya Janata Party, India Today reported.

The Kerala Police have registered a first information report against Palakkad MLA Rahul Mamkootathil after a woman accused him of repeated sexual exploitation on the false promise of marriage, forcing her to terminate the pregnancy, verbal abuse, death threats and violations of the Information Technology Act, The Hindu reported.

The case was expedited after the woman and her family met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at his office on Thursday. Following this, a team led by Thiruvananthapuram Rural Police chief KS Sudarshan recorded her statement.

The FIR was registered at the Valiamala police station early on Friday and later transferred to the Nemom police station in Thiruvananthapuram city.

Thiruvananthapuram City Police Commissioner Thomson Jose told The Hindu that the charges against Mamkootathil include rape, obtaining sexual consent through deceitful means and coercing a woman to terminate her pregnancy.

Police are also investigating allegations that Mamkootathil procured miscarriage-inducing medicines without a prescription, asked an acquaintance to deliver the pills to the woman, and pressured her to consume them while he allegedly remained on a video call to ensure that she took the medicines, the newspaper reported.

The acquaintance, Joby Thomas, a businessperson from Pathanamthitta, has been named as the second accused person

Provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act have also been invoked in the case. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act allows only registered medical practitioners to administer abortion pills after required tests, including an ultrasound.

The Congress had suspended Mamkootathil from its primary membership in August. He had resigned from the post of Youth Congress president, following multiple allegations from women of misconduct, The Indian Express reported.

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued directions to redress problems faced by booth-level officers during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, Live Law reported.

The court asked the state governments to depute additional staff for the exercise so that the working hours of the booth-level officers can be “proportionately reduced” to alleviate their hardship.

The exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories: the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Puducherry, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

At least eight suicides by booth-level officers and at least seven deaths have been reported in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that the officers deputed for the exercise by the state poll panels are at the disposal of the Election Commission and are “obligated to perform such duties”.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by actor-turned-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam seeking a stay on coercive actions by the Election Commission against booth-level officers for lapses in the duties related to the revision of voter lists.

Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing the petitioner, alleged that notices were being sent to the booth-level officers saying that they will be imprisoned for two years if they do not meet deadlines, citing first information reports filed in Uttar Pradesh, Bar and Bench reported.

“They [Election Commission] are taking pride in this,” Sankaranarayanan was quoted as saying. “There was a boy who wanted to attend his wedding. He was denied and he committed suicide. This is a human story.”

On November 24, reports stated that more than 60 booth-level officers and seven supervisors were booked in Noida for allegedly failing to comply with orders from senior officials during the revision process.

In Bahraich district, the administration has ordered FIRs against five booth-level officers, withheld salaries of 42 personnel and suspended a village-level revenue officer for alleged negligence.

The poll panel opposed the petition.

On Thursday, the court said that if the officers “are facing hardship, including they being overburdened with their routine duties as well as the additional duties” assigned by the poll panel, the state government can “obviate such hardships”, Live Law reported.

When an employee has specific reasons to seek exemption from the duty assigned by the Election Commission, the state government should consider the request on a case-to-case basis and replace the person with another employee, the court was quoted as having directed.

The bench added: “In other words, the state shall be obligated to deploy the requisite workforce at the disposal of the ECI, though the strength of such employees can be increased.”

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise. The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

Also read: I struggled to fill SIR forms. BLOs have it much worse

The Jharkhand High Court on Wednesday exempted Chief Minister Hemant Soren from making a personal appearance before an MP-MLA court in a case related to the violation of Enforcement Directorate summons, India Today reported.

The central agency had filed a complaint case against the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief for refusing to appear before it after multiple summonses were issued to him in an alleged land scam, PTI reported.

The Enforcement Directorate alleged that ten summonses were issued to Soren, but he appeared only twice.

Subsequently, the MP-MLA court in Ranchi ordered his personal appearance at every hearing in the case concerning his refusal to comply with the summonses.

On Wednesday, Justice Anil Kumar Choudhary granted relief to Soren on a petition challenging the MP-MLA court’s directive seeking his personal appearance.

Choudhary disposed the petition and said that Soren could be represented by his counsel.

In December 2024, the High Court had passed an interim order exempting Soren from personally appearing in the case before the MP-MLA court.

However, the court vacated this interim order on November 25 and asked him to appear physically for the hearing.

The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday attached two apartments in Chennai belonging to the owner of Sresan Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the Coldrif cough syrup linked to the deaths of 25 children in Madhya Pradesh, The Hindu reported.

The flats, located in Kodambakkam and valued at Rs 2 crore, were attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act following an investigation based on two first information reports registered by the Madhya Pradesh Police and the Tamil Nadu drugs controller, The Telegraph reported.

On October 9, the Madhya Pradesh Police arrested G Ranganathan, the owner of the firm that made the syrup, in Chennai. Six others linked to the supply chain of the syrup were also arrested.

According to the Enforcement Directorate, the company used industrial-grade raw materials instead of pharmaceutical-grade ingredients and carried out no proper quality checks, The Telegraph reported.

“Such materials were being purchased in cash without invoices to avoid creation of records,” PTI quoted the agency as saying.

The Enforcement Directorate also alleged that the firm indulged in “rampant unfair trade practices to suppress its manufacturing costs and increase profits, which are nothing but proceeds of crime”, The Telegraph reported.

The agency had previously carried out searches at 10 locations linked to Sresan Pharmaceuticals, drugs control officials, licence agents and others, seizing evidence related to the company’s financial dealings and adulterated manufacturing practices, The Hindu reported.

Apart from Madhya Pradesh, deaths had also been reported from Rajasthan. Several children, who had been suffering from fever and cold, consumed the Coldrif syrup, resulting in vomiting and difficulty urinating.

The first death was recorded on September 2.

The Coldrif syrup was manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacture, which is situated in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district.

On October 2, the Tamil Nadu director of drugs control found that Coldrif samples were not of standard quality. Three days later, Madhya Pradesh also reported that one sample of Coldrif had 48.6% of diethylene glycol in it.

The permissible limit of diethylene glycol as an impurity is 0.1%. However, drug officials Scroll spoke to said that the chemical is unsafe even in trace amounts and should ideally be completely absent from an ingestible syrup. Its presence is a serious quality compliance issue, the officials said.

Two drug inspectors from Tamil Nadu had been suspended for failing to conduct quality checks on the drugs manufactured by Sresan Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in the past two years.

The Tamil Nadu government also revoked the manufacturing licence of the company and shut it down.

Following the deaths, the formulation was banned in several states including Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh.

The deaths of the children led the World Health Organization to issue a medical alert on October 13 against the use of three cough syrups found to contain diethylene glycol beyond permissible limits, a substance that can cause acute kidney and liver failure.

The alert named specific batches of Coldrif syrup, and Respifresh TR and ReLife, produced by manufacturing companies in Gujarat.

Also read:

• How justice was denied to Jammu children killed five years ago by deadly cough syrup

• How adulterated cough syrup killed Madhya Pradesh’s children

• India’s cough syrup testing regime has a deadly blind spot

The National Commission for Backward Classes has recommended that the Union government remove 35 communities, most of them Muslim, from West Bengal’s Central Other Backward Classes list, The Hindu reported on Wednesday.

The recommendation was confirmed by the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in Parliament on Tuesday. This followed a review of 37 communities added to the list in 2014, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the newspaper reported. Of these, 35 were Muslim communities.

Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, under whose chairmanship the recommendation was made, said that the suggestion followed the commission’s scrutiny of West Bengal’s Central Other Backward Classes list “in light of a high number of Muslim communities being listed” in it.

Ahir, whose tenure as the National Commission for Backward Classes chairperson came to an end on December 1, noted that “most of the communities” identified for exclusion were Muslim. “One or two of them may be non-Muslim communities,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

He also refused to name the communities, saying it was “a matter for the government to decide”.

The commission’s recommendation must be presented in Parliament under the 102nd Constitutional Amendment, which mandates legislative approval and presidential notification before any changes to the Central Other Backward Classes list can take effect.

However, the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has not specified when the recommendation will be presented in Parliament for final approval, The Tribune reported.

Bharatiya Janata Party social media cell chief Amit Malviya on Wednesday criticised the West Bengal government’s classification, alleging that it was a “policy of clubbing religious groups into OBC quotas for political gain, while depriving genuinely backward Hindu communities of their rightful share”.

He claimed that the Union government was “correcting decades of appeasement-driven distortions and ensuring true social justice based on backwardness, not vote-bank politics”.

The recommendation made by the commission comes amid the Supreme Court hearing a petition against an order of the Calcutta High Court quashing the classification of 77 communities, a majority of them Muslim, under the state Other Backward Classes category.

In May 2024, the High Court cancelled all Other Backward Classes certificates issued in West Bengal after 2010, saying that “religion indeed appears to have been the sole criterion” for granting the status to the 77 communities.

The High Court’s decision was expected to affect nearly five lakh certificates.

In May, the state government told the Supreme Court that it would conduct a fresh survey to identify Other Backward Classes in West Bengal within three months.

Also read:

Explainer: How Calcutta High Court’s Muslim OBC order will help BJP’s national campaign

Until two years ago, Parth Phiroze Mehrotra used between 10 and 12 air purifiers in his apartment in South Delhi to ensure that he could breathe clean air at home.

The devices needed considerable maintenance. Mehrotra had to change their filters two or three times a year. Because he kept the doors of his rooms closed, he also had to install dehumidifiers in his home to ensure that moisture did not build up and lead to the formation of mould.

Then, Mehrotra came across another solution – a ventilation and air purification system that would create a “clean air bubble” inside his home. To install it, the company that he bought the system from, YOGa Air, cut a cavity in a wall of his home – the system brought in air through this cavity and passed it through a filtration mechanism. A pressure regulation mechanism ensured that fresh air stayed indoors and stale air was pushed out.

“Compared to all these things that were needed to make sure the air purifiers worked efficiently, YOGa Air is much cheaper,” said Mehrotra, who is the editor-in-chief at Juggernaut Books.

A YOGa Air representative told Scroll that a 1,500-square-foot home would need a single unit, which costs around Rs 1.5 lakh. The cost for a commercial space of a similar size could be higher, since the company would also have to take into account the occupancy of the space. The representative explained that installation is typically completed within two hours, and that once the system is switched on, PM2.5 levels can drop to 15 ug/m3 within two hours.

Customers pay an annual maintenance cost of Rs 18,000, which covers all maintenance work by the company. “You outsource your home’s air quality to us,” said the representative.

YOGa Air is one of several new firms that are offering new kinds of air purifying products for private use. These companies are primarily focusing on customers in Delhi, given the city’s abysmal air quality and large population.

While room air purifiers have been in use in the city for roughly the last decade, these companies are marketing products that range from these centralised air purification systems, which can create “air bubbles” within entire homes and offices, to wearable air purifiers that can be hung around the neck.

In his book Atmosphere of Collaboration: Air Pollution Science, Politics and Ecopreneurship in Delhi, Rohit Negi, associate professor at IIM Calcutta, wrote that this breed of “airpreneurs” emerged around 2014 and has grown rapidly since. He noted, “given its air quality, the disproportionate media coverage and the purchasing power of many residents, Delhi contributes strongly to this market”.

But experts also warn that the growth of these companies and products, many of which are prohibitively expensive, represents a dangerous trend from the perspective of public health.

Because air pollution usually affects both the rich and the poor, its health risks could serve as a “catalysing factor” that pushes authorities to tackle it, said Arjun Kamdar, a conservation scientist and doctoral candidate at Cambridge University, whose research is at the intersection of behavioural economics, psychology, and conservation.

The availability of expensive products to protect the rich leaves many thinking “they can buy themselves out of this problem”, Kamdar said. “This narrative then crowds out the motivation by the government and people to do anything about air pollution.”

Homes are the biggest business

For Jai Dhar Gupta, it was the authorities’ uneven response to Delhi’s air pollution crisis that prompted him to set up a company called Nirvana Being. One of its products is the “O2 curve mask”, a silicon seal mask with a filter, designed specifically for use by sportspeople. It was developed by a company based in Canada, and is sold in India by firms such as Nirvana Being.

Gupta recounted that he used to be an active runner until he was diagnosed with bronchial asthma in 2013.

“I started to look for solutions for myself. That is how the business came about,” he said.

Gupta explained that the mask his company sells is of the N90 standard, slightly lower than the N95 standard that the World Health Organisation recommends for Delhi-NCR’s severe air pollution – he noted that the N90 mask allowed for protection while also ensuring more comfortable breathing during active movement. Depending on whether a customer buys the mask alone or along with replaceable filters, it costs between Rs 2,200 and Rs 3,900.

Nirvana Being sells other products as well, such as air filters for cars and homes. They also sell a steam inhaler that is equipped with a filter, so that users can inhale purified steam – the device is priced at around Rs 13,000.

Gupta explained that in the early years, his company’s business primarily came from a limited pool of customers – chiefly expats working in Delhi, multinational corporations that had offices in the city, and residents who had underlying health problems.

Now, he said, the pool had widened, and many others were seeking these products primarily for their homes. “The biggest business has now become homes,” Gupta said.

He added that many now saw these devices as necessities. “People want to keep their families safe,” he said. He compared the adoption of these devices to the process by which “water purifiers have become a necessity.”

Mehrotra, the editor, has two of YOGa Air’s units installed at home, and he runs them through the year. “This morning, when I left my home, the PM2.5 inside was between 1 to 3,” he said, on a day when parts of Delhi were recording PM2.5 beyond 400 ug/m3.

The system has brought him an additional benefit. He recounted that he would earlier also often wake up with headaches because the constant use of a purifier in a closed room would lead to an increase in carbon dioxide levels – the gas is released through exhalation and purifiers cannot typically remove them. But the YOGa Air system allows stale air to escape and replenishes it with fresh air – Mehrotra noted that his headaches had ceased since he began using it.

Clean air for larger spaces

The new breed of companies is not only catering to individuals and homes. In South Delhi’s GK-1 market, a Nirvana Being centralised purification system ensures that the Greenr Café provides a clean air environment for its staff and customers.

The café, which serves only plant-based products, has an outdoor exhaust that first sucks in air, which is run through a filtration system and gently released indoors through a shaft.

Near the shaft, a monitor displays real-time air quality indicators – at noon on the day Scroll visited, the PM10 level was 155 ug/m3 when the city’s average PM10 that day was above 300 ug/m3. The carbon dioxide level was at a higher value of 1258 ppm. “Since we just opened the café for the day and switched this on, it takes a little time to start functioning effectively,” a staff member said.

At present, the system is only installed in the upper floor of the cafe. Nirvana Being has installed a similar system for the Director’s Cut PVR cinema at Delhi’s Ambience Mall, as well as in gyms of Fitness First, and the JW Marriott hotel at Aerocity.

The US Embassy in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri, meanwhile, uses an entirely different technology, one that is not widely available at the moment and can even clean up air outdoors.

Developed by the Netherlands-based ENS Clean Air Solutions, this system uses a large metallic device with an exhaust fan that sucks in polluted air into a patented device called “Aufero”.

According to ENS’ website, the device “captures” airborne pollutants on a “collector plate”, where they are “transformed as coarse dust”. Once converted to dust, the airborne pollutants “are immobilized, thereby eliminating the possibility for them to be emitted and inhaled”.

Indian authorities are also studying this technology. Minutes of a March 2023 Commission for Air Quality Management meeting that Scroll accessed, which mentioned that the technology was installed at the US Embassy, also noted that IIT Delhi was conducting trials for it. These trials found that over two years of operation, the device reduced PM2.5 levels by up to 30% and 35% in parking lots, and up to 10% across an area of 1 km.

But the CAQM also noted that the system is still “at the demonstration level”, and as of now “nowhere in the country has been demonstrated for sustainable basis”.

Wearable air purifiers

While most devices purify air in fixed spaces, a newer kind of product is the wearable air purifier, a small pebble-shaped device that is hung around one’s neck. An Indian brand called Atovio sells the device for Rs 3,500, and claims that it reduces pollution by 90% in a person’s breathing space within an hour of operation.

The company’s website states that the device has been tested at IIT Kanpur, and uses an “advanced variable anion technology” which “releases millions of anions into the air every second” – these, upon attaching to harmful airborne particles such as PM2.5, PM10 and pollen, neutralise them, the website states.

These devices gained some attention when the member of parliament Shashi Tharoor was spotted wearing one in 2020. Last December, he put up a favourable post on X about wearing the Atovio air purifier, but then posted again a few hours later that the device had stopped working.

In an email response to Scroll, Atovio stated that they got in touch with Tharoor’s staff immediately, who confirmed that the device was “charged incorrectly” – once charged properly, the company said, “it functioned normally.” It also noted that after this incident, the company carried out an additional quality check as a precaution, and that it had not seen similar reports since.

A 2016 study of such wearable devices showed contrasting results. The scientists compared the ability of four such devices to remove particles from the air, without mentioning their brand names. They also compared their tendency to build-up ozone – purification devices that use ionisation technology can generate ozone as a byproduct, large quantities of which can be harmful to breathe.

The study found that some wearable purifiers “would lead to elevated ozone concentration within the near-head region with poor particle removal performance”, while others could remove particles without ozone emissions. It suggested that such devices should have “regulatory guidelines” to “help customers select useful devices to mitigate their exposures to PM without increasing ozone exposures”.

Atovio told Scroll that they use a “completely different system, a controlled low voltage anion mechanism” which ensures that their “ozone emission is 0%”. It noted, “Our ozone levels are below detectable limits and within international IEC safety norms,” they said, referring to the International Electrotechnical Commission, which develops standards pertaining to electrical and electronic technologies.

Even as the market of these products is growing, Gupta conceded that for the moment these new technologies also only cater to a specific economic class. “We are aware that we cannot get to the mass market,” said Gupta. “We are scientific, and we are not going to use cheap parts which would compromise the air quality.”

Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Wednesday said it is investigating widespread disruptions to airline IndiGo’s operations and directed it to explain the recent spike in cancellations and delays, as well as outline how it intends to restore normal schedules, PTI reported.

On Wednesday, IndiGo cancelled over 150 flights across airports in the country, 38 of them in Delhi alone, The Indian Express reported.

The airline cancelled 1,232 flights in November, including 755 due to crew shortages and new flight duty time limitations, according to data shared with the regulator.

The remaining cancellations were attributed to airspace restrictions, airport-related constraints, an Air Traffic Control system failure and other reasons.

In this backdrop, the aviation regulator said it was reviewing the situation with the airline to reduce passenger inconvenience, PTI reported.

The aviation regulator noted that while many of the causes were outside the airline’s direct control, IndiGo’s on-time performance fell to 67.7% in November from 84.1% in October.

IndiGo in a statement on Wednesday said the disruptions stemmed from several operational challenges “including minor technology glitches, schedule changes linked to the winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system and the implementation of updated crew rostering rules,” The Indian Express reported.

It said it had introduced calibrated schedule adjustments for 48 hours to stabilise operations, which would likely involve selective rescheduling and cancellations aligned with available crew, the newspaper reported.

The disruptions come amid stricter crew rostering and duty-time norms introduced in November.

The revised rostering norms issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in January 2024 after concerns about pilot fatigue were meant to take effect on June 1. However, airlines asked for delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually introduced on November 1.

The Federation of Indian Pilots said the disruption is a direct consequence of IndiGo’s “prolonged and unorthodox lean manpower strategy across departments, particularly in flight operations”, The Indian Express reported.

On Thursday, the public relations officer at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport noted that disruptions in flight operations at Terminal 1 over the past two days had “caused severe inconvenience to thousands of passengers”, ANI reported.

“IndiGo Airlines has been the most affected, with flights delayed by several hours due to technical issues and a shortage of crew,” the official said. “Many passengers were forced to spend the night at the airport. Continuous delays and cancellations have led to Terminal-1 becoming overcrowded.”

The statement said: “According to sources, the primary reason for the chaos is IndiGo’s shortage of pilots and crew. The re-implementation of FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limit) regulations and reduced crew availability have resulted in several flights being cancelled or rescheduled.”

Students, teachers and non-teaching staff members of Assam’s Tezpur University have shut down the campus indefinitely, demanding that Vice-Chancellor Shambhu Nath Singh be immediately replaced due to allegations of corruption and financial irregularities, PTI reported on Wednesday.

The university in Sonitpur district has been witnessing protests for more than two months. However, the staff and students on Saturday declared a shutdown of all academic and administrative activities, The Indian Express reported.

The protests are being carried out under under the aegis of the Tezpur University United Forum. The Tezpur University Teachers’ Association and the Tezpur University Non-Teaching Employees’ Association have also supported the agitation.

Following the shutdown on Saturday, the Controller of Examinations issued a notification rescheduling the semester examinations, which were to begin on December 3, to December 8.

Tezpur University is the only other Central university in the state apart from Assam University. Singh had taken over as vice-chancellor in March 2023, after being the vice-chancellor of Patna University and a professor at Indira Gandhi National Open University earlier.

The students and staff at Tezpur University accuse Singh of financial irregularities and prolonged absence from campus, The Indian Express reported. His absence had led to “administrative stagnation”, dilapidation of campus infrastructure and disruption of academic processes, they allege.

In a memorandum to the Union Ministry of Education on November 18, the Tezpur University Teachers’ Association cited repeated extensions of the finance officer’s tenure, questionable faculty recruitments, preferential awarding of tenders and opaque financial decision-making, among other issues, as reasons for the agitation against Singh, The Indian Express reported.

It also claimed that Singh had not been on campus for 388 days between April 2023 and September 2025, which “exacerbated administrative stagnation and eroded confidence among stakeholders”.

The association further alleged the non-payment of labour wages and vendor bills, which it claimed had affected infrastructure and essential services, the newspaper reported.

The situation in the Tezpur University had earlier grown tense due to the administration’s alleged indifference towards the sentiments of the students after the death of singer Zubeen Garg on September 19.

A student told The Indian Express that the vice-chancellor had not been on campus on September 19 and added that the student council elections scheduled for the day after Garg’s death continued.

The elections were held despite state mourning being declared and a request that the polls be postponed as a mark of respect, the student said.

As the protests became widespread, the Sonitpur District Administration ordered a magisterial probe against Tezpur University authorities for allegedly disrespecting Garg, PTI reported.

A fact-finding committee formed by the Assam governor to look into claims about the functioning of the vice-chancellor also visited the university, along with a separate team from the Union Ministry of Education.

A member from the Tezpur University United Forum told the news agency that their demands included an immediate publication of the reports prepared by both the governor’s fact-finding committee and the Union Ministry of Education.

Tezpur University Teachers’ Association chief Kusum Kumar Bania also told PTI that Singh had been absent from the university for the last 74 days.

“During this period, our students continued their protest peacefully for 70 days, demonstrating remarkable restraint and responsibility,” PTI quoted Bania as saying. “However, there is a limit to how long they can wait and this is something the government must recognise with urgency.”

Amid the agitation, 11 faculty members and officials have relinquished their positions, including Finance Officer Braja Bandhu Mishra, PTI reported. Others include the registrar in charge, several deans, directors and assistant deans.

Earlier, Singh’s office had issued a clarification denying allegations of insensitivity and irregularities.

“Every expenditure undergoes due process and audit scrutiny, and no funds are ever utilised for purposes beyond what is legitimately permitted,” The Indian Express quoted the clarification as saying.

CM speaks to Union education minister

On Wednesday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that he had spoken to Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan about the situation at Tezpur University and urged him to appoint a pro-vice chancellor immediately.

“I am confident that with the support of the Hon’ble Minister, the issues will be resolved at earliest,” the chief minister said.

However, the students at Tezpur University dismissed Sarma’s statements and said that he had “completely misunderstood” their core demands, India Today NE reported.

“Our demands remain unchanged: immediate suspension of the current vice chancellor pending enquiry, appointment of an acting VC – not a pro-VC – and publication of all inquiry reports already submitted to authorities,” the protesting groups stated.

Five alleged members of banned extremist organisation Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh were on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment by a Kolkata court for their role in a 2016 plot to carry out bomb attacks and other subversive activities in India, The Indian Express reported.

Two of those sentenced to life terms, Anwar Hossain Faruque and Mohammad Rubel, are Bangladeshi nationals from Jamalpur.

The others are Maulana Yusuf Sheikh from West Bengal’s Burdwan, and Mohammad Sahidul Islam and Jabirul Islam from Assam.

The verdict was delivered by special judge Rohan Sinha after a trial based on an investigation by the Kolkata Police Special Task Force, The Indian Express reported.

The police had registered the case in 2016 following intelligence on suspected Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh activities.

An unidentified official told the newspaper that intelligence gathered showed that members of the alleged terror module planned to illegally enter India through the border in the North 24 Parganas district to meet associates in India.

They allegedly wanted to carry out attacks in the Northeast, southern states and other parts of the country, the official said.

In September 2016, six men were arrested from Bengal and Assam with explosives, components of improvised explosive devices, documents, laptops and currency notes, Hindustan Times quoted Additional Commissioner of Police Solomon Nesakumar as saying. .

They were charged under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Foreigners Act. However, during the proceedings, one of them, Abdul Kalam, was discharged for lack of sufficient evidence, Hindustan Times reported.

In 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and its Indian sister organisations for allegedly promoting acts of terrorism.

When the Modi government implemented four new labour codes on November 21, it claimed to be delivering “one of the most comprehensive and progressive labour-oriented reforms since Independence”. The prime minister himself celebrated the moment with his characteristic triumphalism, declaring that the codes “greatly empower our workers” while simplifying compliance for businesses.

The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions comprising ten major trade unions saw it differently. In a scathing statement, they condemned the implementation as a “deceptive fraud” against India’s working people and burned copies of the codes in street protests.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) charged that the reforms “dismantle 29 hard-won labour laws” and “shift the balance sharply in favour of employers”. Even the Association of Indian Entrepreneurs, hardly a bastion of worker advocacy, expressed concern about significantly increased operating costs.

Who is right? Is this historic reform or historic betrayal? The answer lies in the details – in comparing specific provisions of the old laws with their equivalents in the new codes. When we examine these comparisons systematically, a clear pattern emerges: beneath the rhetoric of modernisation and expanded coverage, the new codes systematically weaken protections, intensify precarity and shift power dramatically from workers to employers.

The retrenchment revolution

Perhaps the most consequential change concerns retrenchment – the permanent termination of workers’ employment. This provision reveals the codes’ essential logic with stark clarity.

Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, factories, mines, or plantations employing 100 or more workers were required to obtain permission from the central or state government before laying off, retrenching, or closing down operations. These three sectors did not comprise more than one-third of the organised sector.

Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, that became effective last month, the threshold has been tripled to 300 workers and it is made applicable to the entire organised sector. It provides for the increase of this threshold by a notification of the government. Companies with up to 300 employees can now retrench staff without any approval.

Thus, employers at establishments with 100-299 workers – the vast swath of Indian industry, in excess of 87% – can now fire workers at will without government oversight, without demonstrating cause, and without facing consequences for arbitrary dismissals.

The real effect is to create a massive class of workers who live in constant fear of arbitrary termination. An employer dissatisfied with a worker’s union activity, caste background or personal demeanour can simply fire them – no questions asked, no appeals allowed. This is not flexibility. It is tyranny.

Strangling the strike

The right to strike is fundamental to workers’ collective power. It is the ultimate leverage workers possess against exploitative employers – the ability to withdraw their labour and halt production. The new codes systematically strangulate this right.

Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, workers in “public utility services” – railways, ports, sanitation, and similar essential services – were prohibited from striking without notice. Other workers faced fewer restrictions.

Under the new Industrial Relations Code, 2020, workers in any establishment cannot go on strike unless they give notice within 60 days before striking and within 14 days of giving such notice.

Strikes are prohibited during the pendency of conciliation proceedings (and seven days after), during tribunal or arbitration proceedings (and 60 days after) and during any period when a settlement or award is in operation.

If over 50% of a company’s workers take concerted casual leave, it will be treated as a strike – meaning that even coordinated absence becomes illegal without prior notice.

These procedural requirements make spontaneous strikes – often the most effective kind – virtually impossible. Workers must intimate their intentions weeks in advance, giving employers ample time to prepare strikebreakers, intimidate organisers or preemptively fire troublemakers.

More devastatingly, conciliation proceedings might go on for years and workers will not be able to agitate no matter how long the delay in justice. Since employers can easily drag out conciliation or tribunal proceedings, they can effectively keep workers from striking indefinitely.

As the All India Central Council of Trade Unions points out, these provisions violate International Labour Organisation principles, which state that obligations to give prior notice are acceptable only “where this does not cause the strike to become very difficult or even impossible in practice”. The Indian codes cross precisely this line – making strikes so difficult and so risky that they become practically impossible for most workers.

Permanent precarity

The introduction of broad fixed-term employment provisions perhaps represents the codes’ most insidious innovation – creating a legal framework for permanent job insecurity.

Under previous laws. fixed-term employment existed in limited forms, but most regular work was governed by permanent employment norms with significant job security protections.

Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, fixed-term employment is introduced across all sectors, and such workers can be fired without notice, will not be eligible for retrenchment compensation and shall be barred from participating in strikes called by other workers.

The codes claim that fixed-term employees receive “benefits on par with permanent workers”, but this is deceptive. Given that the threshold for standing orders has been elevated to 300 workers, employers can hire as many fixed-term employees as they wish instead of permanent workers, for work of regular nature as well.

Employers can now staff their entire operation with fixed-term workers whose contracts expire regularly. These workers theoretically get equal pay and some benefits, but they live under the constant threat that their contract will not be renewed.

The constant fear of non-renewal of their fixed-term contracts and not being granted permanent status will discourage them from exercising their freedom of association.

A fixed-term worker who joins a union, demands better conditions, or refuses exploitative overtime knows that when their six-month or one-year contract expires, the employer can simply not renew it – no explanation required, no appeal possible. This creates a workforce that is legally employed but permanently insecure.

Threshold raised

Standing orders are the written rules governing employment conditions – working hours, leave policies, disciplinary procedures, grounds for dismissal. They provide transparency and limit arbitrary employer action.

Under the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, industrial establishments employing 100 or more workers were required to prepare formal standing orders and have them certified. Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, the threshold has been raised to 300 workers.

What this means in practice is that establishments employing 100-299 workers – again, a vast category – need not maintain formal written rules governing employment. Employers can change conditions arbitrarily, implement disciplinary procedures capriciously and alter leave policies without notice or consultation.

This might seem like mere paperwork reduction, but standing orders serve a crucial function: they prevent arbitrary management action by establishing clear rules that apply to everyone. Without them, workers have no recourse when employers suddenly change shift timings, reduce break periods, or impose new attendance requirements. Management’s word becomes law, with no written standard to appeal to.

Trade union recognition

The codes introduce a new system for recognising trade unions that appears neutral but functions to fragment and weaken union power.

Under the Trade Unions Act, 1926, multiple unions could exist in an establishment, and settlements made with any registered union were binding on its members. There was no concept of a single “negotiating union”.

Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, a trade union with at least 51% (lowered from the 75% in the 2019 bill) of workers as members will be the sole negotiating union. In practice, the 51% threshold is nearly impossible to achieve in most establishments, particularly large ones. This weakens collective bargaining by requiring super-majoritarian union membership before workers can negotiate as a unified force.

More insidiously, it incentivises employers to create or support several small unions to prevent any single union from reaching the threshold – a classic divide-and-rule strategy.

Where several small unions exist, the negotiating council mechanism sounds democratic but actually weakens worker power. Employers can play unions against each other, reaching agreements with more compliant unions while ignoring militant ones. The fragmentation of worker representation serves employer interests perfectly.

Definition of wages

The codes introduce a uniform definition of “wages” that sounds technical but has significant implications for workers’ monthly income.

Under previous laws, the definition of wages varied across different acts, and many employers structured compensation to minimise the “basic pay” component by loading up allowances – housing allowance, transport allowance, special allowance and the like.

Under the Code on Wages, 2019, the new definition standardises the pay structure, requiring basic pay to form at least 50% of total remuneration, with allowances capped at 50%.

What this means in practice: while take-home pay may fall slightly, retirement benefits will grow because Provident Fund and gratuity contributions are calculated on basic pay. This sounds like a reasonable trade-off – slightly less money now for greater retirement security.

But here is the problem: workers, especially young workers, need money now to survive – to pay rent, buy food, support families. Reducing take-home pay while increasing retirement contributions five decades hence is cold comfort to someone struggling to make ends meet today.

Moreover, it assumes workers will remain employed long enough to collect those retirement benefits – an increasingly dubious prospect, given the other provisions that make employment more precarious.

The provision also significantly increases employer costs, which employers will resist by hiring fewer workers or pushing more employment into the unorganised sector where these rules don’t effectively apply.

The overtime illusion

The provisions of the codes on working hours reveal how ostensible protections can mask intensified exploitation.

Under the Factories Act, 1948, workers could not be required to work more than nine hours per day or 48 hours per week without overtime compensation.

Under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, the codes introduce a standardised 48-hour weekly work limit, with clearer rules on overtime. However, critics point out provisions that effectively allow 12-hour workdays.

While the codes formally maintain the 48-hour weekly limit, they permit employers to stretch daily working hours significantly beyond traditional limits through flexible rostering and overtime provisions. A 12-hour workday, even if compensated with overtime, is physically and mentally exhausting in ways that undermine workers’ health, family life, and human dignity.

The codes present this as flexibility benefiting both employers and workers – employers can adjust to production demands, workers can earn overtime pay. But in practice, employers will pressure workers to accept extended hours, particularly fixed-term and contract workers desperate to have their contracts renewed. The “choice” to work 12-hour days becomes no choice at all.

Permanent insecurity

The treatment of contract labour reveals the codes’ fundamental orientation toward employer interests.

Under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, contract labour was supposed to be regulated, with provisions for abolition in certain circumstances and requirements that contractors be licensed.

Under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, the code provides for automatic absorption of contract workers into the establishment of the principal employer where they are engaged through an unlicensed contractor. Contract workers are supposed to receive equal benefits as permanent staff.

The automatic absorption provision sounds protective, but it only applies to unlicensed contractors – giving employers every incentive to ensure contractors are properly licensed. The promise of equal benefits rings hollow when contract workers can be terminated at any time by simply ending the contract with the contractor who employs them.

The result is a multi-tiered workforce within single establishments: a small core of permanent workers with job security, a larger group of fixed-term workers with temporary security, and a massive base of contract workers with no security at all. All three groups do similar work, but face radically different conditions. This fragmentation prevents worker solidarity and ensures a race to the bottom in working conditions.

Recognition without protection

The treatment under the coes of gig and platform workers exemplifies the gap between rhetorical inclusion and substantive protection.

Under previous laws, gig and platform workers – delivery riders, cab drivers and the like – were classified as independent contractors with essentially no labour law protections. Under the Code on Social Security, 2020, Gig and platform workers receive legal recognition, with aggregators required to contribute 1%-2% of annual turnover to a social security fund.

Recognition is better than invisibility, but it is inadequate. Gig workers remain classified as contractors rather than employees, meaning they lack job security, minimum wage guarantees, working hour protections and collective bargaining rights. The social security fund is a token gesture – 1%-2% of turnover is minimal given platforms’ business models.

Critics note that workers in the gig economy are typically classified as independent contractors and thus are not provided the protection of various labour laws. The codes formally acknowledge gig workers exist but refuse to grant them full employee status with commensurate protections. This legitimises the platform economy’s exploitation model while creating the appearance of progressive reform.

Enforcement exemptions

Many code provisions apply only to establishments above certain size thresholds, effectively excluding the vast unorganised sector where most Indian workers labour.

The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code exempts units with fewer than 20 or 40 workers, depending on power use, from several requirements, including factory registration.

Linking social benefits to establishment size leaves out millions of informal workers who work in small units or perform home-based work.

India’s labour force is overwhelmingly employed in small establishments and the unorganised sector. By exempting small establishments from many requirements, the codes effectively exclude most workers from their protections. The organised sector provisions, however weakened, apply to perhaps 10% of workers. The remaining 90% face even fewer protections than before.

This creates perverse incentives for employers to remain small or fragment operations into multiple small units to avoid regulation. It also means that the codes’ ballyhooed expansions of coverage are largely illusory – the workers who most need protection are systematically excluded.

A deceptive fraud

The trade unions are right to call the labour codes a deceptive fraud. The deception lies in the gap between rhetoric and reality – between claims of worker empowerment and the systematic weakening of every provision that protected workers. The fraud lies in presenting employer enrichment as worker welfare, precarity as flexibility, and disempowerment as modernization.

When the Communist Party of India (Marxist) argues that the codes “dismantle 29 hard-won labour laws” and “shift the balance sharply in favour of employers”, while the government claims they “empower workers”, these are not merely different political perspectives. They are incompatible descriptions of reality. The evidence – provision by provision, comparison by comparison – validates the unions’ assessment.

India’s workers deserved genuine reform: enforcement of existing protections, expansion of coverage to the unorganized sector, democratisation of workplace governance, and meaningful penalties for employer violations. Instead, they received codes that legalise their exploitation, formalise their precarity and celebrate their subordination as liberation.

This is not reform. This is betrayal. And workers burning copies of the codes in the streets understand this better than all the government’s triumphalist rhetoric can obscure.

Writer and civil rights activist Anand Teltumbde is a former CEO, Petronet India Limited and a professor at IIT Kharagpur and the Goa Institute of Management. He is the author most recently of The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir.

Three personnel of Chhattisgarh’s District Reserve Guard and 12 suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight in Bijapur district on Wednesday, reported The Indian Express.

Two other District Reserve Guard personnel sustained bullet injuries and are in stable condition, the newspaper quoted Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Kumar Yadav as saying.

The security personnel who died were identified as Head Constable Monu Wadadi, and Constables Dujaru Gonde and Ramesh Sodi.

With these deaths, the number of security personnel killed in Chhattisgarh this year has risen to 23, The Indian Express reported.

The gunfight took place during a joint operation launched by security forces after they received intelligence inputs about Maoist presence in the area, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying.

Teams from the District Reserve Guard of Bijapur and Dantewada, the Special Task Force and the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action were part of the operation.

The gunfight began around 9 am.

After the exchange of fire ended in the evening, security forces carried out search operations and recovered the bodies of 12 unidentified suspected Maoists.

A total of 275 suspected Maoists have been killed in gunfights in Chhattisgarh so far this year, The Indian Express reported. In the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, more than 400 suspected Maoists had been killed in 2024-’25, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai had said in June.

In 2024, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces in Chhattisgarh.

Malini Subramaniam has reported for Scroll that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

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

Former Indian Police Service officer Sanjiv Bhatt has moved the Supreme Court seeking suspension of the 20-year jail sentence handed to him in the 1996 drug planting case, Live Law reported on Wednesday.

Bhatt is already serving a life sentence in a separate 1990 custodial death case.

The plea came up on Wednesday before a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi but was adjourned at the request of advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Bhatt.

Bhatt was arrested in 2018 in a case based on a complaint by a Rajasthan-based lawyer, Sumer Singh Rajpurohit, who accused the ex-IPS officer and others of planting 1.15 kg of opium at a Palanpur hotel in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, where he was staying in 1996.

At the time of the alleged incident, Bhatt was serving as the district superintendent of police in Banaskantha. Another officer, Inspector IB Vyas, was also named in the case. Vyas turned approver in the case in 2021.

According to the prosecution, Bhatt and his co-accused conspired to frame the lawyer under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

In March 2024, a sessions court in Palanpur sentenced him to 20 years in prison under provisions of the Act.

He was also convicted under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, including forgery, using forged documents, wrongful confinement, criminal conspiracy and framing incorrect documents with intent to cause injury.

Following this, Bhatt approached the Gujarat High Court for suspension of sentence and bail in the case.

The High Court had rejected his plea, noting the “seriousness and gravity” of the offence, the stringent requirements under Section 37 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act and the presumption of innocence being reversed after conviction, among others, Live Law reported.

Section 37 of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act deals with cognisable and non-bailable offences.

The Union government has withdrawn its order that directed smartphone manufacturers to mandatorily preload a government cybersecurity app on all devices. The decision was taken “given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance”, stated the Ministry of Communications.

The announcement came hours after Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told Parliament that the app cannot be used for snooping. He had also said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback.

Opposition leaders and technology policy experts had expressed concern about the directive, stating that it amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards. Read on.

‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it will bring back to India a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son who were “pushed” into Bangladesh. Sunali Khatun, her son Sabir and husband Danish Sk, who are residents of West Bengal, were forced into Bangladesh by the Indian authorities in June on claims that they are undocumented immigrants.

The Bangladeshi authorities arrested them on August 21 for illegal entry. They were released from the Chapainawabganj jail on Monday evening after a lower court granted them bail on humanitarian grounds.

This came on the same day that the Supreme Court asked the Union government if Khatun and her son could be returned to India on humanitarian grounds, taking note of her advanced pregnancy. Read on.

Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

The Indian rupee fell to an all-time low of 90.2 against the United States dollar. The currency has fallen about 5% this year, putting it on track to record the sharpest decline in a year since 2022.

The rupee is the worst-performing Asian currency this year. The plunge has been attributed to punitive tariffs by the United States and the weak inflow of capital. This was coupled with uncertainty about the trade deal between India and the US. Read on.

The Calcutta High Court has overturned an order that cancelled the appointment of about 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal in connection with an alleged cash-for-jobs recruitment scam. The bench set aside the 2023 order passed by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who is now a Bharatiya Janata Party MP.

The High Court observed that the single-judge bench had “gone beyond the pleadings” by cancelling the appointments. The judges also noted that there had been no complaint regarding the effectiveness of the candidates appointed as teachers and set aside the order. Read on.

The Karnataka High Court has refused to suspend the life sentence handed to former Janata Dal (Secular) MP Prajwal Revanna in a rape case. The bench noted that several cases accusing Revanna of sexual abuse are pending trial.

Referring to the ongoing cases, the bench said there was “much force” in the prosecution’s submission that suspending the sentence could lead to witness tampering.

The former MP from Karnataka’s Hassan has been named in four separate sexual abuse cases, including one in which he was convicted on August 2. Read on.

What the Prajwal Revanna case reveals about the struggles of women in politics

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The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday overturned a 2023 order that had cancelled the appointment of about 32,000 primary school teachers in West Bengal in connection with an alleged cash-for-jobs recruitment scam, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra set aside the order passed by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

Gangopadhyay is now a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Tamluk constituency in the Trinamool Congress-ruled state.

The controversy erupted in 2014 after 42,500 primary school teachers were recruited based on the Teachers’ Eligibility Test conducted by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education.

Several candidates had later filed a petition in the High Court alleging irregularities in the recruitment process involving the payment of cash to secure jobs, Live Law reported.

In his order, Gangopadhyay had held that the appointments of 32,000 teachers were invalid on multiple grounds, including the absence of an aptitude test, the involvement of an external agency to conduct parts of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test process and allegations that the board officials “sold” jobs to candidates, the legal news outlet reported.

On Wednesday, Chakraborty and Mitra observed that the single-judge bench had “gone beyond the pleadings” by cancelling the appointments based on the fact that no aptitude test had been conducted.

“For cancellation of the entire exam, there must be a finding on systemic malice as borne out by the evidence on record,” Live Law quoted the High Court as saying on Wednesday. “That is not the case.”

The judges also noted that there had been no complaint regarding the effectiveness of the candidates appointed as teachers.

“There is no allegation that students who paid money got more marks…a group of unsuccessful candidates should not be allowed to affect the entire system when it cannot be ruled out that untainted teachers may suffer greater ignominy and stigma,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying. “Service cannot be terminated on the basis of an ongoing criminal proceeding.”

The bench had begun hearing the matter in April.

The cancellation of appointments of 32,000 primary teachers had earlier been challenged before a division bench led by Justice Soumen Sen, who is now the chief justice of the Meghalaya High Court.

However, Sen recused himself from the case after which it was placed before the present bench.

In April, the Supreme Court had upheld a separate order of the Calcutta High Court terminating the appointment of more than 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by West Bengal’s School Service Commission.

The Supreme Court had passed the order after observing that the recruitment process was “vitiated by manipulation and fraud”.

The High Court had issued the termination order in 2024 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 had found that the selected teachers had been recruited against blank Optical Mark Recognition sheets.

A row erupted in Telangana after Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s comment about Hindu deities at a Congress meeting in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Drawing a comparison between the diversity within the Congress and the plurality within Hinduism, Reddy said that the party “takes along all types of individuals”.

“Some say they will worship Lord Venkteswara, others say they will worship Lord Hanuman,” The Indian Express quoted the chief minister as saying. “We could not reach consensus on which gods to worship; how will we reach consensus on political leaders and DCC [District Congress Committee] presidents?”

He was quoted as having said: “How many Gods are there for Hindus? Three crore? There is Hanuman for those who are not married. There is another god for those who marry twice. There are gods to whom toddy and non-vegetarian food are served during certain events and there are gods for those who eat dal-chawal.”

“Just as Hinduism has a god to suit every mentality, the Congress too has space for every viewpoint,” The Hindu quoted him as saying.

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Tuesday alleged that Reddy had insulted Hindus and Hindu deities.

“The Congress has always been a party that bends before the AIMIM [All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen],” Kumar said on social media.

The Union minister claimed that Reddy had himself said that the Congress is a “Muslim party” and that the comment “exposes their mindset”.

“Congress carries deep-rooted hatred towards Hindus,” Kumar said, alleging that the Bharat Rashtra Samithi had also “repeatedly demeaned” Hindu gods and culture.

He added: “This is exactly why we warned during the Jubilee Hills bye-election that if Congress or BRS accidentally won, Hindus would not be able to step out with dignity. The CM’s latest comments prove BJP was right.”

Following the row, Reddy said that his comments had been twisted for political gains.

“I told them [party workers] that just as there are many gods with different identities and symbols, the Congress too has many leaders and viewpoints,” News18 quoted him as saying on Wednesday. “We all must work together.”

He added that the BJP, having recently lost local body elections, was “needlessly making an issue” out of an innocuous comment.

The BJP’s Telangana chief N Ramchander Rao said that the comments by Reddy were “another insult” to Hindus by the Congress.

Rao demanded an unconditional apology from the chief minister for allegedly hurting religious sentiments, The Hindu reported.

Several leaders of the BRS demanded an apology from the chief minister for hurting the sentiments of Hindus, The Indian Express reported.

Following the criticism, Congress’ Telangana chief B Mahesh Kumar Goud told the newspaper that Reddy had said nothing wrong.

“He shared Telugu adages in a lighter vein,” Goud said. “The CM and the Congress party respect all religions.”

The Union government on Wednesday said it was withdrawing its order that directed smartphone manufacturers to mandatorily preload a government cybersecurity app on all devices, following pushback.

“Given Sanchar Saathi’s increasing acceptance, [the] government has decided not to make the pre- installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers,” said the Ministry of Communications.

The Union government had, on November 28, directed manufacturers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the ministry had said in a press release on Monday.

After Opposition leaders and technology policy experts expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards, Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed on Tuesday that users would be able to delete the app.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation said that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

After the announcement on Wednesday, the organisation described the decision as a “welcome step” but stated it was “awaiting the full text of the legal order that should accompany this announcement, including any revised directions”.

“For now, we should treat this as cautious optimism, not closure, until the formal legal direction is published and independently confirmed,” said the Internet Freedom Foundation.

The announcement came hours after Scindia told Parliament that the app cannot be used for snooping.

“Snooping is neither possible nor will it happen through this [Sanchar Saathi] app,” Scindia told Parliament, adding that the platform is meant to protect users against cyber frauds.

Scindia had also said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback. He added that the government wants to give users the power to help them protect themselves.

On Wednesday, the ministry reiterated that the government had mandated the use of the app “with an intent to provide access to cybersecurity to all citizens”.

“There is no other function other than protecting the users in the app and they can remove the app whenever they want,” the ministry said in a press release. “This has been clarified by [the] government.”

The Congress had on Monday said that the directive by the telecom department was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately.

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”, said the organisation.

It added that the directive was so vague that while today the app is framed as a benign International Mobile Equipment Identity checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

Also read: ‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday dismissed an application by former Janata Dal (Secular) MP Prajwal Revanna seeking suspension of the life sentence handed to him in a rape case, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Justices KS Mudagal and Venkatesh Naik T said that it found “no fit case” to grant bail or suspend the sentence.

“Weighing the material on record, the gravity of the offence, and considering the effect on other pending cases against the appellant, if the appellant is released on bail, this court is of the considered opinion that this is not a fit case for granting suspension of sentence and bail,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The court noted that several cases accusing Revanna of sexual abuse are pending trial. It recorded that the complainant in the present case had not initially approached the police, given the “sound political and economic background” of the former MP. It added that Revanna was not granted bail even during the trial.

Referring to the ongoing cases, the bench said there was “much force” in the prosecution’s submission that suspending the sentence could lead to witness tampering, Live Law reported.

The court said that if Revanna wished to expedite the matter, he was free to seek an early final hearing, and the appeal would be taken up on priority.

The former MP from Karnataka’s Hassan had been arrested on May 31, 2024, after returning to Bengaluru from Germany, where he had fled on April 26, 2024. He was suspended from the Janata Dal (Secular) on April 30, 2024.

He had fled after videos of alleged sexual assaults against several women, allegedly recorded by Prajwal Revanna himself, surfaced during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

He has since been named in four separate cases, including one in which he was convicted on August 2. A trial court found him guilty of raping a 48-year-old worker employed at his family’s farmhouse and recording the assault.

Three women have accused Prajwal Revanna of sexual assault, while the fourth case concerns allegations of sexual harassment, stalking and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code.

Soon after Prajwal Revanna fled to Germany, he and his father, former state minister HD Revanna, were booked by the Karnataka Police for sexual harassment and criminal intimidation.

After being convicted, Prajwal Revanna moved the Karnataka High Court, which is scheduled to continue hearing his plea on Tuesday

A Delhi court on Tuesday granted bail to nine students who were arrested during a protest against air pollution in the national capital on November 23, The Indian Express reported.

More than 20 students had been detained from India Gate, Kartavya Path and later from outside the Parliament Street police station following the protest.

Two first information reports were registered – one against six persons at the Kartavya Path police station and another against 17 persons at the Parliament Street police station.

The cases were initially filed under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to assault, obstruction of public servants and outraging the modesty of women. On November 25, the police also added charges pertaining to making assertions prejudicial to national integration to the FIR registered at the Kartavya Path police station.

The case filed at the Parliament Street police station was linked to an alleged scuffle between the protesters and the police, the newspaper reported. All 17 accused have since been granted bail.

While eight of them received bail last week, nine were granted bail on Tuesday.

The second FIR was related to the alleged recovery of pepper sprays during the protest and the purported Maoists links of the protesters, The Indian Express reported.

The court reserved its order on Tuesday on the bail petitions of the six accused in this case. The order is expected on Thursday.

While granting bail to the nine persons on Tuesday in the case filed at the Parliament Street police station, Judicial Magistrate First Class Sahil Monga of the Patiala House Court said that further custodial detention was not necessary as the investigation officer had not sought police custody.

Monga added that the investigation did not appear to require custody.

The magistrate added that a significant portion of the objections raised by the investigating officer related not to the case filed at Parliament Street but to the investigation in the FIR at the Kartavya Path police station, The Indian Express reported.

This second case included “allegations of protest at India Gate, recovery of pepper sprays, and criminal antecedents of certain individuals”, Monga said, adding that these pertained to a different incident and cannot be the grounds to oppose bail in the present FIR.

In the second case being heard before Judicial Magistrate First Class Aridaman Singh Cheema, the counsels for the students argued that being part of WhatsApp groups that organised the protest was not a crime. The lawyers said that what happened at the site was not in their control.

“You can’t swim in two boats,” the newspaper quoted one of the counsels as saying. “Earlier they said someone else had pepper spray, now they’re pinning it on my client.”

Another lawyer said that shouting an anti-establishment slogan was not a crime.

The police argued that custody was needed as the investigation was still underway, while also noting that the permission had not been sought for the protest.

During an earlier proceeding, the police had claimed that the accused had supported a banned organisation on social media and shared articles supporting Maoist leader Madvi Hidma, who was killed in a gunfight with security forces on November 18.

The students have been accused of using criminal force against police personnel and shouting pro-Maoist slogans at the protest at India Gate on November 23.

Some of the protesters had allegedly used pepper spray on the police personnel while being removed from the site, while some had allegedly displayed posters and shouted slogans allegedly supporting Hidma.

The protest on November 23 was mainly organised by an environmental research and action collective called Himkhand, student group Bhagat Singh Chatra Ekta Manch and the discussion forum Scientists for Society.

Scientists for Society, however, said on November 24 that it joined the protest only on the subject of pollution, and that the agitation was “not the appropriate forum” to discuss Hidma’s killing.

Also read: Why the police claim that a protest against Delhi pollution had ‘Naxal’ links

The government cyber security app that smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices cannot be used for snooping, said Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday.

“Snooping is neither possible nor will it happen through this [Sanchar Saathi] app,” Scindia told Parliament, adding that the platform is meant to protect users against cyber frauds.

The Union government on Friday directed manufacturers to preinstall the Sanchar Saathi app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the Ministry of Communications said in a press release on Monday.

After Opposition leaders and technology policy experts expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards, Scindia had claimed on Tuesday that users would be able to delete the app.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation said that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

On Wednesday, Scindia said that the government is willing to make changes to the order based on public feedback. He added that the government wants to give users the power to help them protect themselves.

During the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, the Congress questioned the minister’s assurance.

“Even after the app is disabled, users will not be able to know whether all its features have been disabled or not,” party MP Deepender Hooda said, asking the minister to clarify. “In such a situation, this issue is surrounded by concerns of violation of the right to privacy and suspicions of spying.”

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”, said the organisation.

It added that the directive was so vague that while today the app is framed as a benign International Mobile Equipment Identity checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

Also read: ‘A permanent surveillance backdoor’: Why Sanchar Saathi app order raises privacy fears

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that her government will not set up any “detention camps” in the state, adding that she follows the Constitution and practises secular politics.

The revision of the voter rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including in West Bengal. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Banerjee has repeatedly claimed that the Union government’s real intention behind the revision is to create a National Register of Citizens – a proposed exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.

The register was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

Those deemed to be foreigners were transferred to detention centres in the state.

On Tuesday, the Trinamool Congress chief also said that she did not want the public to face distress on account of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls and urged the Union government not to issue “forceful instructions” to state government officers “like the British”, The Indian Express reported.

“If you want to give instructions, send them to the state government,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “Otherwise, we have to save our officers.”

Banerjee also announced that the state government would provide Rs 2 lakh each to the families of 39 persons, including booth-level officers, whose deaths had been linked by families and political parties to the stress caused by the ongoing voter roll revision exercise in the state.

The chief minister said that 13 persons remained hospitalised and three others who had attempted suicide were receiving treatment. She further announced Rs 1 lakh as compensation for those injured or hospitalised.

Amid the revision of the electoral rolls, at least eight suicides by booth-level officers and two deaths due to stroke have been reported across the country.

Booth-level officers are typically primary school teachers and anganwadi, or health care workers, who are employed by state governments. They are responsible for distributing and collecting enumeration forms as part of the ongoing exercise.

They are required to go door-to-door, check the identities of new voters and verify the details of those who have died or permanently moved out of an area.

Scroll has also previously reported that the revision exercise has spread panic in West Bengal because exclusion from the voter roll is being perceived as a step towards losing citizenship.

The exercise comes even as Assembly polls are expected to take place in West Bengal in the first half of 2026.

Also read: ‘In Bengal, SIR is NRC’: Why revision of the electoral roll has spread panic in the state

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

West Bengal, among other states, has also moved the court against the exercise.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the revision of the electoral rolls in all 12 states and Union Territories.

The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4. As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The Union government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it will, on humanitarian grounds, bring back to India a pregnant woman from West Bengal and her eight-year-old son who were “pushed” into Bangladesh by the authorities on claims that they are undocumented immigrants, Live Law reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that Sunali Khatun and her son Sabir will be brought back “following the procedure without prejudice to our contentions on merits and our right to put them under surveillance”.

On Monday, the bench had asked the Union government if Khatun and her son could be returned to India on humanitarian grounds. It took note of Khatun’s advanced pregnancy and sought instructions on whether she could be permitted to re-enter India through the Malda border.

Khatun, her son and husband Danish Sk were released on bail in Bangladesh on Monday evening. So was another family of Sweety Bibi and her two sons. They were arrested on August 21 for illegal entry after being “pushed” into Bangladesh by the Indian authorities in June.

They walked out of the Chapainawabganj jail at about 7.30 pm after more than three months in custody.

Their release followed a local court order that granted them bail on humanitarian grounds. A Bangladeshi citizen stood surety for the group and provided a bail bond of 5,000 taka.

The Chapainawabganj court accepted arguments that the group included a pregnant woman and children, and ordered their release on bail. However, the magistrate set conditions that they must remain in Bangladesh and appear before the court when required.

Khatun, Sweety Bibi and their families have maintained that they hail from West Bengal’s Birbum district. Khatun, her husband and son were taken into custody in Delhi on June 20, and all three were sent to Bangladesh six days later.

On September 26, the Calcutta High Court had set aside the deportation order against the six persons. It had directed that they be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks. The High Court had passed the order on a petition filed by Khatun’s father Bhodu Sekh.

Two days before the four-week period ended, the Union government in October challenged the order before the Supreme Court. The Union government and the Delhi Police questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.

In its order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court observed that the solicitor general had agreed to bring back Khatun, along with her son. It noted that Mehta had submitted that Khatun would be brought back to Delhi as she had been taken into custody from there, Live Law reported.

“However, there is a suggestion by the learned senior counsel representing the respondents that it will be advisable to shift her to the town where her father stays in the district of Birbhum,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The bench also directed the West Bengal government to ensure free medical facilities for the woman.

It further directed the state government to also take care of her son.

During the proceedings, advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the West Bengal government, requested that the Union government be instructed to repatriate the other four persons who had been deported.

However, Mehta claimed that they were Bangladeshis and the Union government had a serious contest. He also said that it was surprising that the state government was appearing on a caveat in the matter and seeking protection for them.

The bench also observed that if Khatun could establish a biological connection with Bhodu Sekh, who was an Indian citizen, then she could also establish Indian citizenship, Live Law reported.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter next on December 12.

While hearing the matter last week, the Supreme Court had suggested that the Union government bring back all six persons so that they could be given an opportunity for a hearing, Live Law reported.

The solicitor general had said at the time that he would be able to prove that they were foreigners.

Since May, thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have been rounded up in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked to prove that they were Indian citizens – and not undocumented immigrants.

In several cases, workers have been declared foreigners within days and forced into Bangladesh, despite being Indian citizens.

Following the Union government’s submission in Khatun’s case on Wednesday, Trinamool Congress MP and West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board chairperson Samirul Islam said that justice had finally prevailed after a long wait.

On social media, Islam noted that Khatun had been “illegally deported to Bangladesh merely for speaking Bengali, and her ordeal across the border stands as a stark example of why BJP is called Bangla-Birodhi Zamindars”.

The Rajya Sabha MP added that “the relentless fight of this poor woman ultimately found victory” in the Supreme Court.

After a long wait, justice has finally prevailed. The Central Government has agreed, on humanitarian grounds, to bring back pregnant Sunali Khatun and her minor son.

She was illegally deported to Bangladesh merely for speaking Bengali, and her ordeal across the border stands as… pic.twitter.com/N9Z2TGLnLO

— Samirul Islam (@SamirulAITC) December 3, 2025

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

The Tamil Nadu government has urged the Supreme Court to recall its interim order directing an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the stampede at a Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam party rally in Tamil Nadu’s Karur district, which left 41 persons dead, Live Law reported on Tuesday.

In an affidavit, the state said the order effectively granted the petitioner’s final relief at an interim stage by taking the investigation away from the state police and putting it under an external supervisory committee.

The Supreme Court ordered a CBI investigation into the stampede on October 13 after hearing multiple petitions, including one from Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam general secretary Aadhav Arjuna.

The party took objection to the High Court forming a Special Investigation Team comprising only officers from the Tamil Nadu Police.

Now the state of Tamil Nadu has argued that the October order, which also suspended the Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission and created a three-member supervisory panel led by former Supreme Court judge Ajay Rastogi, “virtually allowed the writ petition” even as questions on the maintainability of the appeal were still pending, Live Law reported.

“There is no prima facie evidence that the investigation conducted by the State Police was tainted, biased, or actuated by mala fides,” The Indian Express quoted the affidavit as saying.

The state further said this approach was inconsistent with previous Supreme Court rulings that a Central Bureau of Investigation probe is an extraordinary measure that should be “used sparingly and cautiously”.

The state said the petitioners relied mainly on media reports, conjecture and political allegations, and had not demonstrated any procedural lapse by the Karur police.

Responding to the Supreme Court’s concern that senior police officers had made public comments exonerating the administration, the state said officers are required to provide information during major disasters and that such communication cannot be treated as evidence of bias, The Indian Express reported.

Tamil Nadu also objected to the direction that the supervisory committee include two Indian Police Service officers who are not from the state, arguing that the term amounted to discrimination on the basis of place of birth, The Indian Express reported.

In the affidavit, the state government also attributed the stampede to a series of “reckless, negligent and uncoordinated actions” by the organisers and cadres of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, Live Law reported.

The stampede had taken place on September 27 at Veluchamy Puram in Karur, when party chief Vijay was addressing supporters from his campaign vehicle.

The first information report filed in the matter alleged that while permission had been granted for 10,000 attendees, more than 25,000 persons gathered at the venue. A day before the event, television channels had said that Vijay would arrive at Karur by noon, but he reached the district by 4.45 pm.

Among those who died were 18 women and nine children.

Last month, two reports were tabled in the Assam Assembly on the Nellie massacre – one of the largest mass killings in post-independent India.

Both the reports arrived at different conclusions.

The Tewary Commission, which had been set up by the Congress state government, said that the Indira Gandhi government’s decision to hold Assembly elections in Assam at the peak of an anti-foreigners’ movement was not to blame for the violence in 1983.

In February that year, 1,800 Bengali Muslims were massacred in Assam’s Morigaon district days after Assembly elections were held under President’s rule. No one has been punished for the killings in all these years.

A different narrative was put forward by a second commission formed by Mukti Jujaru Sanmilan and organisations spearheading the Assam movement, which mobilised people against so-called illegal migrants. The Justice (retired) TU Mehta Commission ascribed the violence squarely on the imposition of the elections against the wishes of the people.

The Himanta Biswa Sarma government’s decision to table the “unofficial” Mehta Commission findings has revived the narrative about the anxiety over “illegal immigrants” ahead of the Assembly election.

But, as the Japanese scholar Makiko Kimura pointed out, neither report addresses the question of justice for the dead.

Kimura wrote The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters (2013), one of the few, scholarly investigations into the violence, which looks into the reasons for the riots, why the attackers participated in the violence, the role of organisations like the All Assam Students’ Union and the government and its agencies.

In this interview with Scroll, Kimura explains the motivations of the two commissions and what happens when justice eludes victims for decades. Excerpts:

What do you think of the Assam government’s decision to table two reports on the 1983 Nellie massacre after so many years?
I have no clue why the government decided to make them public now. Most probably, it is just to divert the attention of the public from some other issues, as many others say.

What are the major differences in the findings of the two commissions? What did both say about the violence against the Muslims peasants? Did they hold anyone responsible for the massacre?
As I say in my book, from the beginning these two commissions represented the interest of the organisations or institutions which asked them to report on the violence.

Both the Tewary Commission report and Mehta Commission Report do not provide details regarding the attackers involved in the collective violence.

The role of the top leaders of the AASU or the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad in any of the incidents has not been established beyond the reports in newspapers, weekly journals, and other publications.

The commissions were, from the beginning, biased towards certain organisations, and their work was utilised to show either the central government’s or [the Assam movement] leaders’ perspectives.

The conclusion of the Tewary commission report is very ambiguous about the cause of the violence. It shies away from criticising the government. It criticised the students’ movement leaders but not very strongly. It only blamed the lower rank police officials for negligence and was guilty and punished. That’s it.

The responsibility of the government and their decision to hold elections in such unusual conditions has never been touched upon.

The Tewary commission did not say anything about what kind of measures should be taken for compensation or justice. I don’t think the government has ever discussed this topic either.

The Mehta Commission Report is also silent on the Assam movement leaders and their responsibility. I am sure that they were pretty aware that if they continued with their boycott of the elections, something would happen especially because the local police were influenced by the movement leaders and their propaganda that they have to drive out foreigners of Assam.

It is regrettable that there has been no neutral and third-party investigation into the Nellie massacre, such as the ones conducted by the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights or People’s Union for Civil Liberties after violent incidents in other parts of India.

Tell me a little about your experience visiting Nellie over the years. What struck you about the survivors?
I was struck by the fact that most people had stayed in the same village even after the attack. Every family has lost members of their family. Sirajuddin, who was quoted in my book, and who gave testimony in the documentary by Subasri Krishnan, What the field remembers, lost four daughters. And his family is not an exception.

Many people said they have lost 10, 20 family members. And they live with those memories.

I have visited a few times. The last time was on February 18, 2023. Every year, they conduct some memorial, but it was smaller and more discreet that year. I heard the organisers were afraid there could be repercussions.

The Tewary Commission in its conclusion said that the 1983 violence was not communal, though over 2,000 Muslims were killed. How do you read this finding?
A recent article in The Print quotes the commission as saying: “It is entirely unwarranted to give a communal colour to the incident’s under enquiry. All sections of the society suffered as a result of the senseless violence.”

It is true that there were numerous violent incidents, and there were no fixed victims or attackers. But I am sure the Muslims were most targeted. There was no other incident on the same scale as Nellie.

It is clear that the Assam police overlooked warnings on possible disturbances in Nellie because they were sympathetic to the movement.

In your view, what led to the 1983 violence and what role did the Assam movement leaders and the government play?
As I say in my book, the first and foremost case was the central government’s failure in handling the situation skillfully and, to some extent, the AASU’s failure. The Assembly election became an occasion for both the Congress and the AASU to pursue success in their attempt to gain control in Assam, and thus, the two powerful organisations’ interests clashed.

To sum up, both the AASU and the Union government did not make enough effort to prevent the violence that had easily been predicted. Instead, both parties tried to utilise the opportunity to gain power to their own end. In this way, neither can escape the criticism of instigating small-scale violence and creating an atmosphere where everybody felt threatened.

Why could the violence not be prevented in the initial days? Why did the state machinery fail to stop the riots?
In a report in India Today on May 15, 1983, Arun Shourie pointed out three things. It helps you to understand why the state machinery could not stop the Nellie incident.

First, ensuring a free and fair poll was not the priority for the police and administrative officers, as well as security personnel. For them, the goal was to be able to proclaim one way or another that the ritual of the elections had been gone through. Thus, police and security personnel were made to concentrate on the polling booths in order to protect the 8,000 officers who had been airlifted for polling duty, and the candidates and their families.

Second, the local policemen were not satisfied with the Centre’s decision, and they became very hostile towards the state apparatus. There was obvious hostility between the local Assam police and the CRPF Personnel.

Third, there was a wireless message sent on February 15 by the Nagaon police station that warned of a possible attack in the area. The village residents had visited the officer-in-charge of the Nagaon Police

station, Zahirud Din Ahmed, and requested him to take some action. There was a specific warning from the district headquarters to the police station in Jagiroad, but the concerned officers failed to take any action.

The government was not really concerned about the violence, they were mostly focused on the elections. They did not have the will to prevent the violence.

What does the lack of justice for riots like this do to communities?
I think overall, Muslims keep losing trust in the government and their own country. When you isolate and marginalise minorities, it sows seeds of future trouble. In the end, it destabilises the country.

The Air Quality Index in Delhi deteriorated again on Wednesday, with six of the 39 monitoring stations recording readings above 400, which is categorised as “severe”, as per the Sameer application at 10.05 am.

The national capital’s average AQI stood at 368, the application, which provides hourly updates published by the Central Pollution Control Board, showed.

A day earlier, the overall AQI had hit 372, rising from 304 on Monday and 279 on Sunday.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

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

In areas adjoining the national capital, Noida recorded an AQI of 386, followed by Ghaziabad with a 356 reading. Greater Noida reported an index of 343.

Delhi has been recording air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October, leading to Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan being imposed on November 11.

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

Restrictions under Stage 3 entail a ban on non-essential construction work and the closure of stone crushers and mining activities, in addition to the measures already imposed under Stage 1 and Stage 2.

They also include the shifting of primary school up to Class 5 to hybrid mode. Parents and students have the option to choose between offline and online classes wherever available.

Additionally, the use of BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel cars is restricted in Delhi and the NCR. BS norms, or Bharat Stage Emission Standards, are regulations set by the Indian government to control air pollutants from motor vehicles.

However, the Commission for Air Quality Management on November 26 withdrew the Stage 3 restrictions, citing improved air quality. The restrictions under the GRAP 1 and GRAP 2 remain in force.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, vehicular pollution, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court directed the Commission for Air Quality Management to submit a report within a week on measures taken to address pollution sources such as vehicular emissions and construction dust.

The commission is a statutory body formed in 2020 to address pollution in the National Capital Region and the adjoining areas.

Activist Gulfisha Fatima, accused of being part of a “larger conspiracy” behind the 2020 Delhi riots, told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the prolonged incarceration of undertrials in the case makes “a caricature of our criminal justice system”, Bar and Bench reported.

Fatima and four others – Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider and Shadab Ahmad – have challenged a September 2 Delhi High Court order that dismissed their bail applications.

The five persons had been arrested between January and September 2020 in connection with the communal violence that broke out in North East Delhi in February 2020 between supporters of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act and those opposing it. The violence had left 53 dead and hundreds injured. Most of those killed were Muslims.

Appearing for Fatima on Tuesday, advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi told a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria that such extended incarceration amounts to “pre-trial conviction”, Bar and Bench reported.

Singhvi added: “Nobody needs to be punished like this unless they are convicted.”

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Khalid, told the court that he cannot be held responsible for delays in the trial, Bar and Bench.

Sibal argued that if bail were denied, Khalid would remain in jail for “another three years” as an undertail despite no “single act of violence” being attributed to him.

“That will be eight years without trial,” Bar and Bench quoted Sibal telling the court. “I am an academic. I am an individual. I have not been attributed for any overt act.”

Khalid, Imam, Fatima, Haider and Rehman were charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, the Arms Act and sections of the Indian Penal Code.

On October 30, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the Delhi Police opposed their petitions, arguing that their alleged actions were part of a coordinated “regime change operation” carried out under the guise of civil dissent.

The Delhi police had also submitted that the petitioners were playing the “victim card” on the grounds of long incarceration, and claimed that they were themselves responsible for delaying the trial for “mala fide and mischievous reasons”.

On October 31, Khalid, Imam and Fatima told the court that they had not called for violence and were only exercising their right to peaceful protest against the CAA.

The Delhi Police had argued on November 18 that the five of them cannot seek parity with co-accused Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal and Asif Iqbal Tanha, saying the High Court’s 2021 bail order in their favour was passed on an incorrect interpretation of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Court examines Imam’s speeches under UAPA

During the hearing on Tuesday, the Supreme Court also examined whether some parts of Imam’s speeches during the protests against the Citizenship Act could amount to incitement or a “terrorist act” under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, Live Law reported.

During earlier hearings, the Delhi Police had played video clips of Imam calling for blockades, nationwide chakka jams and for protesters in the North East to “cut off” the chicken-neck corridor to isolate Assam. These speeches were flagged as provocative and inflammatory.

Advocate Siddharth Dave, appearing for Imam, said that the activist was being unfairly labelled an “intellectual terrorist” despite never having been convicted of any offence, Live Law reported.

He argued that Imam had already been prosecuted in separate first information reports for the same speeches being used to project a “conspiracy”, including one registered on January 25, 2020. Dave argued that Imam was in custody even before the February 2020 riots took place.

The lawyer submitted that a speech by itself cannot amount to a terrorist act and said that the prosecution must show further action beyond the speeches to sustain a charge under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Dave also said that none of the 750 FIRs relating to the 2020 riots named Imam as an accused person. He also highlighted an order of the Allahabad High Court which granted Imam bail, holding that his speeches did not call for violence.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju sought time to respond.

The hearing will continue on Wednesday.

Also read: How the Delhi Police’s riots conspiracy case is built on sand

This October, residents of Delhi NCR breathed a sigh of relief – 10 days into the month, the air quality was still in the “moderate” category, uncharacteristic for this time of the year.

Usually, by this time, the region gets enveloped in a thick layer of smog, owing particularly to cold weather, low wind speed, and farm fires from the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. This pushes the air quality index to hazardous levels, leaving residents choking and breathless.

This year, a late monsoon withdrawal, coupled with farmers delaying stubble burning in the fields due to floods in September, has meant that air pollution is beginning to increase, but later than usual.

Stubble-burning, however, is only one among the plethora of environmental challenges the country is facing – soil-quality deterioration, groundwater depletion and contamination are giving policymakers sleepless nights.

Though the problems appear distinct, they share a common origin: contemporary agricultural practices.

Legally, too, they represent a deeper structural issue – the divergence between India’s agricultural and environmental law-policy frameworks.

Despite clear synergies between the two, the country’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Obsolete agricultural policies

India’s agricultural policy has been driven by the logic of food security and justifiably so. Feeding a large population was amongst the foremost challenges for the newly independent Indian state in 1947. The Green Revolution, launched under the guidance of geneticist Dr MS Swaminathan during the 1960s, was directed towards the singular goal of enhancing agricultural productivity.

By adopting measures such as double-cropping, increased farming areas, adoption of high yield variety seeds, use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and improved irrigation facilities, the Green Revolution delivered on that goal.

But the productivity “hangover” did not fade. The country went into overdrive after the liberalisation of the 1990s, and the hangover has continued to drive India’s agricultural policy.

Consider, for instance, the “Terms of Reference” of a recent NITI Aayog report on pulses. The report clearly points to a policy preference for self-sufficiency and productivity enhancement of pulses with only a tangential reference to sustainable agriculture.

Several other examples such as subsidies for fertilisers, power and irrigation suggest a similar attitude in agricultural policies.

It is no-one’s case that a country such as India should abandon productivity as a policy preference in the wake of its rising population. But focusing solely on productivity makes little sense amidst increasing environmental challenges.

Environment-agriculture interdependency

Agriculture and the environment are not two different worlds. Farming depends on soil, water and climate. Conversely, agriculture shapes their health.

A recent IPCC report notes that an expansion of areas under agriculture has contributed to an increase in net anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (around 13% of carbon dioxide, 44% of methane and 81% of nitrous oxide globally during 2007-2016), loss of natural ecosystems and declining biodiversity.

It further notes that agriculture currently accounts for about 70% of global freshwater use. The situation in India is even more dire. The Green Revolution has caused loss of indigenous crop varieties and also substantially changed the Indian food consumption pattern.

It has also over-stressed water resources: 91% percent of freshwater use in India is attributable to the agricultural sector. Substantial and unwarranted use of pesticides and fertilisers have caused water pollution, significant damage to human health and soil and loss of human lives.

Residents of North India are now accustomed to breathing alarming levels of hazardous air every year caused by stubble burning during the winter season. Despite clear synergies between them, the country’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Bad to worse

What is worse is that the architecture of India’s environmental law continues to provide a safe harbour for agricultural activities.

This is because Indian environmental statutes are primarily directed at regulating and minimising industrial impact on the environment. Take for example the Water & Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Acts of 1974 and 1981 respectively. These legislations pay minimal to no attention to the impact of conventional agricultural practices on the affected environmental systems.

The Environmental Protection Act of 1986, an overarching environmental legislation in the country, takes the same trajectory. Despite adopting an expansive definition for “environment”, “environmental pollution” and “hazardous substances”, it makes no reference to pollution caused through agricultural activities. Same is the case with the Environmental Impact Assessment Notifications of 2006.

Such a dichotomy in India’s environmental and agricultural law-policy is absurd. The need of the hour is to align them, particularly in light of climate change.

It must be understood that unsustainable agricultural productivity cannot fulfill the twin goals of food security and ecological resilience for present and future Indians.

Inadequate efforts

Governmental agriculture policies in the last decade or so have echoed this concern. Different programmes, initiatives and drives have been launched towards that end.

The most notable among them is the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture. As one of the core missions under India’s National Action Plan for Climate Change, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture is an umbrella initiative that focuses on agroforestry, rainfed areas, water and soil health management, climate impacts and adaptation.

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana also promotes adoption of precision farming techniques such as micro-irrigation. Similarly, the Integrated Watershed Management Programme supports rainwater harvesting.

These policy shifts are optimistic, but they are under-financed and have slow adoption rates. A recent report highlights that the budget allocation to National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture is minuscule (0.8%), compared to the overall budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Coordinated and incremental actions

The biggest hurdle in transitioning towards sustainable agricultural practices appears to be the fear of low agricultural productivity by policymakers and farmers themselves.

Other factors include lack of knowledge and training among farmers, the absence of a safety net from potential loss of yields, limited incentives for shifting to sustainable agricultural practices and under-developed markets for sustainable agricultural products.

The government should focus on addressing these concerns and also convince farmers and organisations working with farmers of the positive impacts of sustainable agriculture such as low input costs, better nutritional value and health benefits.

Undoubtedly, the geographic spread and the socio-economic and political significance of agriculture pose enormous challenges for law and policymakers in India to effectuate meaningful shifts towards it.

But if the transition towards sustainable agriculture is to happen, some hard decisions need to be made. It is an urgent endeavor that requires coordinated and incremental actions from all stakeholders, particularly the governments and farmers.

Akhilendra Pratap Singh teaches law at BML Munjal University, Haryana. His research and teaching interests span constitutional and administrative law, environmental law, and comparative law.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

The Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh administration to ensure that members of the Scheduled Castes who have converted to Christianity do not avail benefits meant for the designated groups.

Citing a 2024 Supreme Court order, the bench said on November 21 that persons availing reservations by claiming that they belong to a Scheduled Caste despite having converted amounts to a “fraud on the Constitution”.

The High Court set a four-month deadline for all district magistrates in the state to identify such cases.

The direction by a bench of Justice Praveen Kumar Giri came while dismissing an application filed by a person, Jitendra Sahani, who is accused of making derogatory comments about Hindu deities and promoting communal enmity, to quash the case against him.

The court noted that while the man had stated in his affidavit that he is a Hindu, the additional government advocate had drawn the bench’s attention to a witness’s account that Sahani had converted to Christianity and become a priest.

The order quoted the witness as alleging that Sahani had ridiculed Hinduism by claiming it offered no respect because of caste hierarchies, and that converting to Christianity would lead to jobs, business growth and economic benefits from a “missionary”.

The court said that it finds it pertinent to mention that according to the 1950 Constitution Scheduled Caste Order, no person who belongs to a community other than Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist shall be deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Caste.

It asked the district magistrate of Maharajganj to enquire about the religion of the applicant within three months and take action against him if he is found guilty of forgery.

The court also asked the Uttar Pradesh government to look into the matter and take action or pass orders directing the authorities “so that law may be executed in reality/true sense”.

The court cited the 2024 Supreme Court judgement to state that upon conversion to Christianity, a person ceases to belong to their original caste.

Also read: Why proposed reservations for Dalit Muslims, Christians have sharply divided Ambedkarites

Amid criticism from Opposition leaders and technology policy experts, Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed that users will be able to delete the government cyber security app Sanchar Saathi, which smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices. However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation pointed out that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications on Friday states that the app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media. It also said that the directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The Congress also criticised the directive, stating that it was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately. Read on.

Shiv Sena MLA Santosh Bangar was booked for allegedly violating the election rules after a video showed him entering a polling booth while a woman was casting her vote during the local body polls in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district. Bangar belongs to the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The video widely shared online showed Bangar entering the polling booth, peeking into the enclosure and speaking to the woman who was casting her vote.

Opposition leader Varsha Gaikwad alleged that Bangar was “directly telling a lady to vote for him”, and that the MLA and his supporters were “openly using phones inside the booth”. The video also showed him allegedly shouting political slogans inside the polling booth. Read on.

The Bombay High Court postponed the counting of votes and declaration of results for the local body elections in Maharashtra from December 3 to December 21. The order came on petitions stating that declaring results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of elections.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20.

The High Court directed that the Model Code of Conduct remain in force until the results are declared and prohibited the conduct of exit polls till December 20. Read on.

The Supreme Court stayed the trial proceedings against Karnataka’s former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a case pertaining to the alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl. The decision came on a petition filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader against the Karnataka High Court’s refusal to quash the case against him.

The top court issued a notice to the state government, asking it to examine whether the matter should be remanded back to the High Court for fresh consideration. Read on.

The Supreme Court recommended that the Election Commission further extend the deadline from December 11 for submitting enumeration forms under the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Kerala. The court made the recommendation in view of the ongoing preparations for local body elections in the state.

Local body polls are scheduled in two phases on December 9 and December 11. The counting of votes will take place on December 13. The Kerala government has moved the court seeking to postpone the revision exercise until after the polls are conducted.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise. Read on.

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Shiv Sena MLA Santosh Bangar was on Tuesday booked for allegedly violating the election rules after a video showed him entering a polling booth while a woman was casting her vote during the local body polls in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district, The Indian Express reported.

Bangar belongs to the Shiv Sena faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The incident took place inside a booth in the Bazaar area of Kalamnuri town.

On Tuesday, voting was underway for more than 260 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in the state.

The video widely shared online purportedly showed Bangar entering the polling booth, peeking into the enclosure and speaking to the woman who was casting her vote.

Shinde Sena's Santosh Bangar is seen here directly telling a lady to vote for him. His supporter then looks inside the polling enclosure and points out the button to the lady. He and his supporters are openly using phones inside the booth. How can they call this a free and fair… pic.twitter.com/60MOJMvvcW

— Prof. Varsha Eknath Gaikwad (@VarshaEGaikwad) December 2, 2025

Opposition leader Varsha Gaikwad alleged that Bangar was “directly telling a lady to vote for him”.

“His supporter then looks inside the polling enclosure and points out the button to the lady,” the Congress leader alleged on social media. “He and his supporters are openly using phones inside the booth.”

“How can they call this a free and fair election?” Gaikwad asked.

The video showed Bangar allegedly shouting political slogans inside the polling booth, The Indian Express reported.

Reacting to the incident, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that “people’s representatives should maintain the spirit of democracy” and should “think about how we are behaving in the elections, what message we are giving”, ABP Mazha reported.

Earlier on Tuesday, PTI reported that election officials had ordered an investigation into the matter.

An unidentified election official was quoted as saying that the returning officer at the booth has been asked to submit a report about the incident. Action will be taken based on the report, the polling official said.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday postponed the counting of votes in the elections from December 3 to December 21. The Nagpur bench said that declaring the results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of polls scheduled to take place later this month.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20 after identifying irregularities related to withdrawal timelines and symbol allocation.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday recommended that the Election Commission further extend the deadline from December 11 for submitting enumeration forms under the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Kerala, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi made the recommendation in view of the ongoing preparations for local body elections in the state.

Local body polls in Kerala are scheduled in two phases on December 9 and December 11, with counting on December 13.

Kerala is also among the 12 states and Union Territories where the exercise to revise electoral rolls is underway.

The Left Democratic Front government in the state has moved the Supreme Court seeking to postpone the revision exercise until after the local body elections are conducted.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise. The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4.

As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9. Voters will be able to file their claims and objections between December 16 and January 15, and hearings will be held by February 7 instead of January 31.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

On Tuesday, after the bench was informed about the extension of the timeline, it observed that officials engaged in election duties should also get sufficient time to upload their forms, Live Law reported.

“You extend it more so anyone missed out they will also get an opportunity,” Kant was quoted as telling advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, who represented the Election Commission.

The court said that the request for a further extension was “just and fair” and merited consideration by the poll body.

The State Election Commission told the court that the revision exercise was not hampering the polls, pointing out that personnel assigned to election duties had been exempted from the voter roll revision responsibilities.

The court allowed the Kerala government to submit a detailed representation to the Election Commission explaining why the deadline should be extended.

The commission has been asked to decide by Thursday after considering the proposal “objectively and sympathetically”, Live Law reported

The Supreme Court on Tuesday questioned how far the law should be stretched to accept persons who immigrate to India illegally, Bar and Bench reported.

The court also asked if the Union government had issued any order that declared Rohingyas as refugees.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a habeas corpus plea, which alleged that five Rohingya persons had been detained by the authorities and then disappeared. The petition sought that the deportation of undocumented migrants be carried out in line with the processes.

Kant said that India had a “sensitive border” in the north and questioned whether immigrants should be given access to the country’s resources at the cost of the needs of Indian citizens, Bar and Bench reported.

“And so you want a red carpet for them [undocumented migrants],” he was quoted as saying. You enter through [a] tunnel, etc and then you are entitled to food, shelter, right to education for children etc.”

Kant also said that “asking habeas corpus” was “very fanciful”, Bar and Bench reported. A habeas corpus is a petition through which courts can order the authorities to produce a person before them to verify if they have been detained.

The court questioned whether there was a basis to show that the persons who had allegedly disappeared are refugees. “If somebody is an intruder...do we have an obligation to keep them inside?” Kant was quoted as saying.

When the counsel for the petitioner said that the persons had been detained by the Delhi Police in May and that there had been no information about their whereabouts, Kant asked if there was any government order declaring Rohingyas as refugees, according to Live Law.

“Refugee is a well-defined legal term and there is a prescribed authority by the government to declare them,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “If there is no legal status of a refugee, and somebody is an intruder, and he enters illegally, do we have an obligation to keep that fellow here?”

The counsel said that the plea was not seeking refugee status for the Rohingyas and was not opposing their deportation. But the deportation must be carried out as per the procedure, the counsel added.

The bench will hear the matter next on December 16.

The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday postponed the counting of votes and declaration of results for the municipal council, nagar parishad and nagar panchayat elections in Maharashtra from December 3 to December 21, Bar and Bench reported.

The directive came while voting was underway for 264 municipal councils and nagar panchayats in the state.

Last week, the State Election Commission rescheduled polls in 24 local bodies to December 20 after identifying irregularities related to withdrawal timelines and symbol allocation, PTI reported.

On Tuesday, a division bench of Justices Anil S Kilor and Rajnish R Vyas said that declaring results in phases would “materially influence” voting and the outcome of the second leg of elections, Bar and Bench reported. The court held that the results for all phases must be declared together.

The bench also directed that the Model Code of Conduct remain in force until the results are declared and prohibited the conduct of exit polls till December 20.

The order came on at least 10 petitions seeking simultaneous declaration of results for the local body elections.

The petitioners had argued that announcing results separately for each phase would compromise the fairness of the process, Bar and Bench reported.

“The decision [of phase-wise results] has a direct effect of creating a two-tier electoral process within the same municipal council and further conferring an undue political and psychological advantage upon candidates in the remaining wards who will be contesting against the background of an already declared Council composition,” Bar and Bench quoted the petitioners as saying.

The petitioners said that phased declarations violate the fundamental principle of free and fair elections and the requirement of a level playing field for all candidates.

Similar petitions have also been filed before the Aurangabad Bench and the Kolhapur Circuit Bench of the High Court, though no orders have been passed yet in those cases.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a stay on the trial proceedings against Karnataka’s former Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in a case pertaining to the alleged sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi passed the order after hearing a petition filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party leader against the Karnataka High Court’s refusal to quash the case against him.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya issued notice to the Karnataka government to examine whether the matter should be remanded back to the High Court for fresh consideration, according to Live Law.

The High Court had on November 13 upheld a February order of a special court in Bengaluru that had taken cognisance of a chargesheet in the case and had directed Yediyurappa to appear before it.

The case against Yediyurappa was registered on March 14, 2024, under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act for allegedly assaulting a minor girl, who is a rape survivor in a separate case from 2015.

He also faces charges of sexual harassment under Section 354A of the Indian Penal Code.

The 82-year-old leader is accused of having assaulted the girl on February 2, 2024, when she and her mother met him to seek help in the 2015 rape case.

During proceedings before the Supreme Court, advocate Sidharth Luthra, representing Yediyurappa, submitted that the High Court had ignored key evidence, Bar and Bench reported.

“There are certain statements which prosecution suppresses,” said Luthra. “High Court has ignored facts that there are people present saying nothing as such happened. He [Yediyurappa] has been four times chief minister.”

The advocate also claimed that the BJP leader was “suffering due to political vendetta”, Live Law reported.

In response, the chief justice asked: “How can you compel High Court to hold a mini trial?”

During the hearing on November 13 in the High Court, the judge directed the special court not to insist on Yediyurappa’s appearance during the trial unless “his presence is essential”. It also clarified that he is free to seek discharge before the trial court.

On February 7, the High Court had granted Yediyurappa protection from arrest and sent the matter back to the trial court, noting that the special court had erred in taking cognisance of the chargesheet. It had then directed the court to pass a reasoned order.

The trial court had taken cognisance again on February 28, after which the High Court stayed the proceedings in March.

POCSO case against Yediyurappa

The complainant has said that she and her mother met Yediyurappa at his Bengaluru residence on February 2, 2024.

While her mother was explaining the details of the 2015 rape case, she was asked to wait in another room, where the former chief minister allegedly molested her.

Yediyurappa has denied the allegation. He told investigators in June 2024 that he had only been helping the family with legal support in the earlier rape case.

Meanwhile, Yediyurappa and his three associates, Arun YM, Rudresh M and Y Mariswamy, were also charged under provisions of the Indian Penal Code related to destruction of evidence and offering bribes for concealing the offence for allegedly destroying a video recorded by the girl’s mother during the confrontation with the former chief minister after the alleged incident of sexual assault.

Union Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday claimed that users will be able to delete the government cyber security app that smartphone manufacturers have been asked to mandatorily preload on all devices.

However, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation pointed out that Scindia’s explanation was incorrect.

Paragraph 7(b) of the order issued by the Department of Telecommunications on Friday states that the Sanchar Saathi app “cannot be ‘disabled or restricted’”, the organisation said on social media.

The Union government directed manufacturers to preinstall the app in new phones and to add the application to devices that have already been sold through a software update within three months.

Users will not be able to disable the app, the Ministry of Communications said in a press release on Monday.

The comment by Scindia on Tuesday came following pushback by Opposition leaders and technology policy experts who expressed concern that the directive amounted to expanded surveillance without safeguards.

The Congress said that the directive by the telecom department was “beyond unconstitutional” and demanded that it should be rolled back immediately.

Party leader KC Venugopal said that “Big Brother cannot watch us”, adding that the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the fundamental right to life and liberty.

“A pre-loaded government app that cannot be uninstalled is a dystopian tool to monitor every Indian,” Venugopal said on social media. “It is a means to watch over every movement, interaction and decision of each citizen.”

The Congress MP said that the directive was part of a series of “relentless assaults” on constitutional rights.

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday said that Sanchar Saathi was a “snooping app”.

“Everyone must have the right to privacy to send messages to family and friends without the government looking at everything,” Vadra told reporters. “They’re turning this country into a dictatorship in every form.”

She added: “There’s a very fine line between reporting fraud and seeing what every citizen of India is doing on their phone. That’s not how it should work.”

Vadra said that while there is a need for strengthened cybersecurity, it does not give the government an excuse to “go into every citizen’s telephone”.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas told ANI that the directive was a “blatant invasion” into privacy.

The matter was also raised in Parliament on Tuesday.

During a discussion on a separate matter in Rajya Sabha, Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury said that there are “many ways in which the Modi government disrupts democracy” and the Sanchar Saathi app is “yet another instrument that diminishes the rights of citizens, just like the SIR [special intensive revision of electoral rolls]”.

Scindia told reporters outside Parliament that the app enables users to ensure their safety.

“When the Opposition has no issues, and they are trying to find some, we cannot help them,” he said. “Our duty is to help the consumers and ensure their safety.”

Bharatiya Janata Party publicity chief Amit Malviya said that the app will only work after user activation. It is a “cybersecurity safeguard, not a surveillance mechanism”, he said.

Not proportional, app could be repurposed: Digital rights group

The Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday said that the November 28 directive was a “deeply worrying expansion” of executive control over personal digital devices.

The means chosen to curb International Mobile Equipment Identity fraud are disproportionate, legally fragile and structurally hostile to user privacy and autonomy, it said.

The requirement for the functionalities of the app not being disabled converts every smartphone “into a vessel for state-mandated software that the user cannot meaningfully refuse, control or remove”.

The foundation said that for the app to work, it would “almost certainly need system level or root level access” to the device.

“That design choice erodes the protections that normally prevent one app from peering into the data of others, and turns Sanchar Saathi into a permanent, non-consensual point of access sitting inside the operating system of every Indian smartphone user,” it added.

IFF's Statement on the Sanchar Saathi App Pre-Installation Directive

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), specifically its AI & Digital Intelligence Unit (AI & DIU) on 21st November, 2024 has under the Telecommunications (Telecom Cyber Security) Rules, 2024 issued a…

— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) December 2, 2025

The organisation argued that the mandatory installation of the app does not pass the proportionality test laid down by the 2017 KS Puttaswamy judgement, which established the right to privacy as a fundamental right. The test requires that any intrusion into the right to privacy must meet the standards of legality, necessity and proportionality.

It also said that the directive was so vague that it while today the app is framed as a benign IMEI checker, “through a server side update, it could be repurposed for client side scanning for ‘banned’ applications, flag VPN [Virtual Private Network] usage, correlate SIM activity, or trawl SMS logs in the name of fraud detection”.

The foundation said that the Union government was asking all smartphone users to accept an “open ended, updatable surveillance capability” on their personal devices “without the basic guardrails that a constitutional democracy should insist on as a matter of course”.

Technology policy expert Pranesh Prakash questioned the necessity of mandating the Sanchar Saathi app when the government already has the Central Equipment Identity Register to blacklist IMEI numbers.

“All telecom networks in India have EIRs [equipment identity registers] to check and block spoofed/null IMEIs and reported IMEIs (of stolen phones) with the Indian govt running a CEIR,” he said. “I still haven’t heard a good argument as to why having this app pre-installed at a device level is helpful.”

All telecom networks in India have EIRs to check and block spoofed/null IMEIs and reported IMEIs (of stolen phones) with the Indian govt running a CEIR.

I still haven't heard a good argument as to why having this app pre-installed at a device level is helpful. https://t.co/0hw1KY0Jf8

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) December 2, 2025

Technology company Apple does not plan to comply with New Delhi’s directive, Reuters quoted three unidentified persons in the industry as saying.

The United States-based firm will tell the Indian government that it does not follow such mandates anywhere in the world as they raise several privacy and security issues for the company’s iOS ecosystem, Reuters quoted two of the persons, who are familiar with Apple’s concerns, as saying.

Scroll’s Nolina Minj has won second place at the Schizophrenia Research Foundation India’s 2025 Media for Mental Health Award for her reportage on the world of unregulated psychological counselling in India.

The Chennai-based foundation is a nonprofit organisation for mental health.

The awards were distributed during a virtual ceremony on Friday.

The foundation said that the winners’ “powerful stories, sharp field reporting and compassionate narratives continue to push mental health into mainstream discourse”.

Minj’s article, looks into how the Indian law does not recognise and regulate a range of mental health professionals, was published in January 2025 as part of Scroll’s Common Ground in-depth reporting project.

As a result of psychological counselling being an unregulated area, persons who seek help run the risk of finding themselves in the hands of untrained and unqualified individuals, she reported.

Read: The murky, unregulated world of psychological counselling in India

Independent journalist Sanket Jain won first place in the award for his report about how climate change was leading to a rise in perinatal depression. The article also looked into how Accredited Social Health Activists, or ASHA workers, were acting as an early warning system.

The story was reported for The Fuller Project and co-published with Scroll.

Schizophrenia Research Foundation India said that Jain won the first place for his “powerful reporting on the urgent need for public health strategies that address both environmental and psychosocial impacts, while highlighting the vital work of community health workers”.

Earlier this year, Jain’s report had also won the Asian Development Bank Institute’s Developing Asia Journalism Award.

Read: As climate change takes toll on maternal mental health, ASHA workers are tackling the challenge

Only about 30% of candidates who accepted internship offers under the Prime Minister Internship Scheme have joined their posts since the scheme was launched October 2024, the Union government told Parliament on Monday.

The scheme, introduced in the Union Budget 2024-25, aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore young people over five years.

Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Harsh Malhotra told Lok Sabha in a written reply that only 16,060 candidates, or around 30% of the 52,600 who accepted internship offers in the two pilot rounds, joined the private companies and public sector undertakings where they were placed.

Malhotra added that 6,618 interns, which is nearly 41% of those who joined, left before completing the 12-month internship. Of this, 4,565 candidates are from round 1 and 2,053 candidates from round 2.

In both rounds, only 95 interns have received full-time job offers from their host companies, government data showed.

Malhotra was responding to two separate questions from All India Trinamool Congress MPs Sayani Ghosh and June Maliah in the Lok Sabha.

He said that feedback from interns pointed to long travel distances, the one-year internship duration and lack of interest in assigned roles as key reasons for low acceptance and high dropouts. To address this, the government has geo-tagged internship locations and issued more detailed job descriptions in the second round, Financial Express reported.

The ministry has also used only Rs 73.72 crore of the Rs 10,831-crore allocation for 2025-’26 under the scheme as of September 30, the minister said.

Most applications came from Andhra Pradesh, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of candidates who joined, followed by Assam and Madhya Pradesh.

The scheme was announced as part of the Union Budget 2024-’25 to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in 500 top companies over five years.

The Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs launched the pilot project of the scheme on October 3, 2024.

Also read: Why young Indians are not interested in the prime minister’s ambitious internship scheme

Four Muslim traders from West Bengal’s Murshidabad district were given a 72-hour deadline to leave Odisha’s Nayagarh after being accused of being Bangladeshis and Rohingya migrants, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The men had lived in Nayagarh for several years selling mosquito nets, quilts and woollens on two-wheelers. All four of them were from the Sagarpara gram panchayat in the Jalangi block of the Domkal subdivision in Murshidabad.

On November 27, one of the men, Saheb Sekh, said that police officers had come to their rented accommodation and accused them of being “Rohingya living illegally in India”, The Telegraph reported.

Sekh said that the officers asked for his identity papers.

“I showed him my Aadhaar and voter card,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “He was not satisfied. He called my landlord and asked all of us to report to the station by 5pm.”

Later in the day, the four men went to the Odagaon police station, where an officer asked them to leave the town within three days. The men alleged that they were also accused of being Rohingya and Bangladeshis for speaking in Bengali.

The police also took signed copies of their documents.

Abdus Salam, one among the four men, claimed that another group that was also present in the police station and harassing them was part of a Hindutva outfit. “We have seen them in markets and other places,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying.

It was not clear whether the four men had returned to Murshidabad.

The incident comes amid allegations by the Trinamool Congress that Bengali-speaking workers are being discriminated against in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis.

Since the terror attack on April 22 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the police in several states ruled by the BJP have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

The matter is also being heard by the Supreme Court on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board.

In Odisha, there have been several instances in recent months of Bengali Muslims facing violence and intimidation.

On November 24, Rahul Islam, a 24-year-old winterwear seller from Murshidabad, was allegedly accused of being Bangladeshi and beaten up by a mob in Ganjam after he refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram”, The Telegraph reported.

Islam’s employer, Mainul Sarkar, who also returned to his home in Murshidabad, alleged that he had gone to the police in Odisha for help but did not receive any.

In July, hundreds of Bengali workers in Odisha’s Jharsuguda had been detained on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis. Several of them were released after the authorities ascertained that they were Indians.

India is likely to face a colder-than-usual winter, with more cold wave days than normal across parts of central, northwest and northeast India, the India Meteorological Department said on Monday.

The weather agency said that the expected drop in temperatures will be influenced by a polar vortex and continuing weak La Niña conditions between December and February.

“Below normal temperatures and cold wave conditions over Madhya Pradesh had something to do with the polar vortex and the La Niña conditions,” the Hindustan Times quoted IMD scientist OP Sreejith as saying. “Now again the polar vortex has started impacting.”

La Niña refers to the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific that can lead to higher rainfall and colder winters. A polar vortex is an area of low-pressure, very cold air circling the poles that can push colder conditions southward.

Spatial maps indicate that Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Gujarat are expected to experience below-normal temperatures, while most of central India and the adjoining peninsular and northwest regions are likely to record normal to below-normal minimum temperatures, the Hindustan Times reported.

Above-normal minimum temperatures are expected in the remaining parts of the country, the weather agency added.

IMD chief Mrutyunjay Mohapatra noted that cold wave conditions could persist for up to 11 days, compared with the normal four to six days, The Indian Express reported.

“Above normal cold wave spells will affect Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada regions of Maharashtra during the winter season,” he said. “Cold wave episodes can last longer than normal.”

The weather agency declares a cold wave when the minimum temperature of a station drops to 10 degrees Celsius or less for plains and 0 degrees Celsius or less for hilly regions.

The Election Commission told the Supreme Court that there was no basis to allegations that the special intensive revision of electoral rolls would lead to “mass disenfranchisement”, The Hindu reported.

The poll panel said that 95.6% of the voters in Tamil Nadu and 99.7% in West Bengal had already been given pre-filled enumeration forms. Of these, it had already received back 58.7% of the forms and digitised them, it told the court.

It made the statements in affidavits filed in response to petitions challenging the revision of the electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi have been hearing petitions against the validity of the exercise.

The court will hear Tamil Nadu’s petition on December 4 and that of West Bengal on December 9. At the previous hearing, it had heard Kerala’s petition to defer the process. The bench had asked the poll panel to file its response to this by December 1. The matter will be heard on December 2.

In its affidavits responding to the petitions filed by Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the Election Commission dismissed claims made by the Opposition that there was up to 30% voter exclusion in West Bengal, The Hindu reported.

It said that the statistics on the distribution of pre-filled enumeration forms and the number of completed forms that the poll panel has received back showed that claims by the petitioners about errors, under-inclusiveness and mass disenfranchisement were “highly exaggerated”.

The 1950 Representation of the People Act vested the Election Commission with discretionary powers to conduct a special revision of the electoral rolls “in such a manner as it thinks fit”, the affidavits said.

The poll panel also noted that it had undertaken such an “intensive revision of special nature” of the electoral rolls for all or some parts of the country several times earlier, including in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Significant changes had occurred in the last 20 years, the affidavits said, including additions and deletions in the electoral rolls on a large scale over a long period, The Hindu reported. Urbanisation and migration had become a regular trend, it added.

The revision exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories. Booth-level officers began distributing enumeration forms on November 4.

Besides Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the voter rolls are being revised in Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

A “special revision” of the voter list, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll, will take place in Assam separately.

Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Puducherry and Assam are expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll published on September 30.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners also moved the Supreme Court against it.

On Sunday, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the revision of the electoral rolls in all 12 states and Union Territories.

The last date of submitting the forms was extended to December 11 from December 4. As per the updated schedule, the draft electoral rolls will be published on December 16 instead of December 9.

The final electoral rolls are to be published on February 14 instead of February 7.

The Supreme Court on Monday questioned whether stubble burning alone could explain the severe air pollution affecting Delhi and the broader National Capital Region, and asked for a clearer assessment of the contribution of other pollutants, Bar and Bench reported.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said it was “easy to blame farmers” who were not represented before the court and noted that stubble burning had taken place “as usual” during the Covid-19 lockdown but the pollution crisis was not as severe.

“During COVID, stubble burning happened as usual, but we could still see blue skies and stars…,” the court remarked. “Something to be thought about and other factors.”

The Bench then directed the Commission for Air Quality Management to submit a report within a week on measures taken to address additional pollution sources, including vehicular emissions and construction dust, Hindustan Times reported.

“It could come easy to put the blame on farmers and stubble burning, but there are vehicular emissions and construction dust as well,” the newspaper quoted Kant as saying. “Stubble burning cannot become an issue of politics or ego. Farmers need to be apprised and supported.”

Besides, the court asked the air quality monitoring body to explain which of its directives had produced results on the ground and why earlier action plans had failed to achieve meaningful improvements, the newspaper reported.

The court said it would continue to monitor the case regularly as part of its efforts to address the pollution crisis, Bar and Bench reported.

“None of us can sit idle with an assumption that this problem or crisis will go away on its own,” the court said. “This issue cannot be wished away.”

On November 12, the court had sought reports from Punjab and Haryana on measures taken to curb stubble burning by farmers.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for December 10.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, vehicular pollution, along with the lighting of firecrackers during Diwali, falling temperatures, decreased wind speeds and emissions from industries and coal-fired plants contribute to the problem.

Delhi has been recording air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October, leading to Stage 3 restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan being imposed on November 11.

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

On November 26, the Commission for Air Quality Management withdrew the Stage 3 restrictions, citing improved air quality. The restrictions under the GRAP 1 and GRAP 2 remain in force.

At 9.06 am on Tuesday, Delhi’s average Air Quality Index stood at 340, placing it in the “very poor” category, as per the Sameer application, which provides hourly updates from the Central Pollution Control Board.

An index value between 0 and 50 indicates “good” air quality, between 51 and 100 indicates “satisfactory” air quality and between 101 and 200 indicates “moderate” air quality. As the index value increases further, air quality deteriorates. A value of 201 and 300 means “poor” air quality, while between 301 and 400 indicates “very poor” air.

Between 401 and 450 indicates “severe” air pollution, while anything above the 450 threshold is termed “severe plus”.

A pregnant woman from West Bengal, Sunali Khatun, who was pushed into Bangladesh by Indian authorities in June on allegations of being an undocumented immigrant, and later jailed there for “illegal entry”, was released on bail on Monday evening, The Times of India reported.

She walked out of Chapainawabganj jail at around 7.30 pm along with her husband Danish Sk, their eight-year-old son Shabir and Sweety Bibi and her two sons, after more than three months in custody.

Their release followed a local court order that granted them bail on humanitarian grounds. A Bangladeshi citizen stood surety for the group and provided a bail bond of 5,000 taka.

The development came on the same day that the Indian Supreme Court asked the Union government to consider allowing Khatun and her son to return “on humanitarian grounds”, The Indian Express reported.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi noted Khatun’s advanced pregnancy and asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to seek instructions on whether she could be permitted to re-enter India through the Malda border.

The Supreme Court, however, did not make any statement on the return of her husband. The case is slated to be heard further on Wednesday, the newspaper reported.

Earlier in the day, the Chapainawabganj court accepted arguments that the group included a pregnant woman and children and ordered their release on bail.

However, the magistrate set conditions that they must remain in Bangladesh and appear before the court when required. The court also directed that Khatun receive appropriate medical care and be admitted to hospital if necessary, The Indian Express reported.

Khatun told The Times of India over the phone that she wanted to return home to India and added that she had not been keeping well of late. She thanked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee for standing by their side.

Khatun also said that the police in Chapainawabganj had asked them to appear at the police station at 9.30 pm, The Times of India reported.

“I do not know what is happening or why the police want to speak to me again,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “I just hope that I return home quickly.”

Sk Mofizul, a social worker who has been in Bangladesh for several months assisting the families, said that he had arranged rented accommodation for them in the district. He added that the bail order had no directive that Khatun and the rest of them be repatriated to India.

Khatun, Sweety Bibi and their families have maintained that they hail from West Bengal’s Birbum district. Khatun, her husband and son were taken into custody in Delhi on June 20, and all three were sent to Bangladesh six days later.

The Calcutta High Court had on September 26 set aside the deportation order against six persons, including Khatun. It had directed that they be brought back to West Bengal within four weeks.

Two days before the four-week period ended on October 24, the Union government challenged the order before the Supreme Court. The Centre and the Delhi Police have questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.

Since May, thousands of Bengali-speaking migrant workers have been rounded up in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and asked to prove that they were Indian citizens – and not undocumented immigrants.

In several cases, workers have been declared foreigners within days and forced into Bangladesh, despite being Indian citizens.

Also read:

• Bangladeshi or Indian? Investigating Modi government’s crackdown on ‘illegal immigrants’

• Pregnant woman from Bengal forced into Bangladesh. Family has land records from five generations ago

In The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, Anand Teltumbde notes that incarceration does not only test the body – it also tests whether the mind will refuse to surrender.

That observation sounds a little abstract until one remembers what he endured: months of humiliation, surveillance and the slow discovery that in India’s prisons, time itself is punishment. His reflections are not about one man’s endurance. They are about a republic’s ability to live comfortably with the confinement of some people.

Teltumbde spent 31 months in jail under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act before being released on bail in 2022. His ordeal, like that of many others, exposes a legal order that converts waiting into guilt and procedure into penalty.

The National Crime Records Bureau’s Prison Statistics India 2023 shows that nearly 73.5% of India’s prisoners are undertrials – people not yet convicted of any crime. Behind that abstraction lies a quieter truth: for most who enter the system, justice never arrives; only waiting does.

‘The victim card’

This politics of waiting defines an entire generation of prisoners of conscience. In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has been hearing bail petitions of Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, and Shifa-ur-Rehman – all accused of playing a role in the Delhi riots of 2020 and charged under the same anti-terror law under Teltumbde.

On October 27, the court declined the Delhi Police’s request for more time to respond. By October 31 and November 3, senior lawyers for both sides argued again before the bench. It fixed November 6 for the case to continue. Each date a step forward on paper, a standstill in practice.

The state blamed the accused people for “playing the victim card”. In truth, it is the state that plays the calendar—stretching time until hope itself becomes sub judice. The matters are now listed again for December 2 – an administrative rhythm that keeps liberty negotiable and converts endurance into evidence.

Indian jurisprudence has long known better. In Hussainara Khatoon v State of Bihar in 1979, the Supreme Court read a speedy trial into Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. In Sanjay Chandra v. CBI in 2012, it reminded us that pre-trial detention cannot be punitive.

AR Antulay v RS Nayak in 1992 recognised that delay itself is a denial of justice. Under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Union of India v. KA Najeeb in 2021 held that prolonged incarceration can itself justify bail. In Shoma Kanti Sen v State of Maharashtra 2024, the court granted interim bail to a 66-year-old individual accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, emphasising her age, health, and delay.

The doctrine is clear; what has changed is the country’s appetite for applying it. Law still speaks the language of liberty, but power uses the grammar of postponement. When law begins to delay what it is meant to deliver, power learns to hide behind procedure.

Justice in two speeds

That concealment has consequences. Consider how quickly courts can move when they wish to: television anchors facing contempt, film stars seeking urgent relief or high-profile politicians invoking “public interest”.

In recent years, relief was granted within days, even hours – most visibly in television personality Arnab Goswami’s interim-bail order by the Supreme Court in Nov 2020 and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s interim bail during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign.

Yet bail hearings under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act – where liberty is truly at stake – stretch over years, adjourned on grounds as slight as a missing counter-affidavit. This is not about comparing offences; it is about comparing priorities.

Justice today moves at two speeds: express for the influential, terminal for the dissenter. The difference is not in the law but in the moral speed with which justice travels.

Digital allegations, physical punishment

The prosecutions in the Bhima Koregaon case, in which a group of 16 lawyers, activists, writers and others have been accused of conspiring to organise a riot in 2018, show how easily that happens. Independent forensic experts found that malware had been used to plant incriminating files on the devices of the people accused.

Yet several defendants spent years in prison before these revelations entered the public record. The alleged crime was digital, the punishment physical. The fabrication was digital, the punishment, real.

Anand Teltumbde’s own extended period of incarceration unfolded within that same machinery of distrust – a system where accusation replaces proof and adjournment replaces verdict.

These revelations deepen, not dilute, the moral dimension of these prosecutions. To call them political prisoners is not to romanticise them – it is to name a moral fact. As Teltumbde has written elsewhere, political prisoners are kept in jail not to reform them but to send a message to the world. When liberty depends on obedience, prison becomes a metaphor for citizenship itself. What once was an emergency exception has become a daily administrative habit.

The logic of preventive detention has quietly migrated into ordinary criminal law. This situation was warned against in Khudiram Das v State of West Bengal in 1975, where the court held that even preventive detention is reviewable for mala fides. Again, in Rekha v. State of Tamil Nadu in 2011, the court ruled that such detention is impermissible when ordinary criminal law suffices. The Constitution’s presumption of innocence now coexists with a presumption of distrust.

Corrosion of moral memory

The Constitution never promised a crime-free state – it promised that even the accused would not be forgotten. Article 21 was meant to restrain the government’s impatience, not legitimise it. Yet every fresh adjournment erodes that promise.

A person who spends five years behind bars while the prosecution refines its theory of guilt suffers a visible loss; the Republic suffers a quieter one – the corrosion of its own moral memory.

BR Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution, once warned that political democracy without social conscience would degenerate into tyranny by law. The long pre-trial wait of today’s prisoners proves him right: our courts have constitutional power but shrinking moral bandwidth.

If the past decade has taught us anything, it is that evidence can lie. Digital forensics demand independent scrutiny and institutional humility. An honest criminal process would welcome that; a fearful one prefers adjournments.

When courts allow delay to become routine, they do not merely fail individuals – they normalise punishment without conviction. The current hearings in the case against Umar Khalid and the others test more than the fate of five accused – they test whether the Supreme Court still remembers that the burden of the Constitution lies not in its words but in its waiting citizens.

And yet, there is still a kind of hope in remembering. This is where The Cell and the Soul transcends memoir and becomes a moral document. Teltumbde wrote that in the smallest cell, freedom survives as critical consciousness – a term he uses to describe the mind’s capacity to remain awake even in captivity.

That consciousness – the ability to see what has become normal – is the last liberty left to us. We cannot all break the bars, but we can refuse to forget who is behind them.

Sahil Hussain Choudhury is a lawyer and Constitutional Law Researcher based in New Delhi. His X handle is @SahiHChoudhury and his Instagram handle is voxjuris_.