A trial court in Kerala on Monday acquitted Malayalam film actor Dileep in a 2017 case pertaining to the abduction and rape of an actor, The Hindu reported.

Ernakulam Principal Sessions Judge Honey M Varghese acquitted Dileep of all offences after a nearly eight-year trial.

However, the court found six other persons accused in the matter guilty of rape, conspiracy and abduction, among other offences, Live Law reported.

The court will pronounce the punishment on Friday.

On February 17, 2017, six men allegedly kidnapped and sexually abused the actor inside her car for two hours. They had allegedly also filmed the assault to blackmail the woman. Later, the woman was dropped near the home of a film director, who helped her contact the police and register a case.

Dileep was among the 10 persons accused in the case and was alleged to be the mastermind of the assault.

NS Sunil, alias Pulsur Suni, was named the prime accused. He had allegedly been hired by Dileep to commit the crime.

Investigators had found that the alleged abduction and sexual abuse was the result of a alleged conspiracy to intimidate and humiliate the woman, The Indian Express reported.

The others accused in the case were Martin Antony, B Manikandan, VP Vijeesh, H Salim, Pradeep, Charley Thomas, Sanilkumar and Sarath G Nair, The Hindu reported.

Most of the persons accused in the matter, including Pulsur Suni, were charged under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and gang rape, among others. Sections of the Information Technology Act were also invoked.

Dileep had been booked for criminal conspiracy, intimidation and destruction of evidence.

The resignation of two special prosecutors and appointment of new ones had delayed the hearing. About 100 appeals against several orders of the trial court had also been filed by the prosecution, the accused men and the complainant.

Twenty-eight prosecution witnesses also reportedly turned hostile during the trial.

This is a developing story. It will be updated as new details become available.

Ten members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) surrendered before Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav in Balaghat district on Sunday.

The persons carried a collective reward of Rs 2.3 crore, The New Indian Express reported.

The group was part of the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh special zone, operating mainly in the Kanha-Bhoradev division, which covers Balaghat and Mandla districts in Madhya Pradesh and Kabirdham district in Chhattisgarh.

After the surrender, Yadav said that Dindori and Mandla districts are “Maoist-free”.

“And in Balaghat, their presence has almost come to an end,” Yadav added. “In the Kanha-Bandhavgarh tiger reserve region, where there was once a possibility of Maoist activity…that possibility is now zero.”

Among those who surrendered were Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh Zone Secretary and Special Zonal Committee member Surendra alias Kabir Sodi (50), Special Zonal Committee member Rakesh Odi alias Manish, and area committee members Lalsingh Marawi, Salita alias Savitri, Navin Nuppo alias Hidma, Jaisheela alias Lalita Oyam, Vikram alias Hidma Vatti, Zarina alias Jogi Musak, and Samar alias Somaru, the newspaper reported.

This is the second surrender of Maoists in Madhya Pradesh under the state’s new rehabilitation policy introduced in August 2023.

The first was on November 1, when a 23-year-old woman Maoist, Sunita, surrendered at the Chauriya camp of Madhya Pradesh’s anti-Naxal Hawk Force. She was a member of the Gondia-Rajnandgaon-Balaghat division of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and carried a reward of Rs 14 lakh.

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

In October, the Union home ministry said that the number of districts across states affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to 11 from 18 in March.

In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts has also come down from six to three, it added. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

A 20-month-old cheetah cub from Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park was killed on Sunday after being hit by a vehicle on the Agra-Mumbai National Highway in Gwalior district.

This is the second cheetah death from Kuno in three days. On Friday, another cub had been found dead, a day after it was released into the wild with its mother and sibling.

The cub killed on Sunday was one of two male cheetahs born in India to Gamini, a cheetah from South Africa. They had wandered outside Kuno’s boundaries nearly a month ago, The Hindu quoted forest officials as saying.

Project Cheetah Director Uttam Kumar Sharma said in a statement that the “tracking team and local forest staff were continuously monitoring both cubs”. He added that the accident happened suddenly, even as the tracking team attempted to stop the speeding vehicle from hitting the cheetah.

The vehicle involved in the accident was detained in Rajasthan’s Kota district.

A team from Kuno is on its way to Kota to question the driver and collect samples from the vehicle, Madhya Pradesh Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests-Wildlife L Krishnamoorthy told The Hindu.

With this, Kuno now has 27 cheetahs, eight adults and 19 cubs.

Since 2023, at least 17 cheetahs have died.

In September 2022, cheetahs were reintroduced under Project Cheetah to India seven decades after the species was declared extinct in the country. The animals were being sourced from African nations like Namibia and South Africa.

On November 12, India and Botswana formally announced the translocation of eight cheetahs for the next phase of the programme. The animals will remain in a quarantine facility in Botswana before being moved to India.

The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Before that, the wild cats were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot in the sal forests in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.

Also read: Did the government gravely underestimate the space needed for Project Cheetah?

Congress MLA Sudip Roy Barman on Sunday said that booth-level officers will be beaten up if they try to delete the names of genuine voters or include fake names during the proposed special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Tripura, PTI reported.

The Election Commission in October announced a pan-India revision of the voter lists. The exercise is underway in 12 states and Union Territories. Tripura is not included in the ongoing round.

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 rolls. Several petitioners had moved the Supreme Court against it.

Addressing a training programme in Agartala’s Indranagar for the Congress’ booth-level agents for the proposed exercise in the state, Barman said that the party wanted a transparent and error-free electoral roll, PTI reported.

But that the Opposition party will not allow what had “happened in Maharashtra, Bihar and Haryana” in Tripura, said the MLA representing the Agartala constituency.

The Congress has repeatedly accused the Election Commission of large-scale vote rigging, including in the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls held in 2024, alleging what they called “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of national institutions.”

The Election Commission has rejected the allegations.

“The Congress has no objection if names of dead voters or foreign citizens are deleted from the electoral rolls, but any unethical practice to include fake or ghost voters, duplicate or triplicate names will not be allowed,” PTI quoted Barman as saying on Sunday.

He added that it was the poll panel’s duty to prepare error-free electoral rolls.

Barman also warned of dire consequences if booth-level officers attempted to adopt unethical practices to include fake names in the electoral rolls.

“Tripura is a small state where everybody knows everybody,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “If any BLO tries to delete the names of genuine voters or include any fake names under pressure from the ruling party, he or she will be beaten up publicly.”

Tripura is expected to head for Assembly polls in 2028.

Barman’s remarks came amid reports of booth-level officers being overburdened with work in the revision exercise in other states. At least eight suicides by booth-level officers and at least seven deaths have been reported in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Rajasthan.

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 revision exercise.

Each booth-level officer is responsible for maintaining the voter list for one polling booth, which can sometimes have as many as 1,500 registered voters. 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.

On November 30, the Election Commission extended by one week the timeline for the exercise in the 12 states and Union Territories. 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.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court also issued directions to redress problems faced by booth-level officers during the revision of the electoral rolls.

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.

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

In India today, Hindutva politics often fixates on the claimed barbarism of the Turko-Persianate period. Mediaeval rulers, their monuments, taxation systems, military campaigns, and cultural influence are repeatedly portrayed as alien, oppressive and destructive. Mosque-building, Mughal culture, and political authority are selectively emphasised as evidence of cruelty or moral corruption. Aurangzeb is often singled out as the archetype of tyranny.

This selective reading of history is never neutral. It is used to justify the idea of a “civilised” Hindu order, framing the present as a moral correction of the past.

A similar logic has played out elsewhere. In Latin America, European colonisers used accounts of indigenous cruelty to morally justify the conquest of the Americas and centuries of oppression.

The Aztecs, for example, practised human sacrifice, ritualised warfare and harsh punishments. Captives were ceremonially killed, hearts removed, and in extreme cases, victims were flayed, their skins incorporated into ritual garments. But such practices were far from universal.

The Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Inca performed sacrifices rarely, usually for symbolic or cosmological reasons rather than as instruments of state terror.

Overemphasising Aztec brutality created a one-sided image of indigenous “barbarity”, ignoring the moral and political complexity of these societies. Spanish theologians like Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that this justified conquest as a civilising mission, while Bartolomé de las Casas defended indigenous rationality and humanity.

Yet the moralised conquest narrative endured and later shaped colonial projects in India, Africa, Australia, and North America, masking the vastly greater scale of European violence and normalising atrocities.

Even today, these narratives are weaponised. US Vice President JD Vance recently invoked Aztec sacrifices to frame debates about abortion and Christian identity, showing how colonial-era tropes continue to shape contemporary politics. In Latin America, nationalist groups highlight them to defend authoritarian policies: in Brazil, in particular, Jair Bolsonaro described indigenous communities as obstacles to development.

Historical revisionists such as Jacques de Mahieu explicitly argued that Aztec violence legitimised conquest. Social media amplifies such narratives, spreading fear and misinformation. David Nirenberg observes that xenophobia has become a highly profitable political “stock”, and studies by Petter Törnberg and Juliana Chueri confirm that far-right populists exploit historical distortions to destabilise democracies.

In India, Hindutva discourse does something similar: it selectively highlights mosque-building, Persianate culture, taxation systems, and Aurangzeb’s campaigns as evidence of cruelty, to justify exclusionary policies, territorial claims, and textbook rewrites. In both contexts, history is used as a tool to make moral and political claims about the present.

Latin America’s New and Post-New Left offers a very different approach. Emerging in the late 20th century, these movements combined historical memory, indigenous knowledge, and participatory politics. José María Mariátegui, the Peruvian thinker, emphasised indigenous collectivism and proposed an “Indo-American socialism” that adapted Marxist ideas to local realities.

Unlike mid-century guerrilla movements, the New Left was reformist rather than insurrectionary, aiming to redistribute power, strengthen popular agency, and institutionalise collective rights. Its revolution was imaginative and participatory rather than violent.

The Zapatistas of Mexico exemplify this approach. Rising in the 1990s to resist the North American Free Trade Agreement and neoliberal exclusion, they redefined democracy through indigenous cosmologies, declaring, “we are all equals because we are all different”.

Participation extended to schools, health centres, cooperatives, and community councils, creating governance from the bottom up. Leaders like Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico and Pedro Castillo in Peru have carried forward these principles, foregrounding indigenous rights, local participation, and inclusive governance.

Sheinbaum’s declaration of 2025 as the “Year of the Indigenous Woman,” which restored sacred lands to Wixárika communities, provoked far-right backlash, showing how narratives of indigenous “threat” continue to resonate. Castillo faced violent opposition while trying to empower rural and indigenous communities, reflecting the enduring tension between emancipatory politics and moralising historical narratives.

The Post-New Left also engages actively in the digital sphere. Social media is not only a tool for mobilisation but also for countering misinformation, spreading knowledge, and linking communities across borders. While far-right actors rely on fear, distortion, and selective history, these movements combine reformist policies, participatory governance, and cultural inclusion.

Movements like Argentina’s Piqueteros or Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement connect everyday survival struggles to political empowerment, demonstrating that imagination and action must go hand in hand. Leaders like Lula da Silva, Gabriel Boric, and Gustavo Petro operate within democratic systems to redistribute resources, strengthen social citizenship, and experiment with decentralised governance.

The parallel with India is striking. Hindutva’s selective reading of history, emphasising Turko-Persianate “barbarism” and Aurangzeb’s campaigns, serves to justify exclusion, fear and moral superiority. Public imagination is shaped by what is highlighted and what is erased, much as Spanish colonisers foregrounded Aztec cruelty while hiding the genocidal impact of conquest.

The rhetoric of moralised history creates a hierarchy of “civilised” versus “barbaric”, giving legitimacy to contemporary exclusionary politics. Both contexts show that history is rarely neutral – it is a tool that can be deployed either to exclude and oppress or to imagine more inclusive forms of social organisation.

Latin America offers a hopeful example. Its New and Post-New Left shows that historical critique can coexist with political imagination. By integrating indigenous knowledge, participatory governance, and reformist policies, movements have reclaimed agency from narratives designed to intimidate and exclude.

They show that collective dreaming and practical action can challenge entrenched power and create fairer societies. For India, the lesson is urgent: critical engagement with history, rather than its weaponisation, is necessary if democracy, pluralism, and justice are to survive the pressures of exclusionary ideologies.

The stakes are high. Selective histories – whether Aztec sacrifice or Aurangzeb’s cruelty – have long been used to justify violence and fear. But Latin America demonstrates that societies can reinterpret the past, combine imagination with reform, and build structures that empower rather than oppress.

In a time when social media spreads distorted narratives faster than ever, these lessons are vital. Words do make worlds, but they can also remake them for the better. Collective imagination, grounded in history yet oriented towards justice, remains the strongest counter to fear, exclusion, and authoritarianism.

Ultimately, the experience of Latin America suggests that histories of conquest and oppression do not have to determine the present. Through reformist policies, participatory governance, and the inclusion of indigenous and subaltern voices, societies can transform fear into social dreaming, and dystopia into a collective project of imagination and empowerment.

For India, facing its own battles over historical memory and political legitimacy, these lessons are particularly relevant. By engaging with history critically, rather than weaponising it, India can cultivate a more inclusive public imagination – one that challenges exclusionary narratives, confronts misinformation, and strengthens democratic participation.

Sahasranshu Dash is a research associate at the International Centre for Applied Ethics and Public Affairs in Sheffield, the United Kingdom.

A 10-month-old cheetah cub died at Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno National Park on Friday, a day after it was released into the wild with its mother and sibling.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav had released cheetah Veera and her two ten-month-old cubs from their enclosures into the Parond forest region of Kuno in Sheopur district.

The cub separated from Veera and the other cub during the night, the field director of the Cheetah Project said.

The cause of death will be known after a post-mortem examination, the official added.

With this, Kuno now has 28 cheetahs, eight adults and 20 that were born in India, the park administration said.

Since 2023, at least 16 cheetahs have died.

In September 2022, cheetahs were reintroduced under Project Cheetah to India seven decades after the species was declared extinct in the country. The animals were being sourced from African nations like Namibia and South Africa.

On November 12, India and Botswana formally announced the translocation of eight cheetahs for the next phase of the programme. The animals will remain in a quarantine facility in Botswana before being moved to India.

The cheetah was officially declared extinct by the Indian government in 1952. Before that, the wild cats were last recorded in the country in 1948, when three cheetahs were shot in the sal forests in Chhattisgarh’s Koriya District.

Also read: Did the government gravely underestimate the space needed for Project Cheetah?

The manager and three staff members of a club in Goa, where 25 persons died after a massive fire broke out on Saturday, have been arrested, said Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Sunday.

The owners of the club, Saurav Luthra and Gaurav Luthra, have been booked, he added.

The fire had erupted around midnight at a club named Birch By Romeo Lane, located near Baga beach, one of the most popular tourist spots in the state.

Those who died include 14 staff members and four tourists. The identities of seven of the victims are yet to be established. Six persons were also injured.

Earlier in the day, the chief minister said that he had ordered a magisterial inquiry into the entire incident to identify the cause and fix responsibility”.

He added that “primary information indicates the nightclub had not followed fire safety norms”, PTI reported.

#WATCH | Goa | Aftermath of the fire that broke out at a restaurant in North Goa’s Arpora, claiming the lives of 23 people. pic.twitter.com/v6qleY5WJX

— ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2025

Here are key things you need to know about the fire:

• The staff members who were arrested are: Rajiv Modak, the chief general manager of the club, Vivek Singh, the general manager, bar manager Rajveer Singhania and gate manager Priyanshu Thakur.
• While the police initially claimed that the fire broke out due to a cylinder blast, some eyewitnesses claimed that the blaze began on the first floor of the club, where several tourists were dancing.
• Goa Director General of Police Alok Kumar said later on Sunday that the cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, reported The Indian Express. He added that the police were also investigating if the fire may have been triggered by a pyro sparkle gun, which is a handheld device that shoots cool sparks and is used in weddings and parties.
• Eyewitnesses were quoted as saying by The Indian Express that the blaze broke out after fireworks were lit at around 11.30 pm during a belly dance performance. The firecrackers reportedly hit flammable decorative materials. “This caused some sparks and fumes on the roof…and within a few minutes, there was an inferno,” an unidentified eyewitness said.
• Another person added: “It went completely dark, there was a lot of smoke, people were trying to navigate their way out… I heard some explosions.”
• Calangute MLA Michael Lobo said that a safety audit has been ordered for all clubs in Goa. He added that the Calangute panchayat will issue notices to all the nightclubs on Monday, asking them to provide fire safety permissions and licenses.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the families of those who died. The injured will be given Rs 50,000.
• Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi called the incident a “criminal failure of safety and governance” and demanded a transparent investigation.
• Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge also demanded a comprehensive investigation and said the “avoidable tragic incident is an irreparable loss”.
• Aam Aadmi Party’s Goa president Amit Palekar alleged that the state government was responsible for ignoring illegal operations and extortion, ANI reported. “This could have been pre-empted and avoided,” he added.
• The collector of North Goa has issued emergency helpline numbers for coordination, response and public assistance, ANI reported. 

Fire at a restaurant in North Goa’s Arpora, claiming 25 lives | Office of the Collector, North Goa issues emergency numbers in order to ensure effective monitoring, incident response and public grievance redressal. pic.twitter.com/YERGVRhthG

— ANI (@ANI) December 7, 2025

The National Council of Educational Research and Training has expanded the section on the “Ghaznavid invasions” in the Class 7 social science textbook, reported The Indian Express on Sunday.

The NCERT is an educational body that advises the Union government on school syllabi.

The textbook, released on Friday, has a more detailed account of Mahmud of Ghazni’s “destruction and plunder” and eagerness to “spread his version of Islam to non-Muslim parts of the world”, as compared to the previous version.

While the previous textbook contained only a brief paragraph on Ghazni, the amended version has devoted six pages to the Ghaznavid campaigns, including illustrations and explanatory boxes, according to the newspaper.

It mentions that his biographers depict him as “keen not only to slaughter or enslave ‘infidels’ (that is, Hindus or Buddhists or Jains), but also to kill believers from rival sects of Islam”.

The textbook also mentions that he plundered temples in Mathura and Somnath.

“Mahmud’s campaigns involved not only destruction and plunder but also the slaughter of tens of thousands of Indian civilians and the capture of numerous prisoners, including children, who were taken to be sold in the slave markets of Central Asia,” reads the book.

When asked about the changes, NCERT Director Dinesh Saklani told The Indian Express that the content is self-explanatory.

The book says that the present-day Somnath temple was rebuilt in 1950 and inaugurated by former President Rajendra Prasad. Students are also encouraged to consider why public donations were used for the reconstruction, India Today reported.

The expanded section is preceded by a box titled “a word of caution”, which explains that historical writing has often focused on war, conquest and destruction, while periods of peace or effective governance receive less attention, The Indian Express reported.

“Our approach is that it is better to face them and analyse them so as to understand what made such developments possible and, hopefully, help avoid their recurrence in future,” it adds. “In addition, we should not forget that while past events cannot be erased or denied, it would be wrong to hold anyone responsible for them today.”

The chapter, titled “Turning Tides: 11th and 12th centuries”, covers other Turkic invasions, including those by Muhammad Ghuri, Qutb-ud-din Aibak and his army commander Bakhtiyar Khilji.

It describes Khilji’s destruction of major Buddhist centres such as Nalanda and Vikramashila, adding that there is “consensus among historians of Buddhism that this destruction of its large centres of learning precipitated the decline of Buddhism in India, although a few other factors may have also played a role”.

Also read: India’s complex history cannot be wished away through textbook revisions – it must be confronted

Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad was the most polluted city in the country in November, registering an average PM2.5 concentration of 224 micrograms per cubic metre, according to a report by the think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

PM2.5 refers to tiny airborne particles that are about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair and can easily be breathed into the lungs and the bloodstream.

India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards prescribe a “safe” PM2.5 limit of 60 μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) over a 24-hour period. The World Health Organization prescribes 15 μg/m3.

According to the report released on Friday, Ghaziabad was followed by Noida, Bahadurgarh, Delhi, Hapur, Greater Noida, Baghpat, Sonipat, Meerut and Rohtak in the list of most polluted cities in the country.

Uttar Pradesh accounted for six of these cities, followed by three in Haryana.

Except for Delhi, all the other cities recorded higher PM2.5 levels in November, as compared to the same period last year, said the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Apart from Bahadurgarh, none of the top 10 most polluted cities recorded even a single day within the safe limit set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Manoj Kumar, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said that 20 out of 29 cities in the National Capital Region registered higher pollution levels than the previous year, despite a significant reduction in stubble burning.

“This clearly indicates that the dominant drivers are year-round sources such as transport, industry, power plants, and other combustion sources. Without sector-specific emission cuts, cities will continue to breach standards,” Kumar said.

This is in line with another study carried out by the non-profit organisation Centre for Science and Environment in 2024, which had said that local sources of pollution, rather than farm fires, were primarily to blame for Delhi’s deteriorating air quality ahead of Diwali.

Also read: Delhi’s failure to act against the biggest source of its air pollution – vehicles

In November, Meghalaya’s capital Shillong was the least polluted city in India, registering an average PM2.5 concentration of seven micrograms per cubic metre, according to the report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Among the top 10 least polluted cities in the country, six were in Karnataka and one each in Meghalaya, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Air quality deteriorates sharply in the winter months in Delhi, which is often ranked the world’s most polluted capital. This year, too, the national capital has been recording air quality in the “poor” or worse categories since mid-October.

Measures under stages 1 and 2 of the Graded Response Action Plan to bring pollution under control are in force in Delhi.

Measures under stage 2 entail ensuring an uninterrupted power supply to discourage the use of alternative power arrangements, such as diesel generator sets, and increasing parking fees to discourage private transportation.

Stage 1 involves measures such as the mechanical sweeping of roads and sprinkling water on them to keep the dust from rising. It also bans some kinds of construction and demolition activities.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said the Opposition INDIA bloc was “on life support” and had to decide whether it was a proper national alliance or a loose group of state-based parties, the Hindustan Times reported.

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi, the National Conference leader claimed the Opposition alliance was struggling to keep pace with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s "unparalleled election machine”.

He argued that the Opposition must work together and make joint decisions if it wants to challenge the ruling party, highlighting that the Bihar Assembly election results showed how fragile the bloc had become.

Abdullah contended that the Opposition’s handling of internal disagreements had pushed Janata Dal (United leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ‘back into the arms” of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

He referred to discussions in which Kumar was present but was effectively denied a key role in the INDIA bloc, and said that excluding the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha from Bihar seat-sharing talks was another sign of poor coordination.

When asked whether the alliance was dead, he said that it was “sort of on life support” and prone to recovering briefly before falling back again.

He contrasted this with the BJP’s election strategy, saying the party moves quickly from one state to another and treats every contest as vital, explaining that once “Bihar is over” the BJP immediately turns to the next round of polls, while the Opposition usually reaches those states only “two months before the elections”.

“We will be lucky if we sew up our election alliances before the last date of filing of nominations, and sometimes not even then,” he said.

Abdullah also said he did not believe electronic voting machines were rigged but argued that “elections can be manipulated” by adjusting voter lists or changing constituency boundaries.

Also read: What Election Commission data says about ‘vote chori’ in the Bihar elections

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi responded to Abdullah’s remarks, saying that he has “always been very straightforward in his politics” and expresses his views openly, PTI reported.

She added that “even before the Bihar elections, Uddhav Thackeray had said that a meeting was necessary, but after the Lok Sabha elections, no major meeting of the full alliance has taken place”.

She added that all parties, particularly the Congress, need to “rethink, rework, re-energize, regroup, and figure out how to come together again”.

The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance is an Opposition bloc of several parties formed in July 2023 to put a united fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The alliance won 234 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the election, but secured a narrower majority than predicted by most pollsters.

After the Lok Sabha election, however, the alliance suffered defeats in Assembly elections in Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar. In Jharkhand, an alliance led by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha won the Assembly election in November 2024, while the National Conference won the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election in October 2024.

Also read: What the Opposition got so wrong in Bihar

Twenty-five persons were killed and six were injured in North Goa’s Arpora village late on Saturday night when a fire broke out at a club.

The fire erupted around midnight at a club named Birch By Romeo Lane, located near Baga beach, one of the most popular tourist spots in the state, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

While the police claimed that the fire broke out due to a cylinder blast, some eyewitnesses claimed that the blaze began on the first floor of the club, where several tourists were dancing, PTI reported. Several fire vehicles were rushed to the site, and rescue efforts were underway till Sunday morning.

The Goa Police said that 14 of those killed were staff members, and four were tourists, ANI reported. The identities of seven of the victims are yet to be established.

Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, who arrived at the site after the fire, said that three persons died of burn injuries, while the others died of suffocation.

Sawant said on social media that he has ordered a magisterial inquiry to identify the cause of the blaze and fix responsibility.

A first information report has been filed against the owner and general manager of the club, and they will be arrested, the chief minister was quoted as saying by The Hindu.

Goa Director General of Police Alok Kumar said that the fire has now brought under control.

“The fire was mainly concentrated around the kitchen area on the ground floor,” the police chief said. “The source and cause of the fire are yet to be ascertained.”

Kumar said that most of the bodies were recovered from the kitchen area, suggesting that most of those who died were employees at the club. Two more bodies were found on a staircase, he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that an ex-gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh each from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund will be given to the kin of those who died. The injured will be given Rs 50,000, he added.

Suspended Trinamool Congress MLA Humayun Kabir on Saturday laid the foundation stone for a Babri Masjid-like mosque at Beldanga in West Bengal’s Murshidabad, 33 years after the mosque was demolished in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya, The Indian Express 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 Saturday, thousands gathered in Murshidabad for the laying of the foundation stone, where Kabir was joined by imams from different parts of the country, The Hindu reported. Many in the crowd carried bricks for the construction of the mosque.

Kabir said he viewed the mosque’s construction as a “prestige battle for Muslims” and said the proposed complex would include a 300-bed hospital, a hotel, a helipad and a school, at an estimated cost of Rs 300 crore.

#WATCH | Murshidabad, West Bengal: Suspended TMC MLA Humayun Kabir lays the foundation stone of Babri Masjid. pic.twitter.com/rvCnocvTbK

— ANI (@ANI) December 6, 2025

The Trinamool Congress, the ruling party in West Bengal, had suspended Kabir on Thursday after he claimed that he would “build a Babri Masjid” in Murshidabad district

The party 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.

Kabir, on his part, accused Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of being arrogant and failing to support the state’s minority communities, The Indian Express reported.

“What did the minorities get by making her CM?” he asked.

He has also announced his intention to launch a new political party on December 22 ahead of the state’s Assembly polls, The Indian Express reported.

He said he would field candidates across a large number of Assembly seats with significant Muslim electorates, contending that representation for the community had fallen in successive elections.

West Bengal is expected to head for Assembly elections in the first half of 2026.

A day before the event, the Calcutta High Court had declined to intervene, noting that Kabir could proceed as long as law and order were maintained, The Indian Express reported.

The police had assured the court that adequate security arrangements were in place, and more than 3,000 personnel were deployed in the area on the day of the ceremony.

On the same day, Banerjee marked the day as “harmony day” on social media and said Bengal’s traditions were rooted in unity and rejected attempts to stoke communal tensions.

Bharatiya Janata Party leaders criticised the event, with the party’s state president Samik Bhattacharya claiming Kabir was “acting on a script prepared by Mamata Banerjee”, The Hindu reported.

Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari described the move as a dangerous precedent.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Sakharov Sarkar held a prayer to begin the construction of a planned replica of the Ayodhya Ram temple in the state’s Berhampore, ANI reported.

He also placed a holy stone to mark the official start of the project.

Sarkar also claimed that the temple “will be very huge and will also include a hospital and a school”, the news agency reported.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Saturday sent a show cause notice to IndiGo Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers, directing him to explain why action should not be taken against him for large-scale flight disruptions over the past week, The Hindu reported.

Air travel has been severely hit since December 2, when a shortage of pilots and crew forced IndiGo to cancel and delay hundreds of flights. The disruption also led to fares on several routes rising to unprecedented levels.

The DGCA, in the show cause notice to Elbers, said that such large-scale operational failures indicated “significant lapses in planning, oversight”, The Hindu reported. The disruption prima facie showed that the airline had not complied with rules governing pilot rest and duty hours, the regulatory body said.

“Whereas as the CEO you are responsible for ensuring effective management of the airlines, but you have failed in your duty to ensure timely arrangements for the conduct of reliable operations and the availability of requisite facilities to the passenger,” the DGCA said, according to The Hindu.

Elbers has been directed to explain within 24 hours why action should not be taken against him.

The disruption took place after IndiGo failed to adequately adjust its roster to comply with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s revised duty and rest requirements that came into force on November 1.

The revised rostering rules were issued in January 2024 to address concerns about pilot fatigue and were meant to take effect on June 1.

However, airlines asked for a delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually implemented on November 1.

As IndiGo struggled to meet the new requirements, it was unable to staff enough flights, resulting in widespread cancellations and delays through the week. This led to thousands of passengers stranded at airports, with little information on when their flights would take off.

This is Kochi airport between 2 am to 5 am. People sleeping on floor, fighting, crying. Aircrafts available but no pilots. Worst, while crew gets mandatory rest time, ground staff is working double shifts, sleepless in total chaos #Indigo @DGCAIndia @IndiGo6E #FlightCancellations pic.twitter.com/hoRubnaOUM

— Tabassum Barnagarwala (@tabassum_b) December 5, 2025

In the early hours of Sunday, IndiGo said that it had cancelled a significant number of flights on Saturday, and only operated a little above 700 flights. “The main objective was to reboot the network, systems and rosters so that we could start afresh today with higher number of flights, improved stability, and there are some early signs of improvement,” it said.

The airline said that it hopes to operate over 1,500 flights on Sunday.

“With regards to destinations, over 95% of network connectivity has already been re-established as we are able to operate to 135 out of the existing 138 destinations in operations,” IndiGo said. “While we understand that we have a long way to go, we are committed to build back the trust of our customers.”

pic.twitter.com/5eae9Enrj4

— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) December 6, 2025

The Civil Aviation Ministry on Saturday imposed distance-based fare caps, going up to Rs 18,000 on the longest routes, amid continued disruptions in IndiGo’s operations and a sharp spike in ticket prices.

The cap takes immediate effect and will remain in force until fares stabilise or the government reviews the situation, the ministry said.

Under the notified limits, airlines can charge a maximum fare of Rs 7,500 for routes up to 500 km, Rs 12,000 for routes between 500 km and 1,000 km, Rs 15,000 for those between 1,000 km and 1,500 km, and Rs 18,000 for distances above 1,500 km. These limits exclude user development fee, passenger service fee and taxes.

The ministry said that the ceiling on airfares will apply only to economy-class tickets and will not cover business-class or UDAN flights. UDAN flights are government-supported regional services under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik scheme that connect smaller or remote airports with capped, affordable fares on select seats.

Air travel has been hit since Tuesday, when a shortage of pilots and crew forced IndiGo to cancel and delay hundreds of flights, pushing fares on several routes to unprecedented levels.

In the last few days, one-way economy fares saw a steep rise, with prices on some routes surging above Rs 1 lakh.

A Delhi-Bhopal flight on Friday was priced at around Rs 1.32 lakh, compared to the usual Rs 4,000-Rs 5,000. The same day, the only Mumbai-Delhi flight available was quoting Rs 51,860 per passenger, while the sole Delhi-Mumbai service showed seats at Rs 48,972. On the Delhi-Bengaluru sector, fares touched around Rs 40,000 and Bengaluru-Delhi flights were priced at nearly Rs 70,000.

On Saturday, the ministry said that airlines must not exceed the notified fare caps and should maintain ticket availability across all fare buckets.

It added that carriers may need to increase capacity on routes seeing a surge in demand.

Airlines have also been advised to avoid steep fare hikes on sectors affected by cancellations and to offer maximum possible assistance to stranded passengers, including alternate flight options where feasible.

What caused the disruption

The disruption in IndiGo’s operations began on Tuesday after the airline faced a shortage of pilots and crew, having failed to adequately adjust its roster to comply with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s revised duty and rest requirements that came into force on November 1.

The norms include a provision which states “no leave shall be substituted for weekly rest”.

The revised rostering rules were issued in January 2024 to address concerns about pilot fatigue and were meant to take effect on June 1.

However, airlines asked for a delayed implementation because of staffing shortages and operational challenges, and the key changes were eventually implemented on November 1.

As IndiGo struggled to meet the new requirements, it was unable to staff enough flights, resulting in widespread cancellations and delays through the week.

On Friday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation withdrew its instruction on weekly rest for crew members, saying the provision needed to be reviewed in light of the disruptions and requests from airlines to ensure continuity and stability of operations.

IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market share, cancelled more than 800 flights across four major airports on Saturday, PTI reported.

A day earlier, it had cancelled all domestic flights from Delhi till midnight. Services in other cities were also affected, leaving passengers stranded at airports.

Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha on Friday introduced a private member’s bill in Parliament seeking the maximum punishment for acts of sacrilege against religious scriptures, such as the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible and the Quran.

Private member’s bills are introduced in Parliament independently by MPs.

Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Chadha said that his bill proposes to amend the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita to make sacrilege cases against religious scriptures an offence carrying the highest punishment.

I Introduced a Private Member’s Bill in Parliament to provide for maximum punishment for sacrilege to Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji, Bhagwat Gita, Holy Quran and Holy Bible.

This bill proposes to amend the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 to make such cases of sacrilege a crime… pic.twitter.com/lpwJaI2lQi

— Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) December 5, 2025

The Aam Aadmi Party MP claimed that Punjab had witnessed several cases of sacrilege, adding that the state Assembly in 2018 passed a similar bill to provide for life imprisonment for such incidents.

That bill was returned by the president, he said. “Subsequently, the Punjab Assembly has again tabled a new bill giving maximum punishment of 10 years to life for sacrilege cases,” Chadha added.

In July, the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab introduced the 2025 Punjab Prevention of Offences Against Holy Scripture(s) Bill in the state Assembly.

It proposes life imprisonment and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh for acts of sacrilege against religious scriptures.

The bill has been referred to a select committee of legislators for consultation with stakeholders.

Critics have said that the bill poses a grave threat to constitutional values and “goes against the very grain of a secular polity”. They have argued that the bill is a regressive move that undermines freedom of expression.

Also read: Punjab’s anti-sacrilege bill goes against secular polity, say former bureaucrats

The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation on Saturday imposed temporary caps on airline ticket fares as IndiGo’s domestic operations remained disrupted for the fifth consecutive day.

The ministry said that domestic airlines must not charge passengers more than the notified limits, and added that any deviation from these norms would attract “immediate corrective action in the larger public interest”.

The caps set a maximum fare of Rs 7,500 for routes up to 500 km, Rs 12,000 for routes between 500 km and 1,000 km, Rs 15,000 for those between 1,000 km and 1,500 km, and Rs 18,000 for routes above 1,500 km. These caps exclude applicable user development fee, passenger service fee and taxes.

It also directed IndiGo to clear all pending passenger refunds without delay and mandated that the refund process for all cancelled or disrupted flights be completed by 8 pm on Sunday.

IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market share, cancelled more than 400 flights across four major airports on Saturday, PTI reported.

A day earlier, it had cancelled all domestic flights from Delhi till midnight. Services in other cities were also affected, leaving passengers stranded at airports.

The reduction in IndiGo’s capacity has pushed up domestic airfares across carriers.

On Saturday, the ministry said that it has taken serious note of concerns about “unusually high airfares being charged by certain airlines” during the ongoing disruption.

“In order to protect passengers from any form of opportunistic pricing, the ministry has invoked its regulatory powers to ensure fair and reasonable fares across all affected routes,” the ministry said in a statement.

The fare caps will be in place until the situation stabilises, it added.

The ministry also said that airlines should maintain ticket availability across all fare buckets and, if required, consider increasing capacity on routes witnessing a surge in demand.

The ministry also said that IndiGo had been instructed to set up dedicated passenger support and refund facilitation cells.

The airline has been asked to ensure that baggage separated from passengers due to cancellations or delays is traced and delivered to them within the next 48 hours.

These directives came a day after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation withdrew its instructions to airlines on weekly rest for crew members.

The regulator said the provision, which states that “no leave shall be substituted for weekly rest”, needed to be reviewed in light of the disruptions and requests from airlines to ensure continuity and operational stability.

The order was withdrawn after a shortage of pilots and crew disrupted flights operated by IndiGo beginning Tuesday. The airline had not made sufficient adjustments to its roster to accommodate new government regulations.

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

IndiGo had sought relief from some provisions that limit pilot duty hours at night, Reuters reported.

On Friday, the regulator also granted IndiGo a one-time exemption from night-duty rules for pilots.

Later in the day, Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu said that the Union government will institute a high-level inquiry into the disruption.

IndiGo released an apology on Friday saying that while the problem “will not get resolved overnight”, it was making efforts to bring its operations back to normal.

“Today [Friday] should be the day with highest number of cancellations, as we are doing all that is necessary to reboot all our systems and schedules for progressive improvement starting tomorrow,” it said.

The airlines added that it will process refunds for cancellations automatically and will offer a full waiver on cancellations and rescheduling requests between December 5 and December 15.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the South Central Railway announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers travelling to Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata from Hyderabad following the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights, The Indian Express reported.

The Northern Railway has alsoadded extra coaches to popular services and are running special trains to high-demand destinations, ANI reported.

The News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority on Tuesday directed five news channels to take down eight shows that linked a National Council of Educational Research and Training textbook to a “love jihad” conspiracy.

The complaint concerned the misrepresentation of a fictional letter in an old NCERT Class 3 Environmental Studies chapter titled Chitti Aayi Hai. The letter, written by a character named Reena to another character, Ahmed, was wrongly projected by the television channels as evidence of a love jihad conspiracy, according to the complaint.

Love jihad is a Hindutva conspiracy theory that Muslim men trick Hindu women into romantic relationships with the aim of converting them to Islam. The Union home ministry has told Parliament that Indian law has no provision defining such a term.

The programmes challenged by complainants Indrajeet Ghorpade and Utkarsh Mishra were aired on India TV, News18 MP/Chhattisgarh, Zee MP/Chhattisgarh, Zee News and ABP News.

In its December 2 order directing the removal of the videos, the regulatory body noted that just because an NCERT chapter shows a girl writing a letter to a boy from another religion, it does not justify being described as love jihad.

Retired Justice AK Sikri, the chairperson of the regulatory body, observed that India is a secular country, “which is the constitutional mandate as well”.

“Therefore, giving of this slant to a particular chapter in an NCERT book by the broadcasters would amount to the violation of the Code of Conduct,” Sikri said.

Complainants allege biased coverage

The complainants had alleged that even though the channels had been recently censured for their earlier coverage relating to love jihad, they had chosen to highlight a news story that was “entirely subjective”, “highly polarising” and largely pushed by groups seeking “notoriety and popularity”.

The channels had given a platform to persons promoting the claims, and in some cases, the anchors had casually endorsed the narrative through “dog-whistling” and tickers on the screen, the complainants had alleged.

They said that in the show by News18 MP/Chhattisgarh, the entire coverage revolved around the comments of Dhirendra Shastri, the head priest of the Bageshwar Dham, who claimed that Hindu women were in danger and that love jihad was a strategy to increase the Muslim population.

The complainants argued the show reinforced Shastri’s narrative through tickers and visuals, with “no critical examination” of whether the claims were communal or divisive.

In the broadcasts aired on Zee News and Zee Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh, the complainants stated that even though teachers were interviewed, the broadcast suggested that the chapter in the textbook was “suspicious”.

They said that the reporter openly questioned the motive behind the chapter and implied that including a letter from “Reena to Ahmed” was problematic.

According to the complainants, the views clearly showed that the reporter himself opposed the chapter.

The complainants also alleged that on India TV, the channel showed extreme reactions, including that of a person who was “blackening” the textbook. The broadcaster did not question or challenge the conduct, thereby amplifying it, Ghorpade and Mishra had alleged.

A consistent pattern across all channels, according to the complainants, was the “absence of any critical engagement”. They said that News18 MP/Chhattisgarh and ABP News had challenged Shastri’s claims.

The complainants pointed out that none of the channels had made an effort to contact the NCERT for its explanation.

Merely reporting statements, say channels

During the hearings before the regulatory body, the channels defended their shows by arguing that they were reporting statements made by a parent, political leaders or other public figures.

News18 Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh said it had aired the comments by Shastri and that it was not endorsing or verifying what he said. It also questioned whether the term love jihad can be construed to be “unconstitutional or unparliamentary”, and whether there was “any embargo against the usage” of the term.

India TV said that its coverage focused on the protests and had included NCERT’s response.

Zee and ABP News argued that the term love jihad had been used in the parents’ original complaint, and that their reporting was centred on the news value of the controversy.

NBDSA disapproves coverage, orders removal of shows

The regulatory body disapproved of the manner in which the news story had been dealt with.

Sikri, the chairperson of the NBDSA, noted that a parent had complained about the letter in the chapter and that the channels had justified their coverage saying that they were reporting about the complaint.

The shows being limited to covering the complaint as news might not have led to objections, Sikri said. “Instead, this complaint was turned into a debate by the broadcasters with a specific narrative, and in doing so, they did not interview any other persons or the 15 parents,” his order said.

The NBDSA order also noted that some channels had interviewed individuals whose views were already well known, but failed to bring on anyone with a different perspective.

The regulator observed that the way the shows had been structured “clearly showed a lack of objectivity”.

It directed the five channels to take down the videos from their websites, YouTube channels and other platforms. The broadcasters were asked to report compliance to the NBDSA within a week.

The Kerala High Court on Saturday granted Palakkad MLA Rahul Mamkootathil interim protection from arrest in a rape case registered against him, PTI reported.

Justice K Babu issued the order on an anticipatory bail petition filed by him in the case, Bar and Bench reported. The judge said that the court would hear Mamkootathil’s petition on December 15 next, adding that he should not be arrested till then.

On Thursday, a sessions court in Thiruvananthapuram refused to grant anticipatory bail to the MLA in the case, after which he had moved the High Court.

In light of the development, the Congress in Kerala expelled Mamkootathil on Thursday.

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.

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 Palakkad MLA has allegedly been absconding since the first case was registered against him, PTI reported.

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

On Thursday, Congress’ state chief Sunny Joseph stated that the party leadership had been consulted about his expulsion.

“It is better that he quits as a legislator,” the Kerala Congress chief said. “The Congress has never protected him.” He added that Mamkootathil’s continuation in the party had become “ethically untenable”.

The Union Ministry of Rural Development on Friday told Parliament that it is in the “process of reworking and refining the necessary modalities and procedures” to resume the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in West Bengal.

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

Funds for the scheme are contributed by the Union and the state governments.

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

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

On Friday, Trinamool Congress MPs held a protest in the Parliament complex over the dues from the Union government for West Bengal, accusing a “vindictive regime” of starving an entire state to settle political scores, The Hindu reported.

The Union government owes the state government more than Rs 3,000 crore under MNREGS, of which over Rs 1,400 crore is the wages due for completed work by registered workers, the newspaper reported.

Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’ Brien told The Hindu that West Bengal was one of the top-performing states under the scheme before the funds were stopped in March 2022.

The Rajya Sabha member added that the workers under the scheme had earned their wages honestly. “For over three years, they have waited silently, invisibly,” the newspaper quoted the Rajya Sabha MP as saying.

O’Brien added: “After over three years of freezing funds, does the [Union] government accept that it has effectively converted a legal right-to-work into a political weapon against Bengal’s rural people?”

In June, the Calcutta High Court directed the Centre to resume implementation of the scheme, stating that the Union and state governments may impose special conditions to prevent irregularities.

The Union government challenged this in the Supreme Court, which on October 27, dismissed the petition and upheld the High Court’s directive. The implementation did not begin, prompting further petitions.

On November 7, the High Court directed the Union government to immediately resume work under MNREGS in the state.

While Sam Dalrymple was interviewing survivors of the Partition of India and Pakistan, he was struck by the response of one man from Tripura: “Which partition?” Was he talking about the events of 1937, 1947 or 1971?

The conversation helped inspire Dalrymple to explore a much longer history of border-making in the former British Indian Empire. In this episode of Past Imperfect, he discusses his book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.

Until 1937, India legally constituted a sweep of territory stretching from the Red Sea near Aden to the Burmese border with Thailand on the Isthmus of Kra. The Indian empire’s roster of princely states included Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Shan states abutting China’s Yunnan province.

Only 34 years later, in 1971, this had splintered into 12 nation states.

How did this occur? Despite nationalist narratives, the modern map of South Asia was far from inevitable. Two themes stand out in Shattered Lands.

First, each of the five partitions of the British Indian Empire – of Burma, Arabia, Pakistan, princely India, and Bangladesh – was linked with one another.

Second, partition proposals encountered stiff opposition, sometimes from unexpected quarters. Many Burmese opposed separation from India, just as many East Bengalis clung to the idea of Pakistan as late as 1971. The borders of modern South Asia emerged through a process of fierce negotiation, political chance, and a number of missed opportunities.

Burma stands out as perhaps the most emblematic case. In the early 1930s, Rangoon was a thriving and cosmopolitan entrepot, attracting more migrants than contemporary New York. Gujarati and Tamil were spoken alongside Burmese. When the British government proposed creating Burma as a separate crown colony, many Burmese political leaders launched a vigorous protest.

Most prominent amongst them was U Ottama, better known as Mahatma Ottama, a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and a member of the Indian National Congress. Ottama went so far as to become the president of the Hindu Mahasabha so as to campaign against separation.

It is remarkable how quickly sentiment changed in Burma. The Great Depression helped stimulate a frenzy of anti-Indian xenophobia, especially as Chettiar merchants expropriated Burmese land. “The rhetoric of separationists had revolved around fears of Indian immigrants stealing honest Burmese jobs and Chettiar land seizures seemed a damning proof of the point,” Dalrymple argues.

Some Burmese politicians, observing the changing headwinds, now built careers out of antipathy towards Indians. In the late 1930s, U Saw, who helped fan the flames of anti-Indian pogroms, cultivated ties with Japanese imperialists and won admiration from Nazi propagandists. In power as Burma’s prime minister, he reclassified Rohingyas as Indian foreigners, setting the stage for decades of violent ethnic conflict and the pogroms of the 2010s.

Burma was a harbinger of what was to come. The new India-Burma border snaked through the Patkai Hills, dividing communities like the Nagas – and thus inflaming new conflicts. The fait accompli of hiving Burma off of British India, meanwhile, would be constantly referenced in demands for Pakistan: Rahmat Ali Chaudhary, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and BR Ambedkar all commented about how the logic of division could be repeated in the future.

Amidst the reams of material written about the endgame of empire and Partition, Dalrymple brings a new perspective by looking at the bigger picture. The Long March of 1942, where Indians trekked by foot to escape Japanese-occupied Burma, was the first incident of partition-induced mass migration. And, as Jinnah, Vallabhbhai Patel, V. P. Menon, and Louis Mountbatten used carrots and sticks to coax princely states into accession to India or Pakistan, the fates of princely states in Arabia and Burma also hung in the balance.

Mountbatten ultimately relinquished Indian control of Gulf states early in his viceroyalty. “Without this minor administrative transfer,” Dalrymple tantalizingly speculates, “it is likely that the states of the Persian Gulf Residency would have become part of either India or Pakistan after Independence, as happened to every other princely state in the subcontinent.”

Dalrymple’s account of the 1947 Partition is particularly devastating. No major leader – not even Jawaharlal Nehru – comes out of his reading entirely unscathed. Mountbatten might have made the fatal mistake of drastically shortening the timeline for independence, ensuring chaos and confusion in Punjab and Bengal. Jinnah might have been scandalously unaffected by the communal violence unleashed through events like Direct Action Day.

But Congress leaders were hardly free from blame: Vallabhbhai Patel controlled the Indian intelligence services and displayed a partiality towards the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, while Nehru ultimately signed off on the violent integration of Hyderabad into India.

The 1940s, Dalrymple makes clear, was a moment bursting with fantasies about dividing India. Some Indian princes, like the nawab of Bhopal, flirted with the idea of a “Rajastan” that could federate Indian princely states. Other parties suggested declaring Calcutta a “free city,” on the model of interwar Danzig, with access to both India and Pakistan – or even making it the capital of a unified and independent Bengal.

During this time, which writer Saadat Hasan Manto perhaps correctly diagnosed as a collective lapse into madness, it was not inevitable that a relatively minor entity like Bhutan or Dubai would emerge independent while Hyderabad, a major military and economic power, would disappear off the map.

Shattered Lands eschews all nationalist narratives – and this is why it deserves to be read. At the conclusion of this episode, Dalrymple and I discuss how modern nationalisms erased centuries of cosmopolitan connections across the Indian Ocean, and how South Asia’s violent history of partitions serves as a warning in our own era of hypernationalism and receding globalisation.

Dinyar Patel is an associate professor of history at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research in Mumbai. His award-winning biography of Dadabhai Naoroji, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism, was published by Harvard University Press in May 2020.

Past Imperfect is sponsored and produced by the Centre for Wisdom and Leadership at the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.

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 Birbhum 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

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 were brought back to India on Friday.

The woman, Sunali Khatun, and her son Sabir entered West Bengal through the Mahadipur border crossing, The Times of India reported. They were taken to a hospital in Malda for tests to determine whether she can travel to their home in Birbhum about 180 km away.

Khatun’s husband Danish Sk is still in Bangladesh.

The Union government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it will bring back Khatun and her son on humanitarian grounds, but “without prejudice” to New Delhi’s “contentions on merits and our right to put them under surveillance”.

This came two days after the court, taking note of Khatun’s advanced pregnancy, asked the government whether the mother and the son could be returned to India.

Khatun, her son and husband 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 Birbhum 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 government and the Delhi Police questioned whether the High Court had the jurisdiction to hear the case.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court directed the West Bengal government to ensure free medical facilities for Khatun. 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.

The bench 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.

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

“I’ve met [all] sorts of people, including major war criminals. I don’t regret having met any of them.” That was public intellectual Noam Chomsky’s belligerent reply in 2023 to a newspaper’s question about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. More recently, Epstein’s emails reveal a close friendship with Chomsky and his wife.

Of particular interest is a testimonial (undated but written in or after 2017) written by Chomsky for Epstein, in which he describes their friendship of six years as a “valuable” and “rewarding” experience, thanks to Epstein’s intellectual breadth and insights, and says that “Jeffrey has repeatedly been able to arrange, sometimes on the spot, very productive meetings with leading figures in the sciences and mathematics, and global politics, people whose work and activities I had looked into though I had never expected to meet them.”

In the infamous BBC Newsnight interview, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was asked if in retrospect, knowing Epstein was a paedophile and sexual predator, he felt any “guilt, regret, or shame” about his friendship with Epstein. No, he said, “the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful…(it) had some seriously beneficial outcomes in areas that have nothing to do with (his crimes).”

Both Chomsky and Andrew are saying they don’t regret being Epstein’s friend because through him they could meet useful and important people.

Andrew faces the allegation of raping a young minor girl trafficked by Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein. I must emphasise here that knowing or meeting Epstein does not in any way imply that Chomsky was party to his crimes against girls and women. I’m not suggesting “guilt by association” nor am I interested in a “gotcha” moment at his expense.

But for me the question is this: what does Chomsky’s relationship to Epstein tell us about whether sexual violence survivors matter to our politics – to Left and progressive politics?

In 2005, authorities had begun investigating allegations made by 36 minor girls, one as young as 14, that Jeffrey Epstein had pressured them into giving him sexual massages and had trafficked them to other men. They unearthed a wealth of evidence backing the girls’ words, and eventually in 2008 a draft indictment charged him with 60 counts of federal crimes, enough to earn him a life sentence.

But Epstein infamously got away with a mere rap on his knuckles. In a sweetheart plea deal he confessed to a minor charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution and spent 13 months in an open prison arrangement where he was free in the day and returned to prison at night. All this was widely discussed and criticised in the mainstream media.

In 2023, Chomsky explained why he and his wife befriended Epstein in spite of his conviction for sex crimes against minor girls. “What was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence,” he said. “According to prevailing US laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

Let’s unpack this a little.

Chomsky is a Left icon whose writings introduced generations to the nature of power, impunity for the powerful, and the propaganda that manufactures consent for such systemic inequity, violence and impunity. If working-class children had complained of being trafficked by a filthy rich CEO to do toxic and dangerous work, and the CEO got away with a rap on his knuckles, would Chomsky argue that he now had a clean slate?

But the rules seem different when the working-class children in question are girls, trafficked and enslaved not for factory labour but for sex work. In Chomsky’s political world, these individual survivors of sexual predation are invisible.

The key term in Chomsky’s testimonial is “prevailing norms”. The hint is that the MeToo movement changed prevailing norms and Chomsky’s friendship with Epstein must not be judged by the new feminist norms. But that’s untrue. Even police officials publicly condemned Epstein’s plea deal as a mockery of the prevailing standards of justice, as did most commentators in the “mainstream” media. Why was Chomsky happy to accept the plea deal’s norms which had fallen to a shameful low by any standards?

Speaking to the media in 2008 after his guilty plea, Epstein used an astonishing metaphor which revealed how he viewed his actions and “prevailing laws and norms”. He “likened himself to Gulliver shipwrecked among the diminutive denizens of Lilliput”, saying “Gulliver’s playfulness had unintended consequences. That is what happens with wealth. There are unexpected burdens as well as benefits”.

In his email to Epstein, we should remember, Andrew signed off with the words “Play more later”. Paedophilic predation is seen by Epstein and his circle as “playfulness”. Epstein saw himself as special, entitled by wealth to “play” with “diminutive people” like underage girls without money or status. The prevailing laws and norms were made by diminutive, small-minded people who could not understand the culture of those so far above their station.

As a public intellectual, Chomsky is seen as a defender of “diminutive people”. But he befriended and vouched for Epstein – and has till date not spoken a word in support of the “diminutive” survivors.

The fact that Chomsky expressed admiration for Epstein’s ability to pick up his phone and connect immediately to the world’s Big People is telling: did he really not think that this ability, these connections, might have something to do with the lightness of his punishment?

Why did Chomsky even write that testimonial for Epstein addressed “To Whomsoever It May Concern”? We know that Epstein launched a major PR campaign to rehabilitate himself after pleading guilty to child sexual abuse. Part of that PR campaign included donations to universities and meetings with intellectuals and scientists, all of which helped polish his tarnished image. Did Chomsky write that testimonial at Epstein’s request – his contribution to that PR campaign? Chomsky wrote that testimonial as a public figure – he owes it to the public now to explain why he did it.

The problem is Chomsky is not an exception. Here in India, I’ve just read rave reviews of a stage performance by Mahmood Farooqui in Dastan-e-Ret-Samadhi adapting the Hindi novel Ret Samadhi (for which the writer and translator, both women, received the Booker Prize). Farooqui was once convicted for rape and his conviction was overturned by a higher court.

The judge who acquitted him agreed accepted the trial court’s assessment that the survivor’s word was credible and that she had indeed said “no”. By the letter and spirit of the “prevailing” law, that’s rape, open and shut. But the judge created a new legal concept, lowering the prevailing laws and norms, to acquit. A “feeble no”, he ruled, could mean a yes.

The very phrase “feeble no” is a reminder that the survivor did say no, which proves that she was, in fact, sexually violated against her will. I hear progressive friends say, “He’s been acquitted, so he’s innocent, so why shouldn’t we platform him, we can’t punish him in perpetuity.”

To each of them I say: you’re free to platform and celebrate Farooqui. But on every stage, every page that you do so, you are emblazoning your ringing endorsement and advertisement of the motto – A Feeble No is a Yes. Like Chomsky, you too are happy to embrace the most grotesque and farcical mockery of judicial norms as your own.

The “feeble no” judge held an educated woman’s no to a higher standard: it was her job to make her “no” forceful enough for the man to understand. But he held the man to a very low standard: despite his mastery of language, literature, performance arts and cinema, this man could not be expected to understand that no actually means no. He could not be expected to use his words if in doubt and ask the woman – you said no, would you like me to stop?

Chomsky was dazzled by Epstein and his fellow dinner guest “the great artist” Woody Allen (also accused of sexually abusing his own daughter as a toddler). India’s literary and cultural progressives are dazzled by the artistry of the man with the “feeble no” fig leaf.

If you treat sexual assault allegations against a man as irrelevant to your political assessment of his intellect, his art, and his ideas, you are the opposite of progressive. The norms have progressed and you had better catch up or be left behind.

Kavita Krishnan is a feminist activist and writer, author of Fearless Freedom (Penguin 2020).

December 6, 1992, did not just mark the physical demolition of a mosque: it saw the shattering of the promise India had made to itself that faith would never be weaponised for politics and that plurality would be acknowledged as the nation’s deepest inheritance.

The devastating scale of this rupture was understood by the poet Kaifi Azmi with the clarity of a seer and the wrenching anguish of a patriot. His poem, Doosra Banbaas (The Second Exile), emerged as one of the earliest and sharpest literary indictments of the violence unleashed in Ayodhya.

Yet, it is more than just a political critique. It is a primal lament for the India that went into exile that day – an India of fraternal coexistence, moral courage and syncretic belonging.

Azmi wields irony like a surgeon’s scalpel. His grief is not abstract: it is embodied in the betrayal of neighbours, the cruelty of the mobs and the hypocrisy of compatriots.

In a searing couplet, he strips away the cultural self-righteousness often worn as virtue.

“Shākāhārī the mere dost tumhāre ḳhanjar.”
Your sword, my friend, was vegetarian.

Violence committed by those claiming civility is not merely violence – it is dishonesty made manifest. The claim to purity only amplifies the depth of the deception.

The poem reaches its devastating climax when Azmi reimagines the national tragedy through the eyes of the revered figure whose honour the destruction of the Babri Masjid was intended to restore.

“Chhe december ko milā dūsrā ban-bās mujhe.”
On December 6, I was condemned to a second exile.

The exile he speaks of is not the poet’s alone. It is Ram, the witness, who turns away. Azmi conjures not the triumphant Ram of political sloganeering, but a weary, wounded Ram who finds his own capital city unrecognisable.

The exile, this time, is chosen – for what remains is a city drenched not in devotion, but in blood.

Azmi’s warning resonates with undiminished force today because exile is never merely geographical. It is emotional, ethical and civilisational.

A nation enters exile when it loses its sense of justice. A society enters exile when it forgets how to recognise its members as human first. A people enter exile when memory is replaced by triumphal amnesia.

Three decades on, Doosra Banbaas cuts like freshly sharpened truth. Its power lies not only in its condemnation of hatred but in its profound mourning for the loss of a gentler India, a braver India, an India so sure of its own spiritual heritage that it never needed to fear the faith of another.

Poetry cannot rebuild demolished structures, but it has the singular power to rebuild conscience. And conscience, once awakened, is the only scaffolding strong enough to hold up a fractured republic.

If December 6 is to carry a meaning beyond perpetual grief, it must become a yearly, collective reckoning – a harsh reminder that a nation cannot afford the luxury of forgetting what hatred, cloaked in piety, once did in its name.

Azmi’s Ram walked away in sorrow. It is for us, the citizens of this Republic, to walk back – towards justice, towards memory, towards an India that refuses to live in a permanent exile from its own moral imagination.

Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.

In the desert landscape of western Rajasthan, how communities use water has long depended on an intimate understanding of soil.

Water management systems such as khadeens, bavdi, beris, tankas, johads, naadi, naada and talab were built on a deep, practical knowledge of how soils behave in extreme aridity in the region characterised by low rainfall. Long before the language of “soil and moisture conservation”, “recharge”, “infiltration” entered policy vocabulary, localised systems of water harvesting were already in place.

Today, as India faces accelerating climate variability, land degradation, groundwater collapse and extreme heat, Rajasthan’s water systems are an urgent reminder and solution: soil health is water security.

On World Soil Day, the evolution of Rajasthan’s soil-water wisdom, how it shaped community stewardship and the importance of reviving these systems offer lessons on climate resilience.

Soil power

Contemporary watershed interventions, involving measures such as bunds and planting trees, are often standardised across landscapes, but traditional systems in Rajasthan have been able to harness soil types to conserve water. Each structure is designed around specific soil textures, salinity levels, and slopes making the most of local geomorphology.

For example, it is understood that sand particles do not coalesce like clay, which cracks when hardened allowing moisture to escape. Sand particles stay separate as their porosity is high and do not harden or fissure. Moisture that seeps into the sand dunes does not escape, but instead percolates and collects. As Arati Kumar Rao notes in her book Marginlands, “The heart of the dune, a few feet deep, is a water storing miracle.”

The subcutaneous layer of the desert is gypsum, a mineral with a calcium base. This hard layer holds the fresh rainwater and prevents it from sinking deep into the water table, which is often salty. This water, which is neither surface water nor fossil water is called rejwani pani. Communities often depend on this for consumption.

Across Rajasthan’s arid districts, a range of water-harvesting systems are shaped by this understanding of local soils and rainfall patterns.

In Jaisalmer and Barmer, farmers construct khadeens, which are large earthen embankments built across drainage lines. These 6km-7km-wide systems slow runoff during rare rains, allowing silt to settle and moisture to percolate into deeper layers, sustaining crops long after rainfall. Surplus water flows sequentially from one khadeen to another, creating a cascading recharge system.

Alwar and Shekhawati districts rely on johads, which are small earthen reservoirs, primarily. By slowing runoff, they enhance silt deposition, enrich downstream fields, and recharge wells through steady percolation supported by vegetation and intact soil structure.

Western Rajasthan’s beris are traditional percolation wells that tap shallow aquifers. Constructed near ponds or within johad catchments, they recharge naturally through seepage. Their mineral-rich sediments filter water, while careful protection of surrounding soil ensures purity and continued recharge.

Tankas, or underground storage tanks fed by micro-catchments, are common in Bikaner, Phalodi, and Barmer. Tankas maximise runoff from small rainfall events for drinking water. Their compacted catchments and covered design reduce seepage and contamination,

Finally, nadis, or small natural depressions, collect rainwater in sloping terrain, with overflow outlets managing excess and helping water persist longer in western Rajasthan.

Community practice

The sacred rule of the desert is that you do not deny anyone water.

Rajasthan’s water systems are embedded in local ethics and institutions, with each village being planned around water. Local grazing regulations prevent soil erosion around recharge zones. Village commons are protected to maintain vegetation that stabilises slopes with rules for silt removal, embankment repairs and seasonal maintenance. Digging and water conservation is a community effort, in which all would participate.

Oral traditions encode soil knowledge such as when to open spillways, where seepage indicates healthy recharge and how soil colour signals salinity.

Following these systems, each village has access to three types of water:

i) palar pani, which is surface water harvested from rain on the aagor ,or catchment

ii) rejwani pani, which is percolated, or capillary water siphoned by beris

iii) patali pani, or the deep water table reached by the wells

This way, no single source will get overused and run dry.

Which water gets used when is governed by a natural cycle: once the lakes dry up, beris come into play in the deepest part of the Thar where there is no underlying gypsum layer that can hold water, making the well a lifeline.

Future of traditional systems

Today, Rajasthan’s soil-water relationship is under strain. Land degradation from development, improper agricultural practices, mining and mechanisation has destabilised the delicate balance of runoff and infiltration. Excess groundwater extraction has altered recharge dynamics, leaving beris and johads dry.

Intense rainfall has also overwhelmed traditional systems, accelerating erosion.

Urbanisation and land-use change have severed communities from the landscapes that once sustained them. The standardisation of watershed techniques affects water and soil if not done appropriately. The resulting loss of traditional knowledge means that fewer people understand soil properties that make these systems work.

Strengthening existing localised and traditional forms of watershed management could do wonders for preventing water scarcity.

Climate resilience, indigenous knowledge

As climate change intensifies drought cycles and heat stress, soil is the frontline of resilience. Healthy soils slow runoff, store moisture, buffer crops against drought, and recharge aquifers. They also enhance water quality through natural filtration while supporting biodiversity that stabilises ecosystems. In arid areas, soil determines whether water survives long enough for people and livestock to access it. In Rajasthan, soil conservation is water security.

The renewed interest in nature-based solutions is an opportunity to bring Rajasthan’s traditional systems into contemporary policy. Restoring khaadeens, johads and tankaas can enhance groundwater recharge at greater scale while participatory soil conservation can revive traditional stewardship practices.

Integrating indigenous knowledge into watershed and soil-health missions, such as the Watershed Development Component- Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana that focuses on improving degraded lands, can create more adaptive, context-sensitive interventions. Linking soil restoration with climate adaptation planning can support agriculture, drinking water security, and rural livelihoods simultaneously.

On World Soil Day, Rajasthan’s water systems show that soil health is integral to building climate resilience. Rajasthan’s traditional communities understood scientific techniques for water conservation. Reviving this wisdom can be an important investment in a climate change future.

Sanjana Nair is policy analyst and Karni Singh Bithoo is Project Manager at the Centre for Policy Design, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.

December 5 is World Soil Day.

The Rajasthan High Court has held that two consenting adults are entitled to be in a live-in relationship even if they have not reached the legal age of marriage, reported PTI on Friday.

The legal age of marriage in India is 18 years for women and 21 years for men.

Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand passed the order on Monday while hearing a petition filed by an 18-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man, Law Trend reported.

The petitioners sought protection from the woman’s family, alleging that they had threatened to kill the couple.

They also alleged that they had submitted complaints to the police in Kota on November 13 and November 17, but no action was taken.

Public prosecutor Vivek Choudhary opposed the petition, stating that the man had not reached the legal age of marriage and should not be allowed to be in a live-in relationship.

Dismissing the argument, the court cited Supreme Court judgements to hold that a live-in relationship between consenting adults does not amount to an offence.

Dhand also held that the petitioner’s right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution cannot be violated just because the man had not reached the age of marriage.

“The state has a constitutional obligation to safeguard the life and liberty of every individual,” PTI quoted the judge as saying.

The court also directed the police to assess the threat the couple is facing and to ensure protection, if required.

A male and female leopard locked in a ferocious clash, a Changeable hawk-eagle taking flight with the remains of a kill and a vast congregation of cormorants weaving patterns across the water are among the winning entries of the Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards 2025.

The awards were presented at an event in Mumbai on Friday.

The annual competition is organised by the Sanctuary Nature Foundation, which also brings out the Sanctuary Asia magazine, with the objective of promoting wildlife conservation through photography.

The awards were instituted in 2000 to recognise individuals working for the protection of wildlife and natural habitats in India.

The winners this year were chosen by a panel of judges comprising Sanctuary Asia founder and editor Bittu Sahgal, executive editor Lakshmy Raman, senior members of the magazine team Parvish Pandya, Saurabh Sawant and Prachi Galange, wildlife photographer and author Steve Winter, Wildlife Conservation Trust chief Anish Andheria and wildlife photographer and field biologist Nayan Khanolkar.

Rumna Mukherjee was awarded the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Adam Taylor received the second prize and Kuldeep Lodhi received the third prize.

The editors choice award went to Aditya Agarwal.

Eight change-makers from across the country were also honoured under four categories – Green Teacher Award, Wildlife Service Award, Young Naturalist Award and Lifetime Service Award – on Friday.

A look at the award-winning photographs:

Former judges, lawyers and the civil society group Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms wrote an open letter to Chief Justice Surya Kant on Friday, expressing concerns about the “unconscionable remarks” made by the chief justice’s bench about Rohingyas during a recent hearing.

The remarks made by the bench were contrary to core constitutional values, the signatories said.

“They have had the effect of dehumanising Rohingya refugees whose equal humanity and equal human rights are protected by the Constitution, our laws and by international law,” the letter said.

During the hearing on Tuesday, the bench of Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi had questioned how far the law should be stretched to accept persons who immigrate to India illegally. The court also asked whether the Union government had issued any order that declared Rohingyas as refugees.

The bench was hearing a habeas corpus plea, which alleged that five Rohingya persons had been detained by the authorities and then disappeared. A habeas corpus is a petition through which courts can order the authorities to produce a person before them to verify whether they have been detained.

The petition also 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 had 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.”

On Friday, the group said that as citizens committed to equity, human dignity and the moral foundations of justice, it was “deeply troubled by the remarks”.

The letter cited remarks questioning the legal status of the Rohingya as refugees, “equating them with intruders illegally entering India, the references to persons who dig tunnels to enter illegally, questioning whether such entrants are entitled to food, shelter and education”.

The signatories include AP Shah, the former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, K Chandru, a former judge of the Madras High Court, and Anjana Prakash, a former judge of the Patna High Court. Supreme Court Advocates Rajeev Dhavan, Colin Gonzalves and Kamini Jaiswal were also among the signatories.

The working group of the civil society organisation includes advocate Prashant Bhushan.

The letter said that the “invocation of domestic poverty as a reason to deny basic constitutionally guaranteed entitlements to refugees” and the “suggestion that they be spared third-degree measures, in their treatment in India” were troubling.

The members of the Rohingya community, just as any person in India, are entitled to the protections of Article 21 of the Constitution and “not just protection from ‘third degree measures’”. Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.

The former judges and lawyers said that the United Nations has described the Rohingyas as “the most persecuted minority” in the world, adding that the members of the community had fled to neighbouring countries to escape what has been described by the International Court of Justice as ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“They are fleeing to India, like centuries of refugees before them, seeking basic safety,” the group said.

The letter said that the words of the chief justice, as the head of the judiciary, “carry weight not simply in the courtroom but in the conscience of the nation” and have a “cascading effect” on the lower courts and the authorities.

“Invoking the plight of the poor in India to justify denying protections to refugees sets a dangerous precedent, being contrary to the principles of constitutional justice,” it added.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation withdrew its new weekly rest rules for crew that disrupted IndiGo’s operations for the fourth day on Friday. The regulator said it was necessary to review the provisions in view of the requests from airlines to ensure the stability of operations.

The revised rostering norms issued by the regulator in January 2024 were meant to take effect on June 1. Airlines had asked for delayed implementation, citing operational challenges. The key changes were eventually introduced on November 1 but IndiGo had not made sufficient adjustments to its roster to accommodate the new requirements.

The country’s largest airline by market share, IndiGo on Friday cancelled all its domestic flights from Delhi till midnight. Its services in other cities were also affected, leaving passengers stranded at airports. Read on.

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.25%. The panel had kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.5% in August and October after cutting it by 50 basis points from 6% to 5.5% in June.

Central banks usually reduce repo rates to stimulate economic growth by making borrowing cheaper for individuals and businesses. This translates to lower equated monthly instalments for borrowers. Read on.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reiterated to Russian President Vladimir Putin that India is not neutral but “on the side of peace”, underlining New Delhi’s support for efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine.

“We stand shoulder to shoulder in these peace efforts,” Modi told Putin, who arrived in New Delhi on Thursday for a two-day summit with the Indian prime minister.

Shortly after landing in New Delhi, Putin said that “certain actors clearly dislike India’s growing role in international markets” because of its close ties with Russia, and were trying to limit New Delhi’s influence by creating “artificial obstacles”.

He maintained that energy cooperation between India and Russia remained unaffected by “fleeting political swings” or by the war in Ukraine. Read on.

The Union government has announced that it will not impose penalties or take action against custodians registering waqf properties on the UMEED portal for three months after the deadline ends on Saturday. The announcement came as the progress in registrations has been slow because of technical glitches and custodians facing difficulties in finding documents of centuries-old properties.

The custodians of waqf properties had only six months to register the details on the portal, which has been developed by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs.

Opposition MPs have pointed out that the compliance period had “effectively been much shorter” because clarity on key provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act came only after the Supreme Court’s interim order in mid‑September. Read on.

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The Union government on Friday announced that it would not impose penalties or take action against custodians registering waqf properties on the UMEED portal for the next three months after the deadline ends on Saturday, reported ANI.

The statement came amid concerns about low registrations on the portal, which has seen slow progress due to technical glitches that caused repeated crashes and difficulties faced by custodians in locating documents for centuries-old properties, The Indian Express reported.

Union Minister of Minority Affairs Kiren Rijiju said that custodians who are unable to complete the registration process should approach the Waqf Tribunal, ANI reported. He added that while the Centre would provide “maximum relief”, it remained bound by the law.

The 2025 Waqf Amendment Act, passed in April, requires custodians of waqf properties to register records on the Unified Waqf Management, Empowerment, Efficiency and Development portal.

The portal was developed by the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs to create a digital inventory of waqf properties by geo-tagging them.

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

The UMEED portal was operationalised on June 6 and the rules under the Act were framed on July 3. The custodians of waqf properties had only six months to register the details on the portal.

On Friday, The Indian Express reported that only a small fraction of properties across four of the five states with the largest shares of waqf land had been registered on the portal.

The states are Uttar Pradesh, which has 1.4 lakh waqf properties, followed by West Bengal (80,480), Punjab (75,511), Tamil Nadu (66,092) and Karnataka (65,242). There are an estimated 8.8 lakh waqf properties in the country, according to the newspaper.

Among the five states, only 35% of properties had been registered on UMEED till Thursday.

In West Bengal, 12% of the properties had been registered till Monday night. The figure was 10% each in Karnataka till Tuesday and Tamil Nadu till Wednesday, reported The Indian Express.

In Punjab, 80% of the properties had been registered till Wednesday.

Against this backdrop, several political parties and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension of the deadline for registering waqf properties.

The court, however, refused to grant the request, stating that petitioners could approach the Waqf Tribunal. Section 3B of the Waqf Act gives the tribunal the power to extend the time limit, it noted.

On Monday, advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the petitioners, had contended that the time provided to register the properties was “very less” because not all details were available.

“We do not know who the waqif [who creates the endowment] is for waqfs of 100, 125 years old,” Sibal had said. “Without these details, the portal won’t accept.”

On Thursday, Opposition MPs met Rijiju, seeking a six-month extension of the deadline.

Following the meeting, Congress MP Syed Naseer Hussain said in a social media post that the Opposition delegation had conveyed to the minister that the compliance period for registering properties had “effectively been much shorter” as “clarity on key provisions came only after the Supreme Court’s interim order in mid‑September”.

On September 15, the Supreme Court stayed several provisions of the Act but said that no case had been made to stay the entire amendment.

The court had also declined to stay the requirement for all waqfs to be registered, saying that the requirement existed before the amendment.

Hussain said on Thursday that the Opposition had pointed out that several waqf properties are in rural areas and their custodians are elderly or not digitally trained, “yet the portal still demands precise area, boundary and historical title details that are often unavailable for century‑old waqfs, making it impossible to complete mandatory fields”.

“The minister responded positively and assured us that he would instruct the concerned officers to take necessary steps so that genuine waqf properties and mutawallis are protected,” added the MP.

Last year when the Supreme Court lifted the veil of secrecy over electoral bonds and Indians finally came to know who had paid how much money to which political party, one of the names missing from the list of donors was that of the Tata Group.

Does it mean one of India’s oldest and richest corporate groups does not fund political parties?

It does – and with impeccable timing – as Scroll reporter Ayush Tiwari recently found out.

In the first episode of our new show True Story, watch Scroll’s Executive Editor Supriya Sharma in conversation with Ayush about how he cracked the Tata story and many others related the murky world of political finance.

Also read:

How Tata Group became BJP’s biggest donor weeks after Modi cabinet cleared its semiconductor units

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday withdrew its instructions to airlines on weekly rest for the crew after IndiGo’s operations were disrupted for the fourth consecutive day.

The regulator said it was necessary to review the provision, which states that “no leave shall be substituted for weekly rest”, in view of the disruptions and requests from airlines to ensure continuity and stability of operations.

The instructions were withdrawn after a shortage of pilots and crew disrupted flights operated by IndiGo beginning Tuesday. The airline had not made sufficient adjustments to its roster to accommodate new government regulations.

In January 2024, revised rostering norms were issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation after concerns about pilot fatigue and 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.

IndiGo had sought relief from some provisions that limit pilot duty hours at night, Reuters reported.

On Friday, the regulator also granted IndiGo a one-time exemption from night-duty rules for pilots, Reuters reported.

Minister of Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu on Friday said that the Union government will institute a high-level inquiry into the disruption.

“The inquiry will examine what went wrong at Indigo, determine accountability wherever required for appropriate actions, and recommend measures to prevent similar disruptions in the future, ensuring that passengers do not face such hardships again,” Naidu said.

The airline, India’s largest by market share, on Friday cancelled all its domestic flights from Delhi till midnight. Its services in other cities were also affected, leaving passengers stranded at airports.

This is Kochi airport between 2 am to 5 am. People sleeping on floor, fighting, crying. Aircrafts available but no pilots. Worst, while crew gets mandatory rest time, ground staff is working double shifts, sleepless in total chaos #Indigo @DGCAIndia @IndiGo6E #FlightCancellations pic.twitter.com/hoRubnaOUM

— Tabassum Barnagarwala (@tabassum_b) December 5, 2025

A senior-level manager of the airline in Kochi told Scroll that flight systems had stopped working and ground staff had no information on scheduled routes or crew rosters.

“We have been constantly advising the senior management to announce cancellations,” the official said. “But the airline is unwilling to announce cancellation. As a result, the crowd is surging at airports.”

While the pilot and crew have been allotted mandatory working hours, the ground staff told Scroll that they have been handling multiple shifts and working overnight to handle the crowd.

“We are not able to leave the counter,” said a ground staff of IndiGo, who did not want to be identified. “At one point, at least a dozen passengers are around us in queries.”

IndiGo had cancelled more than 550 flights on Thursday and about 400 on Friday, The Indian Express reported. It told the regulator on Thursday that its operations would be fully restored by February 10, Reuters reported.

On Friday, IndiGo apologised to its customers. The airline said that while the problem “will not get resolved overnight”, it was making efforts to bring its operations back to normal.

“Today [Friday] should be the day with highest number of cancellations, as we are doing all that is necessary to reboot all our systems and schedules for progressive improvement starting tomorrow,” it said.

The airline said it was making “short-term proactive cancellations” to ease its operations and decongest airports “to prepare for starting stronger tomorrow”.

IndiGo said it will process refunds for cancellations automatically and will offer a full waiver on cancellations and rescheduling requests between December 5 and December 15.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the disruption was “the cost of this government’s monopoly model”.

“Once again, it’s ordinary Indians who pay the price - in delays, cancellations and helplessness," Gandhi said on social media. “India deserves fair competition in every sector, not match-fixing monopolies.”

The Calcutta High Court has held the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the state authorities responsible for serious lapses that led to the deaths of four labourers and injuries to three while cleaning a sewer line in Kolkata in February 2021, Live Law reported.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Chaitali Chatterjee Das directed that Rs 30 lakh be paid to each of the dead workers’ family, in line with a Supreme Court ruling on compensation for manual scavenging deaths. The Rs 10 lakh paid earlier will be deducted from the amount.

The authorities were directed to pay the amount within three months, the legal news outlet reported.

The order passed on Friday also directed Rs 5 lakh as compensation within two months for the workers who were injured.

“Manual scavenging is a grave, human right, concern and its persistence is a blot on the nation’s conscience,” The Indian Express quoted the order as saying.

The court observed that mandatory monitoring mechanisms under the 2013 Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers Act had not been shown to exist, Live Law reported.

It also criticised an affidavit from the police referring only to a first information report against unidentified persons as inadequate.

The court directed the deputy commissioner of police to file a report on the incident and asked the West Bengal government to constitute a monitoring committee within one month.

The State Legal Services Authority was instructed to contact the affected families to ensure compensation is disbursed, Live Law reported.

The four workers, all from the state’s Malda district, were employed under the Kolkata Environment Infrastructure Improvement Project, a contractor hired by the municipal corporation, and were desilting sewers when the accident occurred.

They died or were injured after inhaling toxic fumes in the sewer.

The deceased were identified as 19-year-old Sabir Hossain, 35-year-old Mohammad Alamgir, 22-year-old Jahangir Alam and 20-year-old Liyakat Ali, The Hindu reported.

Following the unnatural deaths of the four labourers and injuries to four others in similar sewer-desilting work, the NGO Association for Protection of Democratic Rights and a civil rights activist had filed the public interest litigation through which the present case was heard.

Manual scavenging, which is the practice of removing human excreta by hand from sewer lines or septic tanks, is banned under the 2013 Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act.

However, the practice remains prevalent in several parts of the country.

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a petition challenging a Kerala High Court order that dismissed a plea seeking a ban on the circulation of author Arundhati Roy’s book Mother Mary Comes to Me, with the cover picture showing her smoking a cigarette, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi observed that Roy had not promoted or advertised smoking, adding that the viewership of the book was restricted to those who would buy it, Bar and Bench reported.

There was no violation of any law, added the bench.

The book was released on August 28.

Cover reveal: In September 2025, Mother Mary comes to us all.

In this iconic photo by Carlo Buldrini, a young Arundhati Roy blows wisps of smoke into a future she can't yet imagine. She's daring us to look away, but we won't. The perfect cover for a book that refuses to flinch. pic.twitter.com/ayKM7tk4yU

— Manasi Subramaniam (@sorcerical) January 27, 2025

Subsequently, the petitioner, a lawyer, filed a public interest litigation in the High Court alleging that the book cover violated the 2003 Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution Act, and the 2008 rules.

The Act mandates the addition of health warnings such as “smoking is injurious to health” or “tobacco causes cancer” on all depictions of smoking. The petitioner argued that the book cover did not have the mandatory warning, which amounted to an indirect advertisement of tobacco products.

On October 13, the High Court dismissed the petition and ruled that it appeared to be filed for self-publicity.

“Courts must ensure that PIL is not misused as a vehicle for self-publicity or for engaging in personal slander,” the High Court had said. “The petitioner has chosen to file this PIL only to garner self-publicity and to cast personal aspersions on respondent Arundhati Roy. We agree.”

It had also noted that Penguin India, the publisher of the book, had included a disclaimer on the back cover, a fact the petitioner failed to mention in the petition.

During the proceedings in the Supreme Court, advocate Gopal Kumaran, representing the petitioner, argued that the book cover showed Roy smoking a bidi without the statutory warnings, Live Law reported.

Kumaran further claimed that it was not certain whether she was smoking tobacco or ganja.

In response, the chief justice noted that Roy was an eminent author, adding that her literature did not seem to promote smoking.

“The publisher is also a renowned publisher,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “…the literature as such does not promote it, why is it your problem? Unnecessarily for popularity.”

The chief justice said that the book cover was not being advertised on big hoardings across cities. A reader would buy the book because of its contents and the credibility of the author, and not only because of the cover image, he added.

The counsel for the petitioner also said that the disclaimer at the back of the book was written in minute words.

To this, the chief justice said that the book was not written for the promotion of cigarettes and would not need a disclaimer under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution Act, Live Law reported.

The Supreme Court said that it saw no reason to interfere with the High Court order.

The United States deported 18,822 Indians since 2009, including 3,258 persons since January 2025, the Union government said on Thursday.

More than 1,360 Indians were deported in 2024 and 617 in 2023, the Ministry of External Affairs told Parliament.

Of those deported in 2025 till November 28, about 2,000 persons were deported on commercial flights and others on charter flights operated by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or US Customs and Border Protection.

The deportations are subject to an “unambiguous verification” of their Indian citizenship, the ministry said.

Replying to a question asked in the Rajya Sabha, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated that the government had “strongly registered” concerns with Washington about the treatment of deportees, “particularly with respect to use of shackles, especially on women and children”.

The ministry had not received any complaints about the alleged mistreatment of women and children after February 5, Jaishankar added.

Since January 2025, the Donald Trump administration has tightened immigration regulations and intensified a crackdown on undocumented migrants. In some cases, the US government used military aircraft to repatriate undocumented migrants.

The Opposition had criticised the Narendra Modi government after videos showed the Indian deportees on US military aircraft having been shackled. But Jaishankar had told the Rajya Sabha on February 6 that the persons had been shackled in keeping with past procedure.

On Thursday, the external affairs minister said that wanted criminals and gangsters who have been accused of terrorism, homicide and attempt to murder have also been removed from the US on the deportation flights. This included absconding criminals Lakhwinder Singh and Anmol Bishnoi, Jaishankar said.

Two women died and several others were hospitalised in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad after suspected toxic gas leaked from an underground fire zone within a Bharat Coking Coal Limited mining site, The Indian Express reported.

The deaths occurred on Wednesday evening and Thursday morning when they were being taken to the hospital.

Lalita Devi, 58, and Priyanka Devi, 44, were found unconscious in their homes, about 300 to 400 metres from the leak site. With their windows shut because of the cold, neighbours believe the gas entered through cracks in the ground, the newspaper reported.

At least seven to eight others who had fainted earlier in the week are being treated in hospitals.

The district administration has said it will form a committee to investigate the matter.

Residents of the Kenduadih Rajput Basti have alleged the toxic gas had been escaping for nearly four days.

“Everyone knows it is an underground fire area,” a resident told The Indian Express. “Gas leakage happens here repeatedly, but no permanent action has ever been taken.”

Officials from the Bharat Coking Coal Limited and the district administration visited the area on Thursday, asking families to leave their homes immediately.

Hundreds of residents have since moved into makeshift shelters in the area, refusing to relocate without written assurances on compensation for the dead, permanent rehabilitation and recognition of legal title holders.

On Thursday morning, residents blocked the Dhanbad -Ranchi highway for nearly four hours and were seen burning tires, demanding immediate relocation, Hindustan Times reported.

The coal company’s area general manager, G Saha, told ANI that the site had “been declared unsafe for years”, adding that a permanent solution would be possible only if the entire area was evacuated.

Dhanbad Deputy Commissioner Aditya Ranjan said the situation had stabilised and that the district administration had begun filling the spot from where the gas was escaping.

“A medical team has been deployed for assistance and temporary arrangements are being made to accommodate the affected families,” he told The Indian Express, adding that alternate accommodation in Karmatand and Belgharia was ready for those willing to shift immediately.

However, protesting residents told the newspaper that the flats in Belgharia were not fit for living.

All domestic flights of IndiGo departing from Delhi were cancelled on Friday till midnight, the airport operator said.

Flights of other airlines will operate as scheduled, the Delhi airport said.

The cancellation of IndiGo flights came amid widespread disruption that began on Tuesday. The disruption was triggered by the shortage of pilots after the airline did not make sufficient changes to its roster to accommodate new government regulations, according to Reuters.

The country’s largest airline by market share told the regulator on Thursday that its operations would be fully restored by February 10, Reuters reported. IndiGo also sought relief from some provisions that limit pilot duty hours at night.

The revised rostering norms issued by the regulator 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.

Late on Thursday, IndiGo apologised to its customers and urged them to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport.

The airline said that it was coordinating with the authorities, including the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the Airports Authority of India and airport operators “to reduce the cascading impact of these delays” and restore normalcy.

On Friday, Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that the disruption was “the cost of this government’s monopoly model”.

“Once again, it’s ordinary Indians who pay the price - in delays, cancellations and helplessness," Gandhi said on social media. “India deserves fair competition in every sector, not match-fixing monopolies.”

On Wednesday, the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation said it is investigating the disruptions and directed IndiGo to explain the cancellations and delays, and outline how it intends to restore normal schedules.

IndiGo had cancelled more than 550 flights on Thursday and about 400 on Friday, The Indian Express reported.

The Trinamool Congress on Thursday suspended party 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.

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this article featured an incorrect photograph of Bharatpur MLA Humayun Kabir. The error is regretted.

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee on Friday cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.25%.

The repo rate is the interest rate at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks. The Monetary Policy Committee reviews the rate every two months.

The committee had kept the repo rate unchanged at 5.5% in both August and October. In June, it had cut the rate by 50 basis points from 6% to 5.5%, following reductions of 25 basis points each in April and February.

A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Basis points are used to describe the percentage change in the value of a financial instrument.

Central banks usually reduce repo rates to stimulate economic growth by making borrowing cheaper for individuals and businesses. This translates to lower equated monthly instalments for borrowers.

On Friday, Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said that the Monetary Policy Committee had also decided to maintain its monetary policy stance as “neutral”.

A neutral stance means that the Reserve Bank remained flexible in adjusting policy rates based on prevailing economic conditions.

The policy review comes amid strong economic performance, with the country’s gross domestic product growing at 8.2% in the second quarter of the financial year. This marked the fastest pace in six quarters.

Malhotra noted that merchandise exports contracted year-on-year in October, while imports rose for the second straight month, widening the trade deficit.

However, strong services exports, remittances and robust foreign investment flows were expected to keep the current account deficit modest, the central bank governor said.

Inflation forecast lowered to 2%

The Monetary Policy Committee on Friday also lowered its inflation forecast for the financial year 2025-’26 to 2%, down from the earlier 2.6%, citing a correction in food prices.

The quarter-wise estimates for the next financial year indicate a persistent fall in prices, with inflation projected at 3.9% for the first quarter, before rising to 4.0% in the second quarter.

The central bank also revised its GDP forecast for the current year upward to 7.3% from the earlier estimate of 6.8%.

The development comes against the backdrop of a weakening rupee, which breached the Rs 90 mark against the United States dollar on Wednesday.

The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday issued a notification extending a section of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to the state police, making prior government sanction necessary to prosecute personnel of all ranks for offences allegedly committed while on duty, The Hindu reported.

Such protection mandating prior sanction was available earlier under Section 197 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure, The New Indian Express reported. However, this provision did not cover personnel in the ranks of inspector and below.

The only exception was for inspectors in the intelligence and anti-terror wing ‘Q’ Branch, who were offered the same protection through a provision in the Tamil Nadu Police Discipline and Appeal Rules.

In July 2024, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure. With this, Section 218 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita became the equivalent of Section 197.

Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, such protection to the armed forces was also offered under sub-section 2 of Section 218. It also covered classes of public servants under sub-section 1.

However, it was left up to state governments to extend such protection to members of the police in their states by making enabling provisions.

In a notification issued on Wednesday, the state government said that Section 218(2) will apply “to all the classes and categories of police personnel of the Tamil Nadu Police charged with the maintenance of public order, wherever they may be serving,” The Hindu reported.

A total of 10,440 persons were arrested between 2019 and 2023 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Union government has told Parliament. Of these, only 335 persons were convicted under the anti-terror law.

Jammu and Kashmir had the highest number of arrests between 2019 and 2023 under the UAPA among the states and Union Territories at 3,662. However, it had only 23 convictions, as per data tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 2 by Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai.

Uttar Pradesh had the second highest number of arrests during this period at 2,805. The state registered 222 convictions under the Act from 2019 to 2023.

Other states with a high number of arrests included Assam, Manipur and Jharkhand.

The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act allows the Union government to designate an individual or organisation as “unlawful” and also defines punishments for terrorist acts. Under the law, which was enacted in 1967, investigative agencies get 180 days to probe a case, compared to 60 to 90 days under ordinary criminal law.

It is also generally difficult to secure bail for someone charged with an offence under the UAPA.

Unlawful activity is defined in the law as any action, whether by a person or an association, which “disclaims, questions, disrupts or is intended to disrupt the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India” or “causes or is intended to cause disaffection against India”.

Over the years, activists and legal experts have raised concerns about an increase in the number of UAPA cases against critics of the government. The law is meant to combat terrorism but it has been used against many other activities, they say.

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