“The more you torture us in Bengal, the more problems you will face in Delhi,” former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had warned the Bharatiya Janata Party on May 24. The Trinamool Congress chairperson was making her first public comments after her party lost West Bengal to the BJP as workers of her organisation were bearing the brunt of post-poll violence.

In the two weeks since then, though, it is the Trinamool whose problems have compounded, both in Bengal and Delhi. A majority of the party’s 80 MLAs defied Banerjee last week by choosing their own leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly. Media reports put their number at 58. On Monday, Trinamool MPs in the Lok Sabha broke into two groups.

MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a veteran leader of the party, told reporters in Delhi that as many as 20 of the Trinamool’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs had decided to ally with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance to work for the state’s “development”. Banerjee’s party is the third-largest constituent of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance and has been a fierce opponent of the BJP for years.

The leading faces of this rebellion within the Trinamool have trained their guns on the party’s national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, who is the nephew of Mamata Banerjee. They blame him for killing inner-party democracy and accuse him of large-scale corruption that supposedly made the Trinamool unpopular.

However, others in the party allege that the BJP has engineered the split by luring defectors and using the investigative agencies to threaten them.

Both sides might be understating the importance of a third factor behind the collapse: the gradual decline of the party’s organisational structure.

In the name of dynasty

Soon after the results of the West Bengal Assembly elections trickled in on May 4, a host of Trinamool politicians began to blame Abhishek Banerjee for the party’s poor performance. They faulted him for purportedly sidelining leaders who had stayed with the Trinamool through thick and thin and using the political consultancy firm, Indian Political Action Committee, to control the party.

This line of criticism echoed what Trinamool politicians who had switched over to the BJP previously had said about the party, sparking speculation about a fresh wave of defections from the Trinamool. The conjecture only intensified after the controversy over the appointment of the leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.

Though the Trinamool was legally entitled to pick someone for the post, its choice of the octogenarian politician Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay for the role did not immediately receive the BJP-appointed speaker’s approval.

Soon, two MLAs from the party claimed that they had not signed the letter nominating Chattopadhyay for the position. The state police, which now reported to the BJP government, even opened a forgery investigation based on their claims. On Tuesday, the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department raided Mamata Banerjee’s house in connection with this case.

On June 3, these two MLAs held a meeting with several other Trinamool MLAs in which they decided that one of them, Ritabrata Banerjee, would become the leader of opposition. This time, the speaker promptly accepted the choice.

The party has moved the Calcutta High Court against this appointment.

Curiously, these MLAs declared Mamata Banerjee as their leader at this meeting. This was meant to convey that their rebellion was against her nephew, who is the party’s national general secretary.

The sequence of events has led many to draw parallels with Maharashtra, where Eknath Shinde pitted himself against Aaditya Thackeray, the heir apparent of the Shiv Sena, and broke the party. In Bengal, Suvendu Adhikari, whom the Hindutva party made chief minister after its victory, is known to have exited the Trinamool in 2020 primarily because of the importance Mamata Banerjee gave to her bhaipo or nephew.

Operation Lotus

But those in the party who have not joined this rebellion dismiss the theory that dynastic control of the Trinamool had led to its split. They instead blame the BJP’s pressure tactics.

“These same people made Abhishek the crown prince and used to call him their commander-in-chief,” MP Kalyan Banerjee said at a news conference on Tuesday. “So what changed? We are no longer in power. Is that it?”

He also pointed out that the Trinamool MPs allying with the BJP had reportedly met at the Delhi home of Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on Monday, adding that Suvendu Adhikari, too, had attended the meeting. This, in his view, made it clear that the BJP had hatched the conspiracy and those taking part in it were either acting out of greed or fear.

“They [Trinamool rebels] have become so used to standing with the chief minister that they are still doing it,” Kalyan Banerjee claimed, harking back to Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year reign in the state. “They cannot live without power. They don’t want to hit the ground and play the role of the opposition. Now they will be asked to help in putting the rest of us behind bars.”

He was referring to the string of Trinamool politicians who have been arrested under various cases since the BJP came to power in Bengal.

Organisational Woes

In some cases, the BJP may have attracted Trinamool MPs without dangling a carrot or wielding a stick. Former cricketer Yusuf Pathan, for example, has allegedly joined the rebel group, causing much displeasure to the loyalist faction of Trinamool MPs.

“You are rushing to Delhi because Amit Shah has called you?” Krishnanagar MP Mahua Moitra wrote on X, tagging Pathan. “Have some shame and some spine.”

Pathan hails from Gujarat and became a first-time MP from Baharampur, West Bengal, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. He had defeated Congress veteran Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a five-term MP and former leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha, from the seat.

He was criticised for not visiting his constituency after it witnessed a communal riot last year.

Pathan is not alone. The Trinamool has long faced criticism for sending political lightweights to Parliament. And even before it lost in the elections, the party was seen to be relying too heavily on I-PAC, its political consultancy firm, rather than its own grassroots network of workers.

Since the Trinamool’s defeat last month, loyalists like Kalyan Banerjee have also publicly spoken out against what they describe as the Trinamool’s excessive dependence on I-PAC.

Both these factors point to the weakening of Trinamool’s organisational structure, which might be a major reason for its rapid collapse within just weeks of losing power.

The nomination of Meenakshi Natarajan, the Congress’ sole candidate for the June 18 Rajya Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh, was rejected on Tuesday.

This came after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state general secretary Rahul Kothari raised objections about Natarajan allegedly failing to disclose in her election affidavit details of a criminal case pending against her in Telangana, reported The Indian Express.

The returning officer had sought Natarajan’s response and given her until 6 pm on Tuesday to present her case. After considering her explanation, the officer rejected her nomination, Aaj Tak reported.

Natarajan later alleged at a press conference that the Congress’ advocates “were not heard”, reported PTI.

“What was limited to vote theft, has now become seat theft,” she added.

VIDEO | Rajya Sabha Polls: As her nomination was cancelled in Madhya Pradesh, Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan says, "When the number of members was not adequate, and the BJP fielded third candidate, it all started from there, and we started to understand that they are doing… pic.twitter.com/cmhViTdb76

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) June 9, 2026

The 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly is going to elect three members to the Rajya Sabha on June 18. With the Assembly’s effective strength at 229, a candidate requires 58 first-preference votes to win.

Of these seats, the BJP has 164 MLAs excluding the speaker. While the Congress has 63 MLAs, its ally Bharat Adivasi Party one.

The BJP has fielded three candidates – its National General Secretary Tarun Chugh, state unit Secretary Rajneesh Agrawal and Madhya Pradesh Fishermen Welfare Board chairman Mahesh Kewat.

Earlier in the day, the party flew most of its MLAs from Bhopal to Bengaluru, where the Congress is in power, while keeping a few senior legislators back in Madhya Pradesh, where it is in the Opposition.

This came as the BJP’s decision to field a third candidate triggered concerns within the Congress about cross-voting and defections.

The BJP has the numbers to win two of the three seats as it needs 116 votes to do so. However, it will be left with 48 votes that are not sufficient to clinch the third seat.

On Tuesday, the Congress said that no criminal case has been registered against Natarajan. “Only a notice has been received stating why proceedings for 10 crore compensation should not be initiated against her and other people,” said Congress MP Vivek Tankha.

Urging his party colleagues to approach the Supreme Court, he said: “This is nothing but murder of democracy.

Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Jitu Patwari accused the BJP of “political-thuggery”.

Former Chief Minister Kamal Nath alleged that the BJP had abandoned “political decency to snatch the Congress seat”.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department on Tuesday searched the Kolkata home of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, reported The Indian Express. The action was part of an investigation into allegedly forged signatures in a letter submitted to support the appointment of Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.

Mamata Banerjee was in Delhi on Tuesday, according to ANI. Her residence is also an office of the Opposition party.

The action came after TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee skipped summons, News18 reported. Abhishek Banerjee is Mamata Banerjee’s nephew.

Kolkata, West Bengal: CID officials have reached Former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence at 30B, Harish Chatterjee Street and also visited her party office. pic.twitter.com/gILjayIqZ2

— IANS (@ians_india) June 9, 2026

Rebel TMC MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha, who have been expelled from the party, have alleged that 14 of the signatures were forged in documents submitted to Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment.

Fissures within TMC

On June 3, Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose had accepted the claim of 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs to be the main Opposition in the state.

Earlier that day, the 58 MLAs submitted to the speaker, without the party’s letterhead, a list mentioning Mamata Banerjee as the party’s leader, Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition, and Sheuli Saha, Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha and Sabina Yasmin as the deputy leaders in the House.

Ritabrata Banerjee, who led the group, claimed that the speaker has accepted these demands.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the House.

On June 2, Abhishek Banerjee sent a fresh letter to Bose, reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Chattopadhyay as leader of the Opposition.

Edited by Sneha.

The Congress took several of its MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, barring a few senior legislators, from Bhopal to Bengaluru on Wednesday ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in the state on June 18, PTI reported.

The Congress is the ruling party in Karnataka and is in the Opposition in Madhya Pradesh.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Umang Singhar told the news agency that the Congress MLAs “will definitely go to the state where our government is in power”. It is “important to keep an eye out because of the way BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] is trying to cause disruptions”, he said.

While 48 Congress MLAs boarded a flight on Tuesday afternoon, another batch of legislators was likely to travel the evening, The Hindu reported.

The 230-member Assembly is going to elect three members to the Rajya Sabha on June 18. With the Assembly’s effective strength at 229, a candidate requires 58 first-preference votes to win.

Of these seats, the BJP has 164 MLAs excluding the speaker. While the Congress has 63 MLAs, its ally Bharat Adivasi Party one.

The BJP has the numbers to win two of the three seats as it needs 116 votes to do so. However, it will be left with 48 votes that are not sufficient to clinch the third seat.

As it stands, the Congress has 63 MLAs, giving it enough votes to win the third seat. This is despite the High Court having barred one MLA from voting. Another MLA’s vote is uncertain because of a separate court petition seeking her disqualification.

The BJP initially fielded its National General Secretary Tarun Chugh and state unit Secretary Rajneesh Agrawal. It later named Mahesh Kewat, the chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Fishermen Welfare Board, as its third candidate.

The Congress has only fielded former MP Meenakshi Natarajan.

The BJP nominating the third candidate has led to concerns in the Congress’ state leadership about possible poaching attempts.

The Congress’ state chief Jitu Patwari said that while the BJP speaks about women’s empowerment, it had “fielded a candidate against our women nominee despite lacking eight to ten MLAs”, The Times of India reported.

“They will try to influence MLAs by any means,” Patwari alleged. “This is an attempt to crush democracy.”

Congress MLA Babu Singh Jandel claimed that he had received “an offer of Rs 10 crore” to switch sides, The Indian Express reported.

भारतीय जनता पार्टी लोकतांत्रिक संस्थाओं को कमजोर कर देश को तानाशाही की ओर ले जाने का प्रयास कर रही है।

कांग्रेस पार्टी लोकतंत्र, संविधान और जनता की आवाज़ की रक्षा के लिए प्रतिबद्ध है। हमारी लड़ाई सत्ता की नहीं, बल्कि उस विचारधारा के खिलाफ है जो लोकतांत्रिक मूल्यों को कुचलना… pic.twitter.com/kUwirmPXr8

— Umang Singhar (@UmangSinghar) June 9, 2026

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

A group of 20 Trinamool Congress MPs wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, declaring their support for the ruling National Democratic Alliance. Led by party leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, the group held a meeting at the home of Union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal observer Bhupendra Yadav in New Delhi.

Bardhaman Purba MP Sharmila Sarkar, who was part of the group, later said that the MPs “want to sit separately”. She said that the new bloc “will help in the development of Bengal”, adding that “we need to support [the] NDA for Bengal’s development”.

This came days after 58 of the 80 MLAs of the TMC rebelled against the party and elected now-expelled party leader Ritabrata Banerjee as leader of the Opposition. Read on.

TMC leader Sukhendu Sekhar Ray resigned as Rajya Sabha MP and quit the party. He said that he has accepted the mandate delivered by voters in the recent West Bengal Assembly elections.

Ray said that the voters had “given huge mandate” to the Bharatiya Janata Party “to put an end to 15-year anarchical rule” by the TMC. The new government had taken steps for the “overall development and reconstruction” of the state, he added. Read on.

TMC leader and the party’s candidate from the Falta Assembly constituency, Jahangir Khan, was arrested by the police near India’s border with Nepal in northern Bengal. Khan was allegedly attempting to flee the country amid allegations of electoral malpractices during the second phase of polling.

After the BJP defeated the TMC in the state, several residents in Falta had accused Khan of land grab and extortion. The police have yet to disclose all the charges against the Trinamool candidate. Read on.

The Opposition INDIA bloc demanded the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The alliance alleged that Pradhan had presided over the “betrayal of lakhs of youth” who appeared for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical seats and the Central Board of Secondary Education exam.

Speaking at a press conference after a meeting of the bloc, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Opposition will also approach the chief justice of India on the special intensive revision of electoral rolls underway across the country, “vote loot” and the “stealing of elections”.

Member parties of the bloc also announced that they had agreed to meet every two months and that they will continue to coordinate in Parliament. Read on.

The Indian embassy in Iran advised Indian citizens to leave the country “by available means” amid fresh strikes by Israel. The Indian embassy in Tel Aviv advised citizens to avoid non-essential travel within Israel.

The statements by the Indian diplomatic missions came amid a second round of strikes in Iran. The Mehrabad airport in Tehran and the Kermanshah airport cancelled all flights “until further notice”.

Hours later, United States President Donald Trump said that Israel and Iran “must immediately stop ‘shooting’”. He later said that both sides were “looking to do an immediate ceasefire”. Read on.

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A group of 20 Trinamool Congress MPs, led by party leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday, declaring their support for the ruling National Democratic Alliance, PTI reported.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party has 28 MPs in the Lower House of Parliament. Although the TMC had won 29 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the MP from Basirhat has since died and a bye-poll is yet to be held.

The development comes amid turmoil within the TMC at the state level and in the Rajya Sabha.

On Wednesday, 58 of the 80 MLAs of the TMC rebelled against the party and elected now-expelled party leader Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

On Monday, the 20 MPs wrote to Birla after holding a meeting at the home of Union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s West Bengal observer Bhupendra Yadav in New Delhi, The Hindu reported.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari was also present during the meeting, The Indian Express reported.

Those part of the breakaway faction include Howrah MP Prasun Banerjee, Bankura MP Anup Chakraborty, Cooch Behar MP Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, Bolpur Lok Sabha MP Asit Kumar Mal, Birbhum MP Satabdi Roy, Jhargram MP Kalipada Soren and Bardhaman Purba MP Sharmila Sarkar, the newspaper reported.

Sarkar told The Indian Express that the MPs “want to sit separately”.

“I respect Didi,” the MP was quoted as saying. “I wanted to work, but I could not.”

She said that the new bloc “will help in the development of Bengal”, adding that “we need to support [the] NDA for Bengal’s development”.

The defections come after the BJP won 207 seats in the 294-member West Bengal Assembly, ending the TMC’s 15-year rule in the state.

TMC moves High Court

Meanwhile, the TMC moved the Calcutta High Court on Monday, challenging Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose’s decision to recognise Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition in the state, Live Law reported.

The petition sought a judicial review of Bose’s decision, arguing that it goes against established parliamentary norms, the legal news outlet reported.

A bench of Justice Krishna Rao will hear the plea on Thursday.

The future of the Trinamool Congress’ Rajya Sabha contingent also remains uncertain, with MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy resigning earlier on Monday. The party currently has 13 members in the Rajya Sabha.

On Wednesday, the TMC dissolved all its committees and organisational units in the state, saying it would undertake a “comprehensive” review of its performance and party structure.

Edited by Sneha.

The Opposition INDIA bloc on Monday demanded the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, saying that he presided over the “betrayal of lakhs of youth” who appeared for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical seats and the Central Board of Secondary Education exam.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Opposition will also approach the chief justice of India on the special intensive revision of electoral rolls underway across the country, “vote loot” and the “stealing of elections”.

Speaking at a press conference alongside Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, among leaders of the alliance, Kharge demanded that the Union government immediately call an all-party meeting to discuss the “precarious current economic situation”, unemployment, price rise and farmers’ problems.

The Congress leaders said that members of the INDIA bloc agreed to meet every two months and that they will continue to coordinate in Parliament.

Problems raised by the Opposition

More than 22 lakh candidates had appeared for the undergraduate NEET exam that was conducted on May 3. However, the National Testing Agency on May 12 cancelled the test following allegations of a paper leak. A retest will take place on June 21.

Similar allegations of paper leaks and irregular grace marks had emerged during the test in 2024.

Many Class 12 students of the Central Board of Secondary Education have also alleged mismanagement relating to the on-screen marking evaluation system. They alleged that the scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about possible answer sheet mismatches.

Students seeking re-evaluation also alleged that they faced portal failures, delays in payment confirmation and, in some cases, were asked to pay excess fees because of technical glitches.

On May 28, Pradhan said that the Union government had acknowledged discrepancies in the board’s on-screen marking evaluation process and accepted responsibility for them.

The Opposition has for long alleged that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party colluded with the Election Commission for favourable electoral outcomes. It has also alleged that the revision of voter lists was an attempt to undermine democracy.

Scroll’s analysis of the recent West Bengal Assembly election results found that in half the seats that the BJP won, the total deletions that took place during the voter list revision exercise outnumbered the victory margin.

By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls. Ahead of the Assembly elections in April, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals.

On May 27, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, saying that the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections”.

However, the court said that the poll panel’s inquiries for the purpose of including a person in the voter list do not mean that it can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Trinamool Congress leader Sukhendu Sekhar Ray on Monday resigned as Rajya Sabha MP and quit the party, saying that he has accepted the mandate delivered by voters in the recent West Bengal Assembly elections, PTI reported.

Ray said that the voters had “given huge mandate” to the Bharatiya Janata Party “to put an end to 15-year anarchical rule” of the TMC arising out of “widespread unbridled corruption, atrocities committed against women, abysmal failure in the field of health, education, industry, law and order, employment, etc”.

The new government had taken steps for the “overall development and reconstruction” of the state, he said.

Ray had become a Rajya Sabha member in 2011.

The BJP won 207 seats in the 294-member Assembly. A party or an alliance needs 148 seats in the Assembly to secure a majority. The TMC won 80 seats.

The TMC is facing internal divisions with expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claiming that a group of 58 of the 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

On Wednesday, the TMC dissolved all its committees and organisational units in the state, saying it would undertake a “comprehensive” review of its performance and party structure.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Four former ministers from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam quit the party and joined the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam on Saturday, The Hindu reported.

They are MC Sampath, NR Sivapathi, Kadambur C Raju and Udumalai K Radhakrishnan. Except for Sivapathi, the other three had contested and lost the Assembly elections in May.

Sampath had contested from the Cuddalore constituency, Raju had contested from Kovilpatti in the Thoothukudi district and Radhakrishnan was in the fray from Udumalpet in the Tiruppur district.

All four of them had served as ministers under AIADMK leaders J Jayalalithaa and Edappadi K Palaniswamy. On Saturday, they joined Tamil Nadu’s ruling party at its headquarters in Panaiyur on the outskirts of Chennai.

Former Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLA J Karunanidhi also joined the TVK along with them, India Today reported.

The TVK, led by Chief Minister Vijay, formed the government with the support of the Congress, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

The DMK won 59 seats, while the AIADMK won 47 constituencies.

Vijay took oath as chief minister on May 10, and the TVK won a floor test three days later.

During the floor test, 25 AIADMK MLAs led by former ministers CV Shanmugam and SP Velumani voted in favour of the new government. Of the 25, four MLAs – Maragatham Kumaravel, Sathyabama P, Jayakumar S and Esakki Subaya – resigned from the party and joined the TVK the same day.

Twenty-two MLAs led by former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami had voted against the government.

This had led to a rift within the AIADMK, with MLAs from the two groups filing disqualification petitions against each other. However, on May 27, the two groups arrived at a truce, and withdrew the disqualification petitions.

Edited by Sara Varghese.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin on Saturday claimed that his party allowed alliance partners in the state to support actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam with the “sole intention of preventing the imposition of President's rule in the state,” PTI reported.

The former chief minister said he had not opposed the decision of the alliance parties to back the TVK because he believed the imposition of President’s Rule “could have paved the way for BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) rule” in the state.

“But soon, we must take a pledge to bring down the TVK government,” The Hindu quoted him as further saying.

Speaking at an event in Chennai where he welcomed former All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam members into the DMK, Stalin said leaders of the alliance parties had informed him before extending support to the TVK after the Assembly election results.

He said he told them: “You may go, it is your choice and your democratic right; I will not stop you.”

He added that the current government was “in a way, being sustained by our support because our former alliance partners are backing it,” The Hindu reported.

While the Vijay-led TVK emerged as the single-largest party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, it had fallen short of the majority mark by 10 seats. It formed the government with the support of the Congress, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

Congress informed DMK before backing TVK: Chidambaram

Congress leader P Chidambaram said on Saturday that the party had informed the DMK leadership before extending support to the TVK after the Assembly election results, Puthiyathalaimurai News reported.

“We want to prevent another election if TVK failed to secure majority in the House,” he said. “This was wider feeling among alliance partners. Even people do not want another elections.”

Chidambaram said that the Congress had informed all alliance partners, including the CPI, VCK and IUML, of its decision to support the TVK government.

He added that “the only difference is that we have announced the support to TVK one day before allies did”.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

“Inquilab zindabad! Vande mataram! Jai Bhim!” Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke shouted a few minutes past noon on Saturday at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Long live the revolution! I bow to you, my motherland! Victory to Bhimrao Ambedkar!

Dipke started the Cockroach Janta Party in May as online satire in response to the Chief Justice of India allegedly comparing India’s unemployed youth to cockroaches. The campaign soon trained its guns on the Modi government and Dipke called for its first street protest in Delhi on June 6.

The three slogans he had chosen were ordinarily associated with three distinct, and often warring, political groups in India: communists, Hindu nationalists and Ambedkarites. But the Cockroach Janta Party leader blended them together seamlessly in his short address to the crowd that had gathered to listen to him.

Questions of ideology did not seem to matter much for the hundreds of people who showed up in the sweltering Delhi heat either. Nearly every protestor that Scroll spoke to echoed Dipke’s demand that Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan must be held responsible for the spate of paper leaks under his watch.

“I have come here to seek the education minister’s resignation,” said Zeenat, a 16-year-old from Bihar’s Gaya district, who will have to re-appear for the entrance examination for medicine undergraduates on June 21 because her earlier attempt at clearing it was annulled last month.

But Pradhan was only the tip of the iceberg. As Scroll spoke to teenagers like Zeenat, left-wing activists, early-career professionals and middle-aged business owners who had gathered at Jantar Mantar, it was clear that the protestors were disillusioned with the institutions of the republic itself. They had little hope that things would self-correct.

‘Can't even conduct an exam’

Zeenat was among the 22 lakh students affected by the recent cancellation of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

“I feel very disheartened,” she added. “I was certain that I would get into a medical college this time, but they cancelled the paper. My Class XII results were not good either, even though I had thought that I did well in the examinations.”

Zeenat moved to Delhi to prepare for the NEET. She was staying with her elder sister, Zainab, in the Mukherjee Nagar neighbourhood, known to be a hub of coaching centres for entrance examinations. Zainab, too, had accompanied her to the protest. Both sisters had worn cockroach masks to cover their faces.

“If they can’t even conduct an examination properly, what hope will we be left with?” Zainab asked. “For her NEET paper, I took her to Bihar in the general compartment of the train because no other ticket was available. Soon after we came back to Delhi, that paper was cancelled. The least that the education minister can do is resign. He must take accountability.”

Aarav Kejriwal, another 16-year-old at the protest, invoked the same word when asked why he had come to Jantar Mantar.

“To demand accountability from the government,” declared the Class XII student from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, as he rattled off recent instances of paper leaks. “There are so many discrepancies in the system. We need a person to take accountability.”

Mobilising Gen Z

Aarav Kejriwal had defied his parents to come to the protest, where he was distributing Cockroach Janta Party flyers. He said that he had discovered the initiative on social media.

Political parties and their student outfits have been raising the issue of paper leaks repeatedly in recent years, but could not make much headway in capturing the attention of teenagers like Kejriwal. The cockroach campaign appears to have broken new ground in this regard.

Student activist Aishe Ghosh, 31, attributed this success of the Cockroach Janta Party to the youth-oriented vocabulary of its campaign. “We have been saying the same thing, but there is sometimes a certain lingo that people connect with,” argued the PhD scholar.

Ghosh is a former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union. She shot to national fame after a violent attack on her university in January 2020 had left her with an injured head. She was among the several left-wing student activists who attended the protest on Saturday.

“We welcome the response that the Cockroach Janta Party has got,” Ghosh added. “We see it as a reflection of how frustrated the youth is.”

Divyanshi, a second-year student of political science at the Delhi University, put the campaign’s popularity down to its innovative messaging. While the party’s failure to appoint even a single woman as spokesperson had not sat well with her, she still appreciated its overall presentation.

“It’s new for us,” said Divyanshi, who grew up in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. “I don’t know what will be the outcome, but it is good to see. Such things have become very rare. It is a rare aesthetic.”

For many, the Cockroach Janta Party protest was the first such protest they had attended. The suspense about whether the police would grant permission for the event caused confusion among those interested in attending. The green signal from the police only came after Dipke had landed in Delhi from the United States, which delayed proceedings at Jantar Mantar by over an hour.

The ever-changing instructions from the organisers, communicated via X and Instagram, also added to the chaos. As a result, the campaign’s spokespersons, who were on the ground before Dipke reached the venue, had to face questions from angry protestors.

Growing disillusionment

However, most people that Scroll met were willing to look past these lapses and welcomed the initiative, citing what they described as their frustration with the state of institutions in India.

“How dare the chief justice compare our children to cockroaches?” asked Pradeep Kumar, a 44-year-old business owner who drove down from Moti Nagar in west Delhi. “If we protest against paper leaks, the police try to stop us. The system is compelling us to become cockroaches.”

Retiree Kulbhushan Tandon, who had accompanied Kumar to the protest, seconded him. “They have sold themselves out,” the 75-year-old remarked when asked about institutions such as the judiciary and the media. “The police, the judiciary are all good for nothing.”

Some attendees even questioned the integrity of the Election Commission of India. The Cockroach Janta Party’s manifesto alludes to the controversial special intensive revision exercise carried out by the commission.

“If a single legitimate vote is deleted – in any state, of any party – the Chief Election Commissioner shall be charged under UAPA,” its website reads, referring to India’s draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. “Stripping a citizen of their vote is terrorism by other means.”

Vicky, 25, hails from Nalanda in Bihar and is preparing for the civil service exams in the Karol Bagh area of central Delhi. He wore a t-shirt with Mohandas Gandhi’s picture and was carrying a copy of the Constitution to the protest.

“The Bharatiya Janata Party has come to power by fraud,” he said, referring to the November elections in Bihar, which followed the special intensive revision exercise in the state. “The Election Commission has sold its soul. We will all have to take to the streets sooner or later.”

‘Godi media go back!’

No other institution drew more criticism than the media at the protest. Chants of “Godi media go back!” were raised repeatedly and several protestors had run-ins with journalists seen to be working for pro-establishment outlets.

Deepti, a 36-year-old scientist, was taking part in a protest for the first time on Saturday. She complained that a television journalist to whom she gave an interview had tried to discredit the cockroach campaign by questioning her intelligence and not letting her speak.

“That journalist ruined my whole experience,” she lamented. “I wanted to talk about the problems that the youth are facing. I came here with a lot of hope. But I was not able to express myself.”

The state of the media also finds mention in the Cockroach Janta Party’s manifesto.

“Media houses owned by Ambani and Adani shall have their broadcasting licences cancelled to make room for genuinely independent press,” it says on its website. “Bank accounts of compliant anchors shall be audited.”

The Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical political campaign on social media, launched a protest in Delhi on Saturday to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged mismanagement in conducting major competitive and board exams.

The protest is the first on-ground event of the youth-led campaign, which started as a reaction to remarks made by Chief Justice Surya Kant on May 15, allegedly comparing some unemployed youngsters to “cockroaches”. A day later, Kant claimed that he had been misquoted by sections of the media and that he had not criticised the young people in general.

But the clarification came too late. The campaign created by Abhijeet Dipke, a 30-year-old political communications strategist from Pune, became a rage among the young. Within a week, the campaign’s Instagram account garnered more followers than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress combined.

The chief justice’s alleged remark were a catalyst for a section for young Indians belonging to “Gen Z” – born between the late 1990s and 2010 – to voice their grievances and channel their disillusionment against the Narendra Modi government.

The campaign came amid a confluence of problems.

Some of them were more recent. In early May, a paper leak in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for medical college admissions meant that 22 lakh candidates need to take the exam a second time. Then came allegations of mismanagement related to the Central Board of Secondary Education’s on-screen marking system.

An opinion poll conducted by CVoter on May 28 showed that 66% of the respondents want the education minister to resign. Even among those who identified as voters of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, 58.2% said that Pradhan should resign and that they support the dismantling of the Modi government’s National Testing Agency, which conducts the NEET.

There have also been broader grievances. Even before the war in West Asia caused economic troubles, there was anxiety about the rising cost of living, unemployment, stagnant wages, crumbling infrastructure, toxic communal politics and the most basic forms of dissent being stifled.

Dipke, who was studying in Boston, has described the Cockroach Janta Party as a platform to “bring integrity back into politics” and hold the government accountable. And so, the campaign’s immediate demand is the education minister’s resignation.

The popularity of the campaign confirms that a section of the youth may be looking for political alternatives. Another CVoter survey conducted on May 22 and May 23 showed that more than 60% of the respondents in the 18 to 34 age group believe that the Cockroach Janta Party “can influence real politics”.

Watching with circumspection

While the grievances driving the Cockroach Janta Party’s popularity are real, the campaign must be viewed with some circumspection.

Late Gen Zs may have no memory of the political developments preceding the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that through the BJP came to power, but early Gen Zs or millennials like me who were in their teens at the time remember the 2011 anti-corruption movement.

Many India’s voters, frustrated with the Congress-led coalition government at the time, bought into the idea of the movement. It eventually fizzled out. But, unbeknownst to many at the time, India Against Corruption contributed in 2014 to the rise of the Modi government – whose policies the Cockroach Janta Party is protesting against.

Some leaders of the anti-corruption movement claimed later that it had been “propped up” or harnessed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP. Others, such as Arvind Kejriwal, went on to form the Aam Aadmi Party. Dipke has acknowledged that he was part of AAP’s social media team.

Some are seeing similarities between the India Against Corruption movement then and the Cockroach Janta Party campaign now.

It is unclear whether the Cockroach Janta Party will eventually contest elections. But if it does, whom will it hurt? This question perhaps explains why while other Opposition parties have welcomed the Cockroach Janta Party, the Congress – the largest of them – has been cautious.

Of course, new political parties or movements dislodge existing ones, but the question on many minds is: can India’s anxious cockroaches ensure that a platform to voice genuine grievances will not get hijacked by other groups?

Beyond an idealistic five-point manifesto, the Cockroach Janta Party has not defined its ideology, where it stands on the key problems India faces and how it plans to solve them. Perhaps it’s too early. But without that clarity, it remains a youth pressure group at best, and not the alternative it hopes to be.

Also read:

• Cockroach Janta Party is doomed to fade fast – unless it goes beyond meme politics
• Irrepressible and resilient, the cockroach is a political metaphor for our times
• Watch Scroll interview: Will BJP co-opt Cockroach Janta Party?

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

Political claims. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that Narendra Modi would not be the prime minister a year from now as the “system that he once controlled is now shaken and collapsing internally”. He also claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party government could attempt to suppress growing public anger by imposing “something like an Emergency”.

Gandhi further said that an “economic tsunami” will hit the country because the Modi government had removed the economic safeguards that existed earlier.

Reacting to the remarks, BJP’s publicity chief Amit Malviya said that Gandhi was unveiling “a new conspiracy theory” every few months. “The country has heard these predictions before,” said Malviya. “The problem is that none of them ever come true.”

A deadly blaze. Twenty-one persons were killed in a fire that broke out in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar area. Eight of them were Indians and thirteen foreign citizens. Seventeen persons were injured and taken to hospital.

Fissures in the Opposition. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam said that it will not participate in a meeting of the Opposition INDIA bloc on June 8. The decision was made as party workers were “deeply hurt by what they consider the betrayal committed by the Congress”, the DMK said.

The Congress, a long-time ally of the MK Stalin-led party, joined the coalition government led by the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in the state after the Assembly polls resulted in a hung House in May.

The DMK said that while it will not attend the June 8 meet, it will continue “to raise its voice on issues affecting the welfare of the nation that may be brought forward by the other parties participating in the meeting”.

Also on Scroll last week

• Why Punjab survey on drug addiction has led to fears of undercount
• An ‘indigenous’ Assamese woman was pushed into Bangladesh. A year later, she is still stuck there
• Why Delhi University’s four-year undergraduate programme has left students in panic
• Five rejoinders: What Ramachandra Guha gets wrong about Rahul Gandhi
• Why India is not able to fully use the solar power it generates
• Delhi fire deaths highlight precariousness of ‘medical tourists’ in the city
• Mumbai is worried about water, but its control over mainland dams is depriving others
• How official heat plans are failing India’s street vendors
• ‘Hai Jawani Toh Ishq Hona Hai’ review: A dated comedy about one man with two pregnant partners
• ‘Brown’ review: Gripping series overcomes plotting holes through memorable characters

Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won’t get: spam.

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Pakistan has made measurable progress in reducing the gender gap in voter registration. More women are now listed on electoral rolls than ever before.

Yet this administrative success masks a troubling democratic reality: while the number of registered women voters increased significantly before the 2024 general elections, overall voter turnout declined from 52.1% in 2018 to 47.6% in 2024.

The contradiction raises an important democratic question: why are more women registering to vote while fewer citizens, including many women, are turning out on election day?

According to the Election Commission of Pakistan, Pakistan’s electoral rolls for the 2024 general elections included approximately 128.6 million registered voters.

Of these, around 69.3 million were men and 59.3 million were women. In comparison, about 105.9 million voters registered for the 2018 general elections, including nearly 46.7 million women voters. This means that between 2018 and 2024, the number of registered women voters increased by more than 12 million.

Turnout drops

These figures reflect substantial administrative progress

Over the past several years, the Election Commission of Pakistan and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) intensified efforts to reduce Pakistan’s gender gap in voter registration through mobile registration campaigns, drives to provide them with national identity cards and awareness initiatives targeting women, particularly in rural and under-served areas.

Historically, many Pakistani women were excluded from electoral rolls simply because they lacked ID.

Nonetheless, voter registration and voter participation are not the same thing. While millions more women were added to electoral rolls, Pakistan experienced a notable decline in turnout during the 2024 elections as national turnout dropped significantly compared to 2018.

The decline suggests that formal inclusion through registration did not automatically translate into active electoral participation. Why? The explanation lies in the difference between legal access and political agency.

Social barriers

Voting is not merely an administrative act. It’s also shaped by social norms, family structures, economic conditions and political trust. In Pakistan, many women continue to face structural barriers that limit their ability to cast ballots even after they become registered voters.

One major factor is patriarchal gate-keeping.

In many parts of Pakistan, women’s mobility and public participation remain influenced by male family members or local community dynamics. Research on electoral participation in Pakistan has consistently shown that household decision-making strongly affects women’s turnout.

In some communities, women require permission, accompaniment or logistical support from male relatives to travel to polling stations. Even where women are officially registered, these social barriers can prevent them from voting.

The problem is particularly acute in rural and conservative regions, where informal restrictions on women’s political participation sometimes persist despite legal protections.

In previous elections, reports emerged from certain constituencies that local agreements among political officials discouraged or blocked women from voting altogether.

Other factors affecting turnout

Pakistan’s electoral laws already recognise that women’s exclusion from voting is a serious democratic problem. Under provisions of the 2017 Elections Act, the Election Commission of Pakistan has the authority to declare polling or even an entire election in a constituency void if women are prevented from voting.

The Election Commission of Pakistan exercised this authority following the 2018 general elections, when it annulled the results in Shangla and North Waziristan due to female voter turnout falling below the legal threshold and ordered fresh polls.

The political environment surrounding the 2024 elections also contributed to declining turnout. Pakistan entered the election period amid economic instability, inflation, political polarisation and institutional tensions. Such conditions often reduce public confidence in electoral politics. When voters feel disillusioned or uncertain about whether elections will produce meaningful change, participation tends to decline.

This creates an important democratic paradox. Pakistan has become more successful at documenting women as citizens, but less effective at ensuring their meaningful political participation.

The distinction matters because democracy cannot be measured solely by the size of electoral rolls. Expanding voter registration is an important achievement, but democratic inclusion requires more than adding names to a database.

Overcoming entrenched inequality

A woman may possess an identity card, appear on electoral rolls and still face obstacles on election day. She may lack transportation to polling stations. She may face family pressure discouraging political participation. She may not trust political institutions or feel represented by existing political parties.

Registration gives formal access to democracy; turnout reflects whether citizens are actually empowered to participate in it.

Pakistan’s experience offers a broader lesson for democracies worldwide. Administrative reforms can improve electoral inclusion, but they cannot alone overcome entrenched social inequalities.

The country’s next democratic challenge is therefore not only registering more women voters, but ensuring that women are able – and motivated – to cast ballots. This requires stronger voter education campaigns, safer polling environments, transportation support, greater political outreach to women and stricter enforcement against practices that suppress women’s participation.

Until the gap between registration and turnout is addressed, the promise of equal democratic representation will remain only partially fulfilled.

Adnan Skhawat Ali is PhD Candidate, Public Policy and Global Governance, Queen's University, Ontario.

Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant is Professor, Political Studies; Director, Canadian Opinion Research Archive, Queen's University, Ontario.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as a satirical political campaign, launched a protest at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on Saturday to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged mismanagement in the conduct of competitive exams.

The protest began after the campaign’s founder Abhijeet Dipke arrived in the national capital from the United States.

Dipke said that the only objective of the protest was to demand Pradhan’s resignation.

“It has been a month since we started demanding Pradhan’s resignation on social media,” PTI quoted Dipke as saying. “But these individuals are so shameless that instead of taking action, they have been focused on other distractions, like hacking our accounts and getting our posts deleted.”

He said: “You may be able to delete our posts, but you cannot erase us from this space.”

Dipke said that protests will be held across the country if Pradhan did not resign by 5 pm on Saturday, The Indian Express reported. “The cockroach will return next Saturday,” he added.

“For the past 10 to 12 years, these people have kept us trapped in Hindu-Muslim politics,” The Quint quoted Dipke as having told the protesters, asking who had benefited from it.

“Did Hindu-Muslim politics get jobs for anyone in the country?” he asked.

Dipke accused the government of focusing on the organisation’s social media activity instead of responding to its demands.

The campaign was “not a planned party”, he said, adding that it was “students’ outrage”.

“My mother was very scared that this government would throw me in jail,” he said. “In this country, every mother feels this fear when their child raises their voice against this government.”

Earlier in the day, the police had stepped up security at Dipke’s home in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city, PTI quoted a police officer as saying.

Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk also participated in the protest.

The Delhi Police on Saturday granted permission for the Cockroach Janta Party to protest at the site till 5 pm. Officials had earlier said that no request had been received from the group and that more than 1,000 personnel had been deployed in the national capital.

Some persons were detained for shouting slogans against the Cockroach Janta Party, The Hindu reported.

View this post on Instagram

देश का युवा अब डरेगा नहीं लड़ेगा

कॉकरोच डरते भी नहीं, कभी मरते भी नहीं #cjpprotest pic.twitter.com/BxUMDJv6Sl

— Cockroach is Back (@Cockroachisback) June 6, 2026

The Cockroach Janta Party describes itself as a “political front of the youth, by the youth, for the youth”.

It was launched on May 16 in response to reports of remarks by Chief Justice Surya Kant on the previous day comparing some unemployed youngsters to “cockroaches”. Since then, the campaign has garnered more than 22 million followers on Instagram.

The chief justice claimed on May 16 that he had been misquoted by sections of the media and that it was baseless to say that he criticised young people in general. Kant claimed he had specifically criticised “those who have entered professions like the Bar [legal profession] with the aid of fake and bogus degrees”.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• Interview: ‘Good chance that BJP will co-opt Cockroach Janta Party’s demands’
• Does Abhijeet Dipke’s popularity signal a new age of Dalit leaders?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the coming of a “New India” in 2017 – in his Independence Day speech and his New Year’s Eve address that year. After his re-election in 2019, the project of superimposing a new India gathered pace. Since then, it is clear to any observer of Indian politics that a transition is under way – the old order is almost done away with.

In the name of attacking Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress Party, and so on, what has been actually happening is a frontal attack on the constitutional republic that came into being in 1950. By invoking ideas of New India, Viksit Bharat, and Hindu nationalism, a new regime has been ushered in. That new regime is now slowly stabilising.

Many would choose to believe that the new regime is still some way off. They would cite the many weaknesses of current power structures to argue that neither a new regime nor a new hegemony has successfully installed itself. However, it would be well to realise that the regime’s penchant for repression and violence, its impetuousness, and its irritability are not signs of unsteadiness. They are its organic characteristics.

It is a regime characterised by excitable assertions of power and a crass show of strength. Its opponents are at a loss as to how to counter it. The question of how to tame the current regime must therefore begin with a clear-headed mapping of its core characteristics.

India’s new regime obviously relies on many strategies. Its public image and operational identity are characterised by the Modi phenomenon, but its core comprises three interwoven factors – three body parts, so to speak: Hindutva makes for the head, civil society for the arms, and the state for the legs that kick hard.

This composition produces many closures, distractions, and the mirage of revenge, greatness, and achievement. Together, these factors have created an unprecedented condition – a decade-long collective willing suspension of disbelief that has made the new regime feasible.

Beyond the individual cult

When talking of the present moment and the new order, the Modi factor is discussed the most – for obvious reasons. It has led to the personality cult of a megalomaniac leader. Democracy is known to throw up such leadership from time to time – cravings for “strong leaders” and plebiscitary turns are not unknown to democracies, and India is no exception. Since the death of Indira Gandhi, Indian politics had been devoid of anything like a national hero.

Then, suddenly, in 2014, a claim was made that such a leader had arrived to save the country – a leader who believed he was destined to make history and to be history himself, a leader who could convince large numbers that he could deliver, save, and bring glory.

Such a leader often revels in destabilising pre-existing patterns and norms. For the public at large, he is a magician who can pull rabbits out of a hat – giving credence to slogans such as Modi hai toh mumkin hai (With Modi, it’s possible). Beyond this ability to conjure an aura of making the impossible possible, Modi’s leadership is also associated with demagoguery sustained by a carefully crafted image and state-funded publicity.

The question is: how long can such a leader sustain his aura? The history of demagogues offers no clear answer. In Modi’s case, ever since he roughshod senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2013, his popularity has remained almost steady. Despite being in power, it has not exactly grown – yet everything his government does or does not do is endorsed in the context of his leadership and popularity.

Sceptics will always doubt how much of this is manufactured – and indeed, Modi has carefully crafted this popularity. His role, and the media’s, in producing a willing suspension of disbelief is undeniable. In many an election, and also during crises such as Covid-19 and the current global shadows of war, the regime has managed to retain its grip on popular perceptions mainly on the strength of Modi’s popularity.

And, yet, it might be a mistake to analyse the present moment and the new regime only, or primarily, in the context of Modi the person. The regime was ushered in by Modi, but there is something more problematic and more serious about it than the mere personality cult of the leader.

When we talk of Modi, in any case we are talking about a package – more than mere persona. That is why we need to look at the substance of the regime beyond the dramatic and divisive role of one leader.

Hindutva, the Overarching Phenomenon

Is it possible, for instance, to imagine Modi without the deeper and long-standing politics of Hindutva? Hindutva is the motif that binds many dots together – Modi, his party, the more slippery “parent body”, and, more concretely, the transformation of state and civil society. Of course, Hindutva is a nebulous phenomenon – many things packaged into one. Its conveniently confusing conflation of religion, culture, and nation helps generate diffuse support for its upholders. Public display of religiosity is its performative part.

But behind that performative act lies a critical factor: converting the religiosity of lay Hindus into an urge for religious assertion. Another component is the messaging of Hindu religiosity as nationalism. Yet another is the homogenisation of Hindu society by transforming local practices into national expressions of religiosity.

But above all, persuading a large section of Hindu society to feel permanently and retrospectively victimised – and identifying Muslims (of yesterday, today, and tomorrow) as the cause of that victimisation – is the most essential feature of Hindutva. As a result, the project of Hindutva turns into a routine and collective enterprise of suspecting, hating, villainising, attacking, and marginalising Muslims. Take away the Muslim factor and much of the argument and attraction of Hindutva disappears.

In other words, as I have been arguing for over two decades, the politics of Hindutva – with anti-Muslim sentiment as its most essential part – needs to be understood as majoritarianism. A caveat is in order here.

In a society like India, with long and complicated histories of relations between different communities, the project of majoritarianism was always a potent factor.

With the distortions of democracy, such a majoritarian project is bound to remain a major feature of collective mobilisations. No society with the kind of diversity India has could escape such a majoritarian challenge. That challenge existed during the freedom struggle; it existed within the Congress; it lurked for some time after Independence; it pounced on the opportunity to share power in the electoral arena; and it finally gathered steam around 1990, when the democratic project had become battered and weak.

Hindutva is not the product of the Modi phenomenon – the Modi phenomenon is the product of the politics of Hindutva, which gained muscle since the late 1980s. Hindutva is not a devil that emerged overnight. It was a demon always present in our midst. It will not disappear suddenly. It can only be contained.

A democratic society with the kind of plurality India has cannot wish away majoritarian tendencies. The battle against majoritarianism has to be a continuous one, both within and beyond formal politics. Imagining that the demon had been defeated led to a lazy lethargy in the realms of ideas, policy, and practice. We are paying the price of that today.

What distinguishes the Modi moment from the earlier phase of Hindutva is that today Hindutva has captured both the state and civil society, situating itself firmly as the foundation of the new regime.

Takeover of civil society

On the surface, it appears strange that Hindutva is not being adequately contested. This is explained by the new shape of civil society – it has become an arm of the regime, driven by its fountainhead: Hindutva.

With the rise of the BJP in 2014, sections of civil society chose to align themselves with the tide. A steady stream of influential figures from the arena of culture and entertainment swiftly moved to support the Hindutva project – not just the ruling party. As early as 2013-’14, the media began to acquiesce to the project, whether for commercial or ideological reasons.

Since then, in every moment of limited challenge faced by the regime, the media – as the most voluble part of civil society – has functioned as its spokesperson. It has silenced criticism, cast doubt on legitimate questions, and manufactured the unprecedented decade-long collective suspension of disbelief.

Equally importantly, the quiet surrender of the corporates ensured that both the personality cult and the ideological venom became acceptable across sections of society. Historically, corporates and the classes with access to material resources have never been progressive or inclusive in the Indian context. It has therefore been easy for them to align with the cultural project of Hindutva. At the same time, these classes have never had adequate autonomy, and they swiftly buckled under the pressures of the determined authoritarianism unleashed by the Modi government. Both developments meant that when the new regime began asserting itself, the corporates had neither the willingness nor the capacity to support autonomous civil societal forces.

Less-than-democratic regimes always produce cowardice among sections of civil society – or at any rate, encourage cowardice and complicity. But, in the process, such regimes also guarantee their own sustenance through the penetration of civil society. Civil society is thus reformulated by the regime and in turn helps the regime to sustain itself.

One can go into the historical analysis of civil society’s fragile democratic commitment and its pseudo-commitment to diversity. But the larger point is that today, elements of the traditional civil society are not in a position to forestall the regime.

At the same time, a gigantic project of reshaping civil society is currently under way. Hindutva organisations are busy occupying the entire societal space. From think tanks to town libraries, from the entertainment industry to literary forums, from art to academia, every nook and corner of the socio-cultural space is being captured by pro-Hindutva organisations – so much so that nothing but Hindutva exists in the space of civil society. This new civil society drowns – if not actually destroys – the somewhat autonomous elements of the older civil society.

It can be argued that many opponents of the regime are also located in the realm of civil society. But they are easily discredited or marginalised. And even when sections of civil society offer resistance, they can be readily handled by the other component of the regime – the repressive state apparatus.

Hydra-headed state power

The exercise of state power is an essential part of any arrangement of normative and physical power in a society. It is no wonder, then, that electoral victories since 2014 have been used by the BJP to capture and transform state power. Within a decade, the ruling party has not only captured the state apparatus but has also ensured that it will be wielded viciously against any opposition.

The BJP inherited a state that was strong in its formal accessories but weak and chaotic in its operation. The trappings of physical control over citizens were already in place; ideological and extra-constitutional expressions of state power were then added to these.

Several factors have contributed to the making of the contemporary Indian state – one that advertises democratic pretensions but practises less-than-democratic actions. A personality cult often takes shelter in the cosy shadow of repression, born out of the conviction that all opposition is treacherous. Besides, Hindutva requires a large amount of violence – in the metaphorical sense but also in the actual sense. Today’s personality cult has thus contributed to the strong assertions of the state. But more than that, the attitude of the Indian state today is predicated on a feeling of revenge and retaliation.

This development has also been indirectly supported by at least two related processes. First, the previous regime historically failed to evolve a state apparatus that would systematically balance repressive tendencies with constitutional boundaries. Instead, in the name of doing good to the needy, the previous regime allowed the state to become the fulcrum of power as benevolence – something that was easily justified. Once the state is pushed to that pedestal, it is only one step to transform it into a machine that controls citizens – for their own good and for the good of the nation.

Second, ever since the idea of terrorism became a password for compromising democratic processes, the repressive turn of the state apparatus became more prominent. The ruling party has deftly taken advantage of these background processes. The state today constitutes a confluence of the Hegelian idea of wisdom, the 20th century European idea of the strong state as an expression of the strong and exclusionary nation, and the post-Independence Indian idea of the state as the ultimate facilitator of well-being. All repression and every act of high-handedness is seen as emanating from one of these three justifications.

In other words, multiple ideological justifications exist today to defend and legitimise the use of the state apparatus – irrespective of the implications for democracy, at times they are even presented as democratic. Various technologies and legal instruments have colluded to produce a surveillance state, which the regime uses for its own protection. The wherewithal of state repression and surveillance was earlier already being built up. The current regime has made the surveillance state and its repressive behaviour ideologically justifiable and acceptable to many sections of society. There is also an extension of the state through private enforcement agencies. Once state repression is legitimised in the name of the nation, private and localised forms of repression are easily accepted as popular expressions of anger and collective expressions of “state” authority.

What we are witnessing today is therefore not merely a near-unconstitutional state repression as an expression of the nation-state. We also witness layers of force, extortion, and intimidation – a public culture of vigilantism and fear, both protected and permeated by the state.

Taking up the challenge

Labelling the new regime may appear to be an academic exercise, but it is necessary because it helps us understand the true significance of our present moment. Globally, the theme of democratic backsliding has captured the imagination of both democracy theorists and democracy practitioners. Sometimes a more nuanced label is adopted – competitive authoritarianism – referring to a reasonably competitive context in which authoritarianism manages to rear its head. On three counts, this label is inadequate, if not outright inapplicable, to the Indian case.

First, the competitive framework is increasingly under a cloud. The asymmetry of access to resources, and to the capabilities for reaching the public through autonomous media, is becoming so stark that it would be a travesty to describe the current political arena in India as competitive. This is compounded by the use of state apparatuses to push competitors to disadvantage.

Second, the public-political arena being crafted under the new regime may not qualify as competitive for a deeper reason – the rigging of imagination and the public discourse. We witness the transformation of the idea of nation into the idea of a community-centred national identity, and the state becoming more and more explicitly a Hindutva state in its symbolism and actual operation. This closes the possibility of genuine competition.

Third, the idea of competitive authoritarianism does not adequately capture the cultural and civil societal closures visible in private life and public contestations. The increasing porousness between state authority and private authority, between state regulation and societal regulation, and the imposition of a uniform civic identity as the test of good citizenship all indicate that India may have crossed the threshold of competitive authoritarianism. Among the “decolonised” supporters of the regime, there is as yet no overt contestation over the desirability of democracy – but a redefinition of democracy itself is under way.

The head, arms, and legs of the regime represent three crucial challenges for the democratic project. Hindutva signals exclusion and dares us to think of new ways of building an inclusionary social imagination. The current espousal of a pseudo-nationalism has led to two distortions: it has put everyone’s national loyalty under the scanner and it has torn apart the social fabric. To remedy this situation, we require trust in the national loyalty of citizens and a concerted effort to build bridges across communities and regions.

Secondly, the capture of civil society poses the challenge of shaping critical and autonomous public spaces. We cannot wait for the state to desist from enforcing its normative logic on the civil societal space. Those in academia, and those active in fields of art and culture have to explore spaces of self-expression that are not bound by the formal and informal pressures of the current moment. It is not easy to expect revolutionary assertions by actors from civil society; but they can at least avoid meekly upholding imposed norms. The moment legitimation by civil society gets suspended, the suspension of disbelief will be somewhat contained.

Finally, the authoritarian state challenges us to revive constitutional morality. While the regime robs citizens of all agency in the name of authority derived from the Constitution, the constitutiional imagination alone can be a platform for imagining and exploring democratic spaces in both private and public spheres. Adherence to constitutional morality by citizens can ensure that the misappropriation of the Constitution as an instrument of the rulers is minimised. Here the onus is on non-BJP parties – they must own up to past misappropriations and wherever in power, they must avoid the temptation to use tactics similar to the BJP.

Together, the challenges of the present moment require the imagination of a new nation-state and the practice of new democratic politics.

Whether democratic forces take up these challenges, connect the three arenas of struggle, and above all produce A new imagination – rather than trying to return to the status quo ante – will determine whether a democratic contest is taken forward or the current regime runs roughshod.

Suhas Palshikar, based in Pune, was a professor of political science and is currently chief editor of the journal, Studies in Indian Politics. His recent work includes Indian Democracy, in the Oxford India Short Introductions series.

This article was first published on The India Forum.

The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as an online satirical campaign on May 16, is keeping up the pressure on the Narendra Modi government. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has announced his plans to return from the United States to India and lead a protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday.

Could this hugely popular social media campaign lead to dramatic political changes in India much like the youth protests in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal? Amit Ahuja, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, grapples with that question in this Scroll interview.

Ahuja has written extensively about protests, social movements and political parties in India. In his view, the Cockroach Janta Party’s online success underscores the “crisis of employment” that India is witnessing. All political parties, particularly the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, would do well to be more sensitive towards the “desperation” among the youth.

Two days after Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar’s new Cabinet took office, Congress leader Ramalinga Reddy on Friday submitted his resignation as a minister, citing displeasure over the portfolio allocated to him, The Indian Express reported.

Reddy was made the irrigation minister on Thursday.

He said at a press conference that he had twice been promised the Bengaluru development department by the party, adding that he had “never asked anyone for any portfolio”, Deccan Herald reported.

The Bengaluru development department was allocated to party leader Krishna Byre Gowda.

Reddy served as the transport minister in the previous Siddaramaiah government since May 2023.

On Friday, the MLA also clarified that he had not resigned from the Congress, ANI reported. “I have been in the Congress party for the past 53 years,” he told reporters, adding that he had been given several responsibilities in the party.

“...I have never asked anyone to give me a ministerial position,” he added.

Shivakumar said that Reddy had told him that he “cannot go to the village and work” and that he had asked for other ministries, ANI reported.

The chief minister told reporters that Reddy is a “great friend” and that the matter will be resolved.

Reddy has been the MLA from Bengaluru’s BTM Layout since 2008. He represented the Jayanagara constituency between 1989 and 2008

On Thursday, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara was allocated the revenue and sports portfolios. Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge’s son Priyank Kharge was given charge of the home department, but without the intelligence department, in addition to the information technology, biotechnology and e-governance portfolios.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Former chief of the Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party K Annamalai quit the organisation on Friday, with the BJP formally accepting his resignation from its primary membership, ANI reported.

In a video message after his resignation, Annamalai said that he would launch a new political party that would contest the next Assembly elections expected to be held in 2031. “Today, we are going to start a movement,” he said.

He resigned from the Hindutva party less than a month after the National Democratic Alliance lost the Assembly elections in the state.

Annamalai said that he had informed the BJP leadership of his intention to resign on December 4, but had been asked to remain in the party until the work related to the state polls was completed.

He said he had joined the Hindutva party “for a positive change” but the time had come to build a new platform. “I have come to the conclusion that our views don’t align regarding Tamil Nadu”, ANI quoted his resignation letter as saying.

In his video message, he expressed respect for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but said that after a certain level “small problems keep creeping up”. Annamalai added that he did not want to be a recurring problem for the party leadership.

“We need to move away from cult politics and promote common man politics,” he said.

Reacting to the resignation, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu chief Nainar Nagendran said it would have no impact on the party, ANI reported. “The allegation that importance is not being given to state-level rights is incorrect,” he added.

Nagendran said the BJP was an ideology-based party and that Annamalai’s departure would not impact it.

“Anyone is free to start a political party,” Nagendran said. “In a democracy, everyone has that right.”

In the election results announced on May 4, actor-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, on its electoral debut, emerged as the single-largest party in Tamil Nadu. While the party won 108 seats, it fell short of the majority mark of 118 seats in the 234-member Assembly.

The ruling Secular Progressive Alliance, mainly comprising the DMK, the Congress and some Left parties, won 73 seats.

The NDA, mainly comprising the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the BJP, won 53 seats. Of these, the AIADMK won 47 seats and the BJP one.

On May 10, Vijay became the chief minister after the Congress, two Left parties and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi agreed to support his coalition government. This resulted in the first non-DMK, non-AIADMK-led state government in nearly 60 years.

Annamalai served as an Indian Police Service officer between 2011 and 2019, when he voluntarily retired. He joined the BJP in 2020 and served as the party’s Tamil Nadu chief between July 2021 and April 2025.

He lost the 2021 Assembly elections from the Aravakurichi constituency by more than 24,000 votes. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, he lost in the Coimbatore parliamentary constituency by more than 1.1 lakh votes.

In 2023, AIADMK leaders had cited remarks made by Annamalai about late Dravidian leader CN Annadurai as among the reasons for the party ending its alliance with the BJP at the time.

The aggressive politics practiced by Annamalai had repeatedly angered the AIADMK in the past.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read:

• Tamil Nadu: After defeat in the Assembly polls, Dravidian parties face unprecedented crisis
• How did Vijay break the Dravidian duopoly? And what lies ahead for Tamil Nadu?

Trinamool Congress leader Krishna Chakraborty on Thursday resigned as mayor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, a day after Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim submitted his resignation, The Hindu reported.

Chakraborty cited “personal reasons” in her resignation letter to the municipal commissioner.

A long-time associate of Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Chakraborty said she would continue to serve as a councillor.

She, however, claimed that it had become difficult for the civic board to function since the change of government in West Bengal, The Telegraph reported.

Her resignation came amid a period of upheaval within the Trinamool Congress after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections ended the party’s 15-year rule in the state.

The party is facing internal divisions with expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claiming that a group of 58 of the TMC’s 80 legislators had been recognised as the party’s legislature wing in the Assembly. The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

Separately, on Wednesday, the TMC dissolved all its committees and organisational units in the state, saying it would undertake a “comprehensive” review of its performance and organisational structure.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Cockroach Janta Party, which began as an online satirical campaign on May 16, has kept up the pressure on the Modi government. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, announced plans to return from the United States to India on Saturday to lead a protest demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The online popularity of the campaign has sparked speculation that India, too, could see dramatic political changes driven by youth protests like the upheavels in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. But Amit Ahuja, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was sceptical of this possibility.

Ahuja has written extensively about protests, social movements and political parties in India. He told Scroll that even if the cockroach campaign manages to bring some of its social media followers out on the streets, the Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to eventually co-opt its demands.

However, this does not take away from the fact that India is witnessing a crisis of employment, Ahuja argued. All political parties, particularly the ruling BJP, would do well to be more sensitive towards the “desperation” among the youth that the Cockroach Janta Party represents.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

A lot of commentators in India are calling this the start of a movement and saying that it could lead to Nepal or Bangladesh-like street protests in India. Do you think that's possible?

I can see why people would draw those kinds of conclusions. Not just in Nepal and Bangladesh, but even in Sri Lanka, we've seen street movements bring about regime change. I would not draw those conclusions about the Cockroach Janta Party for one simple reason: so far, it's just been online.

A street movement and online collective action are two very different things. It remains to be seen what kind of ground activities it [the Cockroach Janta Party] organises. And most importantly, I have not seen anywhere a desire to change the government as a major goal of this movement. Its demands are very traditional.

There is something else which we need to remind ourselves of when we make these comparisons. Delhi has seen multiple movements at different points such as the 1988 farmers’ movement or the farmers’ movement that came later [in 2020]. Governments have noticed and responded to them by protecting Delhi and government machinery.

So, those are broad lessons that governments in Delhi have learnt. There are procedures in place. There are security processes in place which will not allow something like what happened in Nepal, for example, to occur in Delhi.

The Cockroach Janta Party is articulating what many young people in India are feeling today, which is that our examination system seems to be riddled with corruption. Have similar anti-corruption movements in the past been good for Indian democracy in your view?

When you see demands ending up on the street, that's almost like a canary in the coal mine. There is something that's not working. That's why people are on the streets. Protests represent demands which the formal system of democracy doesn't seem to be doing a good job of representing.

Corruption is a perennial issue. Whether what is happening with the cancellation of exams is corruption or just plain bureaucratic incompetence, that the government will have to establish. But clearly, because it's a crisis, there will be an administrative response to this and there will be efforts made to correct it.

In the meanwhile, what these kinds of protests will do is put pressure on the government, but also highlight this issue and then force political parties and the media to run with it.

Protests of this nature, which are peaceful, represent popular demands. When demands go unmet by the political process, there are still mechanisms available through these freedoms to protest to put pressure on the government of the day to respond to them. That's what keeps the wheels of democracy running.

In 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power campaigning on an anti-corruption plank. To this date, it draws a lot of support on this issue. Do you think the Cockroach Janta Party campaign could change that?

[That] Remains to be seen. Think about where the BJP is and where it is coming from. It's won the last three national elections. It has a very popular prime minister. It is just coming off major victories in state elections.

And then think about the scale at which you need to mobilise to be able to attain these victories. So, this is still a popular party. It has a handle on some of the issues that are in play here.

I go back to 2014. The BJP at that moment was running on the corruption plank. [But] It was not the only plank they were running on — their broader plank was good governance.

Modi, who was rising as a national star at that time and making a pitch for being the next prime minister, was saying, ‘Look, I will run the country how I ran Gujarat.’ So, it was a good governance plank and corruption became a part of that plank.

On the other side, you had a Congress-led coalition government. There were internal differences in that government. The Prime Minister served at the pleasure of the party leadership. The kind of pressure that Manmohan Singh had to take was of a very different nature.

The BJP will worry about the kind of support this movement has been able to mobilise, especially on corruption. And then it will respond.

Parties take note of popular demands that can bring people out on the street. When public opinion begins to back certain demands, they will respond because they are in the business of building large coalitions. Taking popular demands on board actually helps them in this.

There's a very good chance that the BJP will actually co-opt this demand and turn it around by correcting some of the problems that are being highlighted.

One thing that makes this Cockroach Janta Party campaign stand out is that it began as a response to something that the Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kant, had said in court. What does that tell us about the perception of the judiciary in India right now?

I don't think this has anything to do with the perception of the judiciary. This is more a clash of different age groups. People who have a particular way of thinking about things and who are looking at these problems, especially with the youth, are scoffing at it.

As somebody who teaches a younger age cohort, I think it's important to appreciate that when people in this age group protest, their contexts are different. Life experiences of every age cohort are unique. And their politics is influenced by them. That's why politics shifts with age cohorts.

The important thing to remind ourselves here is that we are looking at a demographic bulge where there are very serious employment needs that are not being met. There is a crisis of employment. Whether the government is able to respond to this crisis remains to be seen. We have to be more sensitive to where this age cohort is, their experiences, and the sense of desperation that this movement is representing.

This campaign also comes at a time when it has become incredibly complicated to hold protests in India. So many activists are still in jail merely because they participated in the anti-CAA protests in 2019 and 2020. Do you think that might also be driving the popularity of this online campaign?

The anti-CAA protests were followed by the farmers’ protests that were around for the longest time. The government tried all manner of ways to respond to it. And eventually, they had to withdraw the policy. So, protests as a grammar of politics have survived even when there has been state repression.

In fact, we see more frequent street protests because the cost of bringing people together has fallen with technology and online digital networks. But these digital networks don’t always have an on-the-ground operation. As long as you don't have that, you are not going to be able to sustain this kind of protest over a period of time.

Yes, protests can be criminalised. But if you have an on-the-ground operation, an organisational structure, then your ability to sustain protests, despite repression, will still be there. Does the Cockroach Janta Party have that? Remains to be seen.

The Cockroach Janta Party has amassed millions of online followers so quickly. What does that tell us about our opposition parties? They are also doing a lot of things on social media. But nothing seems to have galvanised anger against the Modi government like this.

It should not surprise us because political parties are in the game of fighting elections. You can build a huge network online, but ultimately what matters is how many people you can bring to the polling station on election day. And that scale is very different from a Jantar Mantar protest.

These are two very different forms of collective action. Yes, parties do take on online activities because they will do everything that's required to grab the attention of the voter. But parties also understand that this alone does not produce the results in terms of turnout on election day.

But let me go back to the question that you were asking. Why does this movement suddenly galvanise so many people, whereas parties cannot? Think about how much money is required in our elections and the allegations of corruption that all governments of all parties face in India. That tells you that on this particular issue, parties just don't have the credibility. That is why movements have been the vehicle for highlighting this issue.

You've written a book about Dalit politics in different parts of India. What do you think Dalits would be making of the Cockroach Janta party right now? We don't know what the campaign thinks of social justice and caste discrimination. But the founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has publicly owned his Dalit identity.

You have to remember that this is not a movement which started on a caste issue. There are strong feelings across caste groups about corruption. So it's not unique to a particular caste or regional or religious identity. That said, there are a few things which are worth noting here.

One is the backlash to the disclosure of that identity [by Dipke], which tells us that whether we like it or not, even when we have casteless issues which impact everybody, caste does manage to come in.

The second aspect which is also worth noting is that Abhijeet Dipke started an anti-corruption movement and people followed it online. That he's a Dalit doesn't matter. You can actually have a Dalit who can be a leader of a movement which people from different castes join.

I am a Dalit myself. I hope that will answer all your questions. https://t.co/4gbkR1kTMU

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) May 21, 2026

We've had this notion because of what our political experience teaches us that when it came to Dalit leadership, it was prominent only when it was leading Dalit movements. But that's not the case. Even in the anti-CAA protests, the role that Chandrashekhar Azad played to mobilise support beyond just Dalits tells us that we have leadership coming out from among Dalits that will lead big umbrella movements.

We can point to even the BJP today. The BJP of 2026 has a prime minister who is from an OBC [Other Backward Classes] caste. And this is his third tenure. He remains popular. When you go back to the BJP's history, it was seen as a predominantly upper-caste party. Its own complexion, its own profile has changed. Its leadership is different.

How caste captivates Indian politics and how we think about caste boundaries is changing. The backlash reminds us that caste still matters. Caste discrimination and caste prejudice still matter. But none of this is static.

Is this what makes the Cockroach Janta Party campaign different from the last major anti-corruption protest that we had in India, the India Against Corruption protest? That was largely led by retired upper-caste bureaucrats and public figures.

Yes and no. It depends on how the issue of corruption is framed. If the kind of corruption that's being talked about is about middle-class concerns, then it still is an interest-based movement.

Where I think the two movements are different is that the previous one started with actual on-the-ground protests. This movement starts online. If it translates into sustained, on-the-ground protests which will remain peaceful but still have a disruptive effect, then they'll be more similar.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Thursday said it will not take part in a meeting of the opposition INDIA bloc on June 8.

The decision was taken keeping in mind the sentiments of party workers, who were “deeply hurt by what they consider the betrayal committed by the Congress party”, ANI quoted the DMK as stating.

The party was referring to the Congress supporting the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government in Tamil Nadu.

The Congress, a long-time ally of the DMK, was the first party to support the outfit led by actor Vijay after the Assembly election results. This had led DMK leader TR Baalu to accuse the Congress of betraying the people who voted for it, according to PTI.

On May 21, two Congress MLAs, S Rajesh Kumar and P Viswanathan, were inducted into the state Cabinet. This was the first time in 59 years that the Congress became part of the Cabinet in Tamil Nadu.

Against this backdrop, the DMK said on Thursday that it will not take part in the meeting of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance on June 8, as the Congress is slated to participate in it.

ஜூன் 8-ஆம் தேதி டெல்லியில் நடைபெறும் "இந்தியா” கூட்டணிக் கூட்டத்தில், காங்கிரஸ் பங்கேற்கும் கூட்டத்தில் திராவிட முன்னேற்றக் கழகம் பங்கேற்காது!

அதே நேரத்தில் – இந்தக் கூட்டத்தில் இடம்பெற்றுள்ள மற்ற கட்சிகள் முன்வைக்கும் நாட்டு நலனைப் பாதிக்கும் பிரச்சினைகளில், திராவிட முன்னேற்றக்… pic.twitter.com/JrEF2ibKsG

— DMK (@arivalayam) June 4, 2026

“While the DMK will not attend this meeting, it will continue, as always, to raise its voice on issues affecting the welfare of the nation that may be brought forward by the other parties participating in the meeting,” it added, according to ANI.

While the Vijay-led TVK emerged as the single-largest party in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, it had fallen short of the majority mark by 10 seats. It formed the government with the support of the Congress, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Sneha.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that Narendra Modi would not be the prime minister a year from now as the “system that he once controlled is now shaken and collapsing internally”.

Speaking at an Adivasi Congress event in New Delhi, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party government could attempt to suppress growing public anger by imposing “something like an Emergency”.

He also said that an “economic tsunami” will hit the country because the Modi government had removed the economic safeguards that existed earlier.

“India’s protection system…a shock absorber from the international system…has been removed by the BJP,” Gandhi said. “Prices are increasing…India will undergo such an economic crisis that you have never ever witnessed in your lives.”

Gandhi also alleged that an “institutional revolt” was underway in India.

“The Election Commission is fully controlled…it has been fully controlled for the last three years,” he said. “Chief election commissioner is messaging me, head of intelligence system, senior judiciary…all are revolting [against the BJP government]...they are providing us information.”

He also said that the “system of control is collapsing internally”. He added that this was happening because the officials can see that “public pressure will be so severe that if we continue on this path, it will be a risk for us”.

“If the public can see that the election system is rigged...if the public gets angry, do you think the Election Commission will not be scared?” Gandhi said.

However, he added that the government “may try to suppress the public pressure and impose something like an Emergency”.

“But, we are now entering the second stage, as they were earlier in full control but are now losing control,” he said.

भयंकर आर्थिक सुनामी आ रही है और नरेंद्र मोदी इसके बारे में न कुछ कर रहे हैं, न कर सकते हैं।

समझिए क्यों? pic.twitter.com/h2HKeh7Jp0

— Congress (@INCIndia) June 3, 2026

Gandhi unveiling new conspiracy theories, says BJP

Bharatiya Janata Party’s publicity chief Amit Malviya said that Gandhi was unveiling “a new conspiracy theory” every few months.

“First, democracy was over,” Malviya said on social media. “Then institutions were captured. Then election rigging. Now we are told that an Emergency is coming and an economic tsunami is around the corner.”

Malviya added: “At some point, one has to ask: is Rahul Gandhi interested in facts, or is he simply manufacturing fear and chaos because he cannot explain his party’s repeated electoral failures? The country has heard these predictions before. The problem is that none of them ever come true.”

The BJP leader claimed that Gandhi had said the chief election commissioner, intelligence chiefs, judges and institutions “have been secretly working for him for the last three years, constantly feeding him information”.

“Yet, despite having this extraordinary network, his party keeps losing elections and shrinking politically,” Malviya said. “Not a single allegation of election rigging has been proven in court. Not one.”

Malviya asked why Gandhi was “vehemently opposing” the special intensive revision of electoral rolls “if everyone has been working for [him] all this time”.

The video of Gandhi’s speech posted by the Congress and shared by Malviya did not show the Opposition leader as having claimed that officials and institutions had been working for him for three years.

Written by Sara Varghese and Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava and Sneha.

In June last year, Jakia Begum found an elderly woman sitting by a road in a neighbourhood in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.

She was drenched in the rain, and weeping. She appeared to have injured her hand.

Jakia Begum’s daughter Klanti Akhtar told Scroll: “She could not tell us how she had ended up here. When we asked her about her home, she said she was from Nalbari.”

Akhtar, a 28-year-old woman from Dhaka’s Mirpur locality, had never heard of Nalbari before. “We thought it was a place in Dhaka or somewhere in Bangladesh.”

Moved by her plight, Jakia and her daughter brought the woman home. It was only later that Akhtar googled Nalbari and realised that the woman they had rescued was from Assam, India.

Sakina Begum, the 69-year-old woman from Nalbari, does not remember how she ended up in the Dhaka neighbourhood of Mirpur.

All she remembers is being taken from a police station in Assam to India’s largest detention centre in Matia – and then pushed across the border near Dhubri district into Bangladesh.

The days after are blurry in her memory. She boarded a bus and asked the conductor to take her to Nalbari – and somehow made it to Dhaka, over 500 km away.

“I told them [Jakia and her daughter] that I don’t know where I am,” Sakina Begum told Scroll over a video call. “Before they took me in, I had been outside in the rain for many days. I was hungry and cold. They said I could live in their home. They fed me, gave me space to offer namaz. They even helped me have a bath when my arm was broken. ”

Akhtar added: “She is a helpless, old woman. So we felt sympathy for her. She is an Indian, not a thief or dacoit. We had to help her.”

Sakina Begum, who speaks only Assamese, now lives with Akhtar’s family, even though she was briefly jailed in Bangladesh.

A year after she was forced out of India, she is desperately waiting to return to Barkura village, Nalbari. Her family back home, say, they have no means to get her back.

“I am an Assamese person, I am not from Bangladesh,” Begum said. “I don’t even know how to speak Bangla. The [Assam] police put me in danger by pushing me here. They should not have. I have not committed any crime.”

An ‘indigenous’ Muslim

In May last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Assam launched a crackdown on “declared foreigners” like Sakina Begum, picking them up from their home across the state and dumping them in Bangladesh in the dead of night.

“Declared foreigners” are not people caught while trying to illegally enter India’s borders. They are typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, who assert that they are Indian citizens – but who have failed to prove their citizenship in Assam’s foreigner tribunals.

These tribunals are unique to Assam, and they decide on citizenship cases on the basis of documentary evidence. They have declared 1.6 lakh residents as foreigners, as of March 2025, through a process criticised for being arbitrary and biased.

Those who lose their cases at the foreigners tribunals have the right to challenge the orders in the higher courts. Sometimes, they have been sent to the state’s detention or holding centres. But, until May last year, they were rarely deported to Bangladesh, as a tribunal order is not proof that they are citizens of another country.

As Scroll has reported, Assam’s “pushback” regime has separated families like Sakina Begum’s and left them devastated.

While the government has not put out a list of those expelled, nearly all forced out in this fashion last year were Muslims of Bengali origin.

The community is often vilified in Assam as “Bangladeshis” and “illegal immigrants” even though they are descendants of peasants settled in the region by the British four decades before India became independent.

Sakina Begum was the exception among those “pushed back”.

She is a Goria Muslim – a community that has been designated by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government as “indigenous” to the state and is considered native to Upper Assam. But her family members say that no Goria Muslim or Assamese Muslim leaders have spoken up for Sakina Begum.

Begum was declared a foreigner in 2012 by a foreigners tribunal in an ex parte order – the judgment was pronounced in her absence or without hearing her claim. Close to 64,000 people in Assam have been adjudged as foreigners in ex parte orders, according to the Union home ministry.

Begum’s appeal against the order was rejected by the Gauhati High Court and she spent five years in the Kokrajhar jail from 2014.

“My mother is not a Bangladeshi,” her eldest daughter Rasia Begum, who lives in Darrang district, told Scroll. “If she were a foreigner, how are her three siblings Indian? The police did not check any documents.”

Scroll has seen Sakina Begum’s name on the state’s 2005 and 2018 voter lists, as well as the name of her father Mokbil Ali on the 1965 and 1970 voter lists.

Jailed in Bangladesh

For four months after she was picked up from Nalbari by the state police, Sakina Begum’s family had no news of her.

“We went to the Matia detention centre three times, but they said my mother was not there,” her eldest daughter Rasia Begum told Scroll.

In Dhaka, Klanti Akhtar and her mother had little idea about how to contact her family in India.

“She repeatedly told us that she is not Bangladeshi. She said she is Axomiya,” Akhtar told Scroll. “My mother and I took her to the local police station so that we could send her back to her family. But the police told us to keep her in our home. They said they will find a way.”

In September, a BBC Bangla crew got wind of Begum’s presence in Mirpur and contacted her family.

“We broke down as soon as we saw her on video call,” Rasia said. “We never imagined that my mother would be in another country. It was a relief to finally see her after four months but we were shocked to see her in Bangladesh.”

The news report of her presence in Bangladesh had grim consequences for Sakina Begum.

The local police station took her into their custody. She was produced in court and charged for entering Bangladesh without a passport or visa and jailed for two months. “I suffered a lot in jail,” she said.

Two months later, Akhtar’s family pooled together money to secure her bail.

“Onar proti maya hoiya gesilo,” she said. We had grown attached to her.

Akhtar added: “We collected about Rs 7,000 from our locality and my mother and I spent Rs 3,000 more to release her from the jail.”

The bail condition mandated that Sakina Begum must report to the police station once a week. Two local guarantors stood surety, including Jakia, Akhtar’s mother.

Since the news of her expulsion, Sakina Begum’s story has been covered by several news channels in Assam.

“So many stories were done asking why they sent an Assamese woman to Bangladesh,” she told Scroll. “I was born there. Everything that I have is there.”

“I am from Assam and I will go to Assam. I am not from Bangladesh,” Sakina Begum told @scroll_in. “The [Assam] police put me in danger by pushing me here. They should not have. I have not committed any crime.”

Read here:https://t.co/Ml0aiquad6 pic.twitter.com/iAQNL0ztQC

— Rokibuz Zaman (@ZamanRokibuz_) June 4, 2026

Years ago, Sakina Begun had married a Bengali-origin Muslim man from Barpeta district. She was arrested and sent to Kokrajhar jail while her husband was still alive.

However, Sakina has found little support from ethnic Assemese groups and organisations.

“Some leaders of Goria organisations have come to our home and talked with us,” her daughter Rasia said. “However, apart from that, nobody has protested or created pressure on the government to bring her back. The leaders did not even check on us whether she had returned home or not.”

Hafijul Ahmed, the BJP-government appointed chairman of the Goria Development Council, refused to speak on the matter, saying it was a legal issue.

“It has become an international matter and the foreign ministry has to take a call,” said Moinul Islam, who heads the Sadou Asom Goria Jatiya Parishad, a group which represents Assamese Muslims in the state.

Islam said that Sakina Begum had not submitted documents stating that she was a Goria Muslim to the foreigners tribunal, which is why she was declared a non-citizen. “Her lawyer told us that they had not turned up at the foreigners tribunal and said the family did not cooperate,” he said.

Since Sakina Begum was reported by Assam’s border police in 2006, the family has spent their savings in fighting the citizenship case.

“We have already sold our ancestral land and home to fight the case in the tribunals and high court,” Rasia Begum said.

As she waits for news of her mother, Rasia Begum said she is in an “impossible situation.”

“We can’t go there to bring her,” she said.

She added: “Our lawyers have told us that we will move the Supreme Court soon. We don’t even have money to fight the case.”

The All Bodoland Territorial Council Minority Students Union has been helping the family in their legal battle, she said.

‘Why this punishment?’

In Dhaka, Akhtar’s family rued that there have been no efforts by the Indian government to take Sakina Begum back.

“She cries every day,” Akhtar said. “She cries whenever her son and daughters call her. How long can she wait? It has been a year.”

Akhtar’s husband is a driver, with a large family to care for. “We are a poor family, we are helping her as much as we can,” she said. “We are providing her with whatever we eat.”

Sakina Begum said she was thankful to her hosts, who came to her aid when she was lost. “I did not have anyone to protect me other than Allah,” she said. “But they found me and not only gave me shelter but also food, respect and love.”

But, she added, she wanted to return home. “I can’t stay here, I can’t tolerate this. Only Allah knows how I am staying here,” she said, breaking down. “Why are people of Assam being punished like this? They brought me here today. Tomorrow, they will bring another one.”

She pleaded with the Assam government to allow her back home. “We are poor people. We have already sold our home and land. We should not be given such punishment.”

Expelled Trinamool Congress MLA Ritabrata Banerjee claimed on Wednesday that West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose has accepted the claim of the rebel group led by him to be the main opposition in the state, ANI reported.

Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that the speaker had accepted a proposal by 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs to be recognised as TMC’s legislature wing.

Earlier in the day, the 58 MLAs submitted to the speaker, without the party’s letterhead, a list mentioning Mamata Banerjee as the party’s leader, Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition, and Sheuli Saha, Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha and Sabina Yasmin as the deputy leaders in the House.

Ritabrata Banerjee claimed that the speaker has accepted these demands.

The stand taken by the 58 MLAs is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

On Tuesday, General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee sent a fresh letter to Bose, reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Chattopadhyay as leader of the Opposition.

This came amid a probe into allegations by Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha that signatures were forged in documents submitted to the speaker in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment.

Saha, who represents the constituency of Entally, was also expelled by the TMC on Monday.

On Wednesday, Ritabrata Banerjee said that the 58 MLAs had told the speaker they want Mamata Banerjee to be the chief advisor of the legislature party despite the ongoing rebellion, reported ANI.

“I have already categorically stated that we will write to Mamata Banerjee to be the chief advisor of the Trinamool Congress legislative party in the 18th West Bengal Legislative Assembly,” he said at a press conference.

He also claimed that two more legislators currently outside the state have conveyed their support to the group, according to PTI.

“Once they formally extend their support, our strength will rise further,” Ritabrata Banerjee was quoted as saying.

He further said that Abhishek Banerjee “has no relation with this legislative Assembly”.

“As a member of Parliament, he has sent a letter earlier with forged documents,” claimed Ritabrata Banerjee.

He added: “If such a thing has happened and it is proved, then the speaker of this legislative Assembly can write to cancel the membership of Abhishek Banerjee from the Lok Sabha of India.”

Meanwhile, TMC MLA Reyat Hossain Sarkar, who was part of the group of 58 legislators, said that the party will not split, reported ANI.

“We were elected as representatives of the TMC,” said Sarkar. “We were elected under the TMC’s party symbol. We contested the election using didi’s [Mamata Banerjee’s] photo. The party selected us as its candidates. We continue to acknowledge the party’s authority, and we continue to recognise didi as our leader.”

TMC leader resigns as Kolkata mayor

Amid the political turmoil, TMC leader Firhad Hakim resigned as the mayor of Kolkata on Wednesday, party MLA Kunal Ghosh was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Mamata Banerjee had accepted Hakim’s request, added Ghosh.

He said that Hakim had asked to step down from his post earlier as well, citing difficulties in functioning after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state.

“At that time, he was asked not to resign,” Ghosh was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “However, he again requested Mamata Banerjee today to allow him to step down, following which she agreed.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Congress leader DK Shivakumar on Wednesday took oath as the chief minister of Karnataka. He was administered the oath of office by Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot.

G Parameshwara, who holds the home portfolio in the state government, was sworn in as the deputy chief minister.

Shivakumar was elected as the leader of the Congress’ legislature party on Saturday, two days after Siddaramaiah resigned as the chief minister.

Shivakumar had served as deputy chief minister in the Siddaramaiah government since May 2023. He represented the Sathanur constituency between 1989 and 2008, and has been the MLA from the Kanakapura constituency since 2008.

Siddaramaiah was the longest-serving chief minister of Karnataka with a tenure of more than eight years across two terms. The 78-year-old served as the chief minister between 2013 and 2018. His most recent term had begun in May 2023.

Speculation about a leadership change in Karnataka had resurfaced after the Congress government completed half of its five-year term in November.

After the Congress defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections in May 2023, reports claimed there had been a competition between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar for the chief minister’s post.

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

The Congress never confirmed that there had been such an agreement. In July, Siddaramaiah said that he would remain in office for the full five-year term.

Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar were in Delhi on May 26 for meetings with the Congress’ central leadership.

Two days later, Siddaramaiah resigned as the chief minister saying that he was following the Congress leadership’s decision asking him to step down. “I am making way for a new chief minister,” he said.

Siddaramaiah also said that the Congress leadership had offered him a Rajya Sabha seat but he “politely told them no, saying I want to remain in state politics”.

On Tuesday, Siddaramaiah was inducted into the Congress Working Committee, the executive body of the party.

The next Assembly elections in Karnataka are expected to be held in May 2028.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Trinamool Congress on Wednesday dissolved all its committees and organisations in West Bengal.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party said that it will conduct a “comprehensive exercise of introspection”, performance review and organisational assessment in the wake of its electoral defeat in the state.

The structure of the party and its units will be reconstituted based on the findings of the review, it said.

On May 4, the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated the TMC in the Assembly elections, ending its 15-year rule in the state.

Division within the TMC

On Wednesday, expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee reached the Assembly with 59 of the party’s 80 MLAs, who are supporting his attempt to become the leader of the Opposition in the House, The Indian Express reported.

Ritabrata Banerjee’s decision is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting Sovandeb Chattopadhyay to be the Opposition leader in the Assembly.

The group of MLAs submitted, without the party’s letterhead, a list mentioning Mamata Banerjee as the party’s leader, Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition, and Sheuli Saha, Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha and Sabina Yasmin as the deputy leaders in the House, the newspaper reported.

This came a day after TMC’ National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday sent a fresh letter to Speaker Rathindra Bose reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Chattopadhyay as leader of the Opposition.

This came amid a probe into an alleged case of signature forgery and speculation about divisions within the TMC’s legislature party after Ritabrata Banerjee and another MLA Sandipan Saha were expelled on Monday.

The two MLAs had alleged that signatures were forged in documents submitted to the speaker in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Trinamool Congress National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday sent a fresh letter to West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose reiterating the party’s decision to appoint Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of the Opposition, PTI reported.

This amid a probe into an alleged signature forgery case and speculation about divisions within the Trinamool Congress legislative party following the expulsion of MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha on Monday. The two legislators had alleged that signatures were forged in documents submitted to the Speaker in support of Chattopadhyay’s appointment, the news agency reported.

On Tuesday, TMC MLAs Kunal Ghosh and Ashima Patra attempted to hand-deliver the letter to the Speaker. They alleged that the Speaker’s office secretary refused to accept it in Bose’s absence, saying he had been verbally instructed not to receive any letters from the party, PTI reported.

“Till yesterday, the Speaker was receiving our letters,” the news agency quoted Ghosh as saying. “For unknown reasons, the office has stopped accepting them from today. How can he not receive an official communication from two elected MLAs?”

The fresh letter, signed by Abhishek Banerjee, also endorsed Ashima Patra and Nayana Bandyopadhyay as deputy Leaders of the Opposition and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip.

requested the Speaker to recognise the posts “on the basis of the precedent or practice of Legislative Assembly, which is in vogue for decades together”, PTI reported.

The row

Ritabrata Banerjee and Saha were suspended from the Trinamool Congress on Monday, after West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari claimed at a press conference that they had complained about forged signatures on the party’s letter. Adhikari said that the two MLAs have claimed that no such resolution had been passed and that the document had been fabricated.

The Crime Investigation Department is probing the allegations.

On Monday evening, officers of the Crime Investigation Department went to Abhishek Banerjee’s home in Kolkata for the second time in 48 hours and served him with a fresh notice directing him to appear at the agency’s headquarters on June 8, PTI reported.

The notice was issued after he did not appear before investigators on Monday and instead sought two weeks’ time, citing health reasons.

Investigators have so far questioned 13 TMC MLAs. Three of them – Baharul Islam, Arup Roy and Subhasis Das – have stated that the signatures attributed to them in the meeting resolution book are not theirs, the agency alleged.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Opposition demanded the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after the chairman and secretary of the Central Board of Secondary Education were transferred on Tuesday following allegations of widespread mismanagement in the Class 12 board examination results.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi described the government’s action as a “cover-up” and alleged that “the real culprit”, Pradhan, was “spared”.

“Our demand remains the same today: Dismiss the education minister and conduct an independent inquiry,” Gandhi said in a social media post. “If the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] cared about the 18.5 million CBSE students–Dharmendra Pradhan ji would have been removed long ago.”

CBSE अध्यक्ष - ट्रांसफ़र।
CBSE सचिव - ट्रांसफ़र।
एक-सदस्यीय “जाँच” समिति - गठित।
और असल ज़िम्मेदार, धर्मेंद्र प्रधान - सुरक्षित।

अधिकारियों को हटा दिया। मंत्री को बचा लिया।

यह जवाबदेही नहीं - यह cover-up है।

हमारी माँग आज भी वही है: शिक्षा मंत्री को बर्ख़ास्त किया जाए और… https://t.co/LUrM8top5y

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 2, 2026

Congress president Mallikarjun said that “nothing less than [Pradhan’s resignation] would provide a sense of justice” to CBSE students.

His party colleague Jairam Ramesh alleged that the transfer of the CBSE chairman and secretary was “an attempt to deflect attention by holding bureaucrats accountable instead of the political leadership” and added that “justice requires that minister Pradhan be dismissed”.

He added that the transfer of the two CBSE officials and the formation of an inquiry committee indicated that “irregularities did occur”.

On Tuesday, a one-member inquiry committee chaired by S Radha Chauhan, the head of the Capacity Building Commission, was also set up to look into the procurement of On-Screen Marking Services by the board. The committee has been directed to submit a report within a month to the Department of Personnel and Training.

CBSE के चेयरमैन और सेक्रेटरी का तबादला कर दिया गया है। न्याय की मांग है कि मंत्री प्रधान को बर्खास्त किया जाए।

CBSE नेतृत्व की इस अचानक विदाई और CBSE के On Screen Marking (OSM) सिस्टम की procurement प्रक्रिया की जांच के लिए एक सदस्यीय आयोग के गठन से यह साबित होता है कि… pic.twitter.com/HOhzjYSjcp

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) June 2, 2026

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal said that the transfers had “sprinkled salt on the wounds of millions of children and their parents”. He alleged that the government was effectively sending the message that “the education minister will not be changed, do whatever you have to”.

CBSE के चेयरमैन और सचिव को ट्रांसफर करके मोदी सरकार ने लाखों बच्चों और उनके पैरेंट्स के घावों पर नमक छिड़कने का काम किया है।

मोदी जी ने चुनौती दी है - शिक्षा मंत्री नहीं बदला जाएगा, जो करना है कर लो। https://t.co/zK8OcjKiet

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) June 2, 2026

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray said that it was a “shame” that the Bharatiya Janata Party government appeared to regard the transfers as a “major action”.

“For ruining the careers of lakhs of students and their parents, the education minister Pradhan must be sacked,” he added.

So apparently transferring CBSE chairman and secretary is “big action” by bjp govt.

What a shame!

For ruining the careers of lakhs of students and their parents, the Education Minister Pradhan must be sacked!

And these chairman and secretary be suspended and investigated…

— Aaditya Thackeray (@AUThackeray) June 2, 2026

In the last two weeks, several discrepancies were flagged in the CBSE’s On-Screen Marking evaluation process for Class 12 answer sheets.

Many students had alleged that the scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the CBSE did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about possible answer sheet mismatches. Students seeking re-evaluation also alleged that they faced portal failures, delays in payment confirmation and, in some cases, were asked to pay excess fees because of technical glitches.

Separately, a cybersecurity researcher, Nisarga Adhikary, has claimed on social media that he had discovered that the OnMark portal link was publicly accessible and that an analysis of its code showed vulnerabilities that could potentially allow accounts of examiners to be taken over.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday wrote a series of letters to political leaders from the Union Territory, including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, calling for a “united outreach” to the Union government.

Mufti said that the recent “breakthroughs” achieved by the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance in their negotiations with the Union government offered a lesson that “only dialogue can deliver meaningful outcomes”.

The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party chief said that the Union Territory had once again found itself at a crossroads where it has been gripped by the “pervasive feeling of despair and disillusionment”.

In her letter to Abdullah, Mufti said that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir “necessitates a broad consensus above and across party, and partisan lines to pull J&K out of the current debilitating stalemate”.

“If we want to restore the dignity and security of our people, a constructive dialogue with the government of India is a much needed imperative,” she added.

Mufti said that the leaders in Jammu and Kashmir should make a “united outreach” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah and “prevail upon them to initiate a sustained dialogue” with the people of the Union Territory.

She added that leaders from Kashmir will need to keep their disagreements “on the back-burner” to unite for the “common good”.

Mufti urged the chief minister to initiate the process of bringing all political parties together as a step towards reaching out to the Union government.

“Given the fact that disagreements and squabbling between regional parties have been detrimental to the collective interests of J&K, a reasonable consensus especially post 2019 is the only solution,” the former chief minister said.

On Tuesday, Mufti said that “if Ladakh could do it, so can [Jammu and Kashmir]”.

Abdullah said that he will respond to Mufti’s letter after consulting the senior leaders of his party, the National Conference.

Besides Abdullah, Mufti also wrote to Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress’ Jammu and Kashmir chief Tariq Hameed Karra, People’s Conference chairperson Sajad Gani Lone and MP Engineer Rashid, among others.

Demands for restoration of statehood

In August 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into two Union territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

In December 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the validity of the 2019 order abrogating Article 370 and ordered the Centre to restore statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.

While Assembly elections were held in October 2024, the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir has not yet been restored.

The Union government has repeatedly said that it would be restored at the “appropriate time”.

In Ladakh, the lack of a legislature has stoked fears among the Ladakhi people over their land, natural resources and livelihoods. They also fear that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem are in danger.

The residents have had four demands: statehood to Ladakh, constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil districts and the rollout of a recruitment process and a separate Public Service Commission for Ladakh.

The Sixth Schedule guarantees protection to land and a degree of autonomy for the country’s tribal areas. All of Ladakh currently has one Lok Sabha seat.

The demands were pushed forward by groups such as the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance, which have been coordinating protests since 2020.

Tensions erupted in 2024 and 2025 with renewed protests, including a hunger strike by activist Sonam Wangchuk supporting the demands and the resumption of talks with the Union government.

In September, protests in Leh turned violent when clashes broke out between protesters and security forces, leaving four people dead in police firing. The Union government accused Wangchuk of instigating the unrest and detained him under the National Security Act for more than five months.

In March, the government revoked his detention, saying the decision was aimed at “fostering an environment of peace, stability, and mutual trust in Ladakh so as to facilitate constructive and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders”.

After his release, the activist called for a “win-win” dialogue with the Union government. The negotiations resumed on May 22.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: ‘We have been made fools’: Why J&K’s hopes for Omar Abdullah government have soured in a year

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath on Monday opposed demands made by Muslim clerics that the cow be declared the national animal, saying that the “cow is our mother”.

At an event in Bijnor, Adityanath said that he had “come to know that some maulvis and maulanas” have demanded that cows be declared a national animal.

“The cow is already our mother and our bond with the cow spans several lifetimes,” he said. “No formal declaration is required to define the relationship between a mother and her child.”

“Gaumata [Mother Cow] is a self-proclaimed national mother, and doesn’t need to be declared as the national mother,” he added.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leader described the demand as “double standards”, alleging that some people support cow slaughter while demanding national animal status for cows.

He also warned that the government would take action against anybody who slaughters cows.

गोमाता तो स्वघोषित 'राष्ट्रमाता' हैं, किसी को घोषित करने की आवश्यकता नहीं है... pic.twitter.com/89SD81i8qz

— Yogi Adityanath (@myogiadityanath) June 1, 2026

The comments came weeks after several Muslim organisations and leaders on May 24 supported a demand made by Maulana Arshad Madani, the president of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (Arshad Madani faction), to declare the cow as the national animal.

This would help stop the issue of cow slaughter from being exploited politically, the organisations said.

The demand was also backed by former Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, who told The Indian Express on May 25 that the cow should be declared the national animal if the “root cause of the problem” could be solved.

“In order to stop the slaughter of cows, if such a step is taken, then it is a good thing,” the newspaper quoted him as having said.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

For the last two weeks, Jaskirat Singh, a government school teacher in Punjab, has been going to a nearby village every afternoon after work.

The teacher from Amritsar knocks on doors, asking people hundreds of questions. “On average, I tick off eight households from my list every day,” Singh, who is in his 50s, told Scroll. “Then I return home exhausted around sunset,”

Singh is one of 28,000 government employees deputed by the Punjab government to conduct the state’s first ever Drug and Socio-Economic Survey – an exercise meant to quantify drug addiction in the border state and assess the socio-economic and educational background of those dependent on drugs.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, while announcing the survey in April, had said that the aim was to “understand the drug problem and then make targeted policies which will have better outcomes”.

But, on the ground, enumerators like Singh are running into hurdles.

In the last 15 days, the government school teacher in Amritsar has surveyed 120 households. “Only two or three families conceded that some of their family members were into drugs,” he said.

The survey’s format makes the majority of respondents evade questions related to drugs, Singh said. “Which mother will reveal to a stranger that her son or daughter is into drugs?” he asked. The teacher requested that his real name not be disclosed, because he feared government action for speaking to the media.

Difficult to admit

Weeks after it began, the “drug census” of 65 lakh households has spawned more questions than answers. Opposition parties have called it a “pre-poll exercise” by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party to gauge voter sentiment in the final year of its term.

Most strikingly, experts have warned that the survey, carried out through a mobile app, might throw up a distorted picture.

“It’s likely that the survey will come up with a positive figure like 80% of Punjab is free from drugs,” said Mohan Sharma, an anti-drug activist and former project director of the Red Cross drug de-addiction centre in Sangrur district. “[In that case], the results will go in favour of the government.”

Before the state-wide census, the Punjab government had carried out a pilot study across 11 villages of the state, according to a report in The Tribune. That study, the government said, had established that local residents were forthcoming on information about drug addiction.

Enumerators say they have not encountered such frankness.

In contrast, most people not only dodge questions about family members using drugs, but even those related to availability of drugs in the neighbourhood.

Singh explained: “The survey asks if drugs are available in the neighbourhood. If a respondent says yes, then the app throws up a new bunch of questions like: Where are the drugs available? Who is selling those drugs?”

He said that residents “tend to avoid answering these questions in the affirmative because it leads to many other questions that they are not comfortable answering”.

Mohan Sharma, the veteran anti-drug campaigner who has been creating awareness about drug abuse for over two decades, said he was not surprised.

Over the years, Sharma and his team members have held hundreds of awareness programmes in villages. But to gain the residents’ confidence remains difficult.

“Every time, I ask those who have become addicted to come forward,” he said. “Despite promising them free treatment and counselling, hardly anyone does.”

Many families have pragmatic reasons to deny that their family members are addicted to drugs – or even that they died of an overdose, Sharma said.

“They would rather pass it off as a cardiac arrest because they have an unmarried girl at home,” he said. “If they say that their family member died of a drug overdose, nobody will want to marry her.”

Ritu Bala, assistant professor and head of Punjabi University’s department of social work, said the survey’s methodology does not align with the principles of social science research.

“You cannot ask sensitive questions straight away and then expect people to answer them easily. Nobody will give an honest answer,” Bala said. “In social sciences, this type of research is always done after framing a proper research methodology. One of the key elements of this type of research entails having a strong rapport between the enumerator and the respondent.”

Fails to address gaps

Several studies have been carried out in the past to assess the extent of drug abuse in Punjab.

A 2015 study by All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had estimated that over 2.3 lakh individuals in Punjab were opioid-dependent, with heroin as the most common opioid used.

In 2017, a study by Chandigarh’s premier Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research had estimated that 14.7 % (29.7 lakh) of Punjab’s population was addicted to substances like alcohol, tobacco, opium, charas and heroin.

Alcohol topped the list of substances abused, with 22 lakh people being dependent on it, the survey said. Between 1.7 lakh and 2.7 lakh people were addicted to opioids.

The latest estimate is included in a 2023 report tabled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment before Lok Sabha. It put the number of opioid-dependent population in Punjab at 21.36 lakh. Of these, 3.43 lakh users were children in the age group of 10-17.

Mohan Sharma, the former director of Sangrur’s de-addiction centre, says the ongoing survey makes a mistake by not categorising alcoholism as drug abuse.

“They have left out the main substance to which people are hooked,” he said. Sharma, who has authored five books on drug abuse, said alcoholism in Punjab has wreaked havoc in the society. “My research shows that there are at least 16 widows in every Punjab village who have lost their husbands to alcohol consumption. How can they leave out alcoholism from the survey?”

Moreover, experts warned that the survey is unlikely to plug existing gaps in the data – for example, on the number of women addicts.

In 2015, a survey by Punjab’s ministry of social justice and department of health had estimated that 1% of the state’s 2.32 lakh opioid users were women. Many argue that the numbers may be much higher.

Dr Ritu Bala, the assistant professor from Punjabi University, Patiala, had little hope that the Punjab government’s survey would help reach a credible number. “Do you think a woman is in a position to come forward and confess about her addiction in a survey?” she said. “Even men shy from accepting their dependence on substances. One can just imagine how difficult it’s for a woman.”

Drug survey or political feedback?

The Punjab government has also drawn criticism for the nature of questions included in a survey ostensibly about drug abuse.

The survey includes approximately 160 questions, which take around 30-35 minutes to complete. “Many of these questions are related to the government’s schemes for the public,” said another government school teacher in Ludhiana, who asked not to be identified. “Rather than a drug survey, it looks like a political feedback survey.”

The Ludhiana teacher said the survey includes questions about every government scheme launched by the Bhagwant Mann government. “We have to ask respondents if they have benefitted from a scheme. For example, we have to record how much a household saves monthly on account of free electricity provided by the government,” he said.

In many cases, he added, the respondents are unaware of many government schemes. “In that case, we have to explain that scheme to them and inform them how they can benefit from it,” he added.

Some questions suggest that the survey’s findings may be used to devise the ruling party’s strategy ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled early next year. For example, the survey asks respondents to identify three issues which should be addressed by the government on priority.

Opposition parties in Punjab have questioned the ruling Aam Aadmi Party government’s intent in carrying out the survey.

Early in May, Congress Punjab state president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring alleged that the census was a “pre-poll” move to gather voter data at the cost of public funds.

Ravneet Singh Bittu, Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Punjab, accused AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal of trying to damage the image of the state through the survey. “Data has become a powerful tool in today’s world,” Bittu said. “There appears to be a conspiracy to defame Punjab’s youth through these figures.”

The Trinamool Congress on Monday expelled party MLAs Ritabrata Bandyopadhyay and Sandipan Saha on charges of “anti-party activities”, The Indian Express reported.

The two legislators were removed minutes after West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari claimed at a press conference that they had complained about the signatures of Trinamool Congress MLAs being forged on a party letter endorsing Sovondeb Chattopadhyay as the leader of opposition in the Assembly.

Adhikari said that Bandopadhyay and Saha claimed that no such resolution was passed, and the document was fabricated, India Today reported.

“Notably, 14 of the signatures are written in block letters,” the chief minister was quoted by the channel as saying. “Three MLAs have already explicitly stated that they never signed any resolution. Following these discrepancies, the secretary of the speaker lodged an FIR at the Hare Street police station, and the case has now been handed over to the CID [Criminal Investigation Department].”

After the Trinamool Congress expelled him, Saha claimed that the party “supports those who do unethical things” and expels those who act ethically, The Indian Express reported. “We did not even know that a signature in an attendance register would be passed off as a signature on a proposal,” he claimed.

The Trinamool Congress, however, accused the two MLAs of harming the party’s interests in several ways. “It has been observed that you have engaged in activities and made statements that are prejudicial to the interests of AITC,” said their expulsion letters, signed by party vice president Chandrima Bhattacharya, according to India Today.

The letter also alleged that Bandopadhyay and Saha remained absent from meetings convened by the party leadership.

Last week, Bandopadhyay and Saha met West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose in Adhikari’s presence amid speculation that they may defect from the Trinamool Congress.

While Bandopadhyay is the MLA from Uluberia-Purba, Saha represents the constituency of Entally. Last month, both of them urged the Trinamool Congress leadership to expel party leader Jahangir Khan after he withdrew his nomination from the repoll that took place in the Falta constituency, The Indian Express reported.

Edited by Sneha.

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Monday carried out the first expansion of his Cabinet, with 35 BJP MLAs taking oath as ministers three weeks after the party formed its first government in the state, The Telegraph reported.

Governor RN Ravi administered the oath at Lok Bhavan in Kolkata.

The expansion takes the strength of the Council of Ministers from six to 41, three short of the maximum permitted in the 294-member Assembly.

Of the 35 inductees, 13 were sworn in as Cabinet ministers, three as ministers of state with independent charge and 19 as ministers of state.

Among those inducted as Cabinet ministers are former Trinamool Congress leaders Arjun Singh and Tapas Roy, and journalist-turned-politicians Swapan Dasgupta and Jagannath Chattopadhyay.

The other Cabinet ministers are Shankar Ghosh, Saradwat Mukherjee, Deepak Burman, Manoj Oraon, Gouri Shankar Ghosh, Kalyan Chakraborty, Arup Kumar Das, Ajay Poddar and Dudh Kumar Mondal, The Indian Express reported.

Rajesh Mahata, Indranil Khan and Malati Rava Roy took oath as ministers of state with independent charge.

The ministers of state include Joyel Murmu, Ashok Dinda, Anandamoy Burman, Kaushik Chowdhury, Gargi Das Ghosh, Bhaskar Bhattacharya, Dibakar Gharami, Sumana Sarkar, Santanu Pramanik, Purnima Chakraborty and Umesh Rai, among others, The Telegraph reported.

The expansion came 27 days after Adhikari and five ministers were sworn in following the BJP's victory in the Assembly elections. On May 9, Adhikari took oath as chief minister alongside Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul, Nisith Pramanik, Ashok Kirtania and Kshudiram Tudu.

Portfolios for the newly inducted ministers are expected to be announced after a Cabinet meeting later in the day, The Telegraph reported.

The BJP formed the government in West Bengal after winning 208 seats in the 294-member Assembly, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led government.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Karnataka Congress President DK Shivakumar was elected leader of the legislature party on Saturday and will be the state’s next chief minister.

Outgoing chief minister Siddaramaiah proposed Shivakumar’s name as the new leader of the legislature party at a meeting held at the Vidhan Soudha, ANI quoted Congress leader KC Venugopal as saying.

Shivakumar is expected to be sworn in as chief minister on June 3 at the Glass House of Lok Bhavan in Bengaluru, PTI reported.

#WATCH | Bengaluru, Karnataka: Congress general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal says, "Congress high command suggested the name of DK Shivakumar as the leader of Congress Legislative Party. Siddaramaiah ji proposed the name of DK Shivakumar as the new leader of the… pic.twitter.com/MPJtk4JZxo

— ANI (@ANI) May 30, 2026

Shivakumar served as deputy chief minister in the Siddaramaiah government.

Siddaramaiah resigned as chief minister on Thursday. Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot accepted his resignation the following day and dissolved the Council of Ministers.

Siddaramaiah is the longest-serving chief minister of Karnataka with a tenure of more than eight years across two terms. The 78-year-old served as the chief minister between 2013 and 2018. His most recent term had begun in May 2023.

Speculation about a leadership change in Karnataka had resurfaced after the Congress government completed half of its five-year term in November.

After the Congress defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections in May 2023, reports claimed there had been a competition between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar for the chief minister’s post.

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

The Congress never confirmed that there had been such an agreement. In July, Siddaramaiah said that he would remain in office for the full five-year term.

In April, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said there would be no change in Karnataka “for now”.

Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar were in Delhi on Tuesday for meetings with the Congress’ central leadership.

On Thursday, Siddaramaiah said that he was following the Congress leadership’s decision asking him to step down. “I am making way for a new chief minister,” he said.

Siddaramaiah also said that the Congress leadership had offered him a Rajya Sabha seat but he “politely told them no, saying I want to remain in state politics”.

“I am not interested in national politics,” he had told reporters. “I have two more years as an MLA, I will serve my people. I will continue in active politics.”

The next Assembly elections in Karnataka are expected to be held in May 2028.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Two days after Kiswar Jahan sent off her 15-year-old son Irfan Shaikh to a madrasa in Maharashtra, she heard that he had been stopped at a railway station in Madhya Pradesh and detained.

Shaikh was among 100-odd children from Bagdahara village going to the madrasa in Latur district. They were not alone. They were accompanied on the long train journey by a teacher from the madrasa.

But in Katni, a team of railway police and child welfare officers stopped the train and “rescued” 163 children from Araria travelling to madrasas in different groups on the suspicion that they were being trafficked.

Most parents did not have the means to rush to Madhya Pradesh. Jahan, a widow, is poor too but she dug into her savings to buy a train ticket.

On April 13, she and 40 others travelled to Madhya Pradesh to convince the authorities that the children were not being forced into labour. “I showed all the documents to prove that he is my son,” said Jahan. “But they did not release him. They said go back home. We will send your son later,” she said.

In the 13 days that he spent at the government home in Jabalpur, Irfan Shaikh recalled being asked several questions. “They asked me about my parents, why I travel so far to study in a madrasa,” he said. “Aur pucha ki aatanqwadi ban ne ja rahe ho kya wahan.” And then they asked whether I was going there to become a terrorist.

Manish Tiwari, chairperson of Jabalpur’s Child Welfare Committee, defended the line of questioning. “What is wrong with that? The police also asked them this,” he said. “Given today’s environment, this is normal. Since these are children traveling to a madrasa, we have to verify everything.”

Eventually, all 163 children from Araria were released, when the Madhya Pradesh child welfare officers and police found no evidence of trafficking.

This was not a one-off case.

As Scroll has reported, this year alone, 375 children have been intercepted and detained from trains by authorities in nine instances, on the suspicion that they were being trafficked. In eight cases, all the children were Muslim. In seven of the nine cases, the children were on their way to madrasas.

The suspicion of child trafficking turned out to be false in all nine cases, Scroll was able to confirm with the police, child welfare committees, parents and madrasas.

All but one of the detentions were carried out in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party – six cases were reported from Odisha, two from Madhya Pradesh and one from Karnataka.

On April 27, a group of activists held a press conference in Araria, claiming that the sudden rise in rescues of children travelling to madrasas was selective targeting of the community. “We believe there is a narrative being set,” Ashish Ranjan, from Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, said during the conference. “And Muslim children are the latest target.”

Kamayani Swami, also from the Sangathan, said the trend of Muslim children going to study in madrasas is not new. “Then why have such detentions suddenly grown?” she questioned.

A few madrasa heads Scroll spoke to said they suspected a design to disrupt madrasa education.

Deepak Kumar Verma, chairperson of Araria’s child welfare committee, refuted the allegations. He pointed out that since Muslim children travelled long distances without their parents, they were “in need of care and protection as per Juvenile Justice Act” and the detentions were according to legal provisions.

Shambhu Kumar, district child protection officer in Araria, however, said that what drew attention towards the movement of these children was “their habit of travelling in large groups with identification markers”. “Such a large group is bound to attract attention,” he said.

‘We have nothing to hide’

After Irfan Shaikh and other children were detained in Katni, the Madhya Pradesh police sent a team to two madrasas in Maharashtra and one in Karnataka where the children had been headed.

“We sent an officer to each madrasa for verification,” said Lalta Kashyap, inspector with the Katni railway police. “They checked with the local police and found no complaint of child labour ever being recorded against the madrasas.”

One of the madrasas they visited was the Darul Uloom Imamdiya madrassa in Bidar, where 30 children from Bihar had planned to study.

The head of the madrasa, Mohd Zakir, said the police inspected their register, saw where classes were held, where the children lived and ate, what food they ate and left. “We have nothing to hide. No child is forced to indulge in any sort of labour,” he said.

Similarly, at the Ashrafia Anjuman-e-Islamia madrassa in Maharashtra’s Udgir, Maulana Azizur Rehman said the Madhya Pradesh police took his statement, visited the campus, asked many questions and left.

Of the four madrassas inspected in Cuttack, Bidar, Udgir and Jagatsinghpur, all taught mathematics, English, Hindi or Odia. Two had tie-ups with nearby government schools to provide additional education in non-religious subjects.

Odisha detentions

Between April 1 and April 14, 85 children travelling to madrasas in Odisha were detained at Cuttack railway station in three instances.

“We detained them because we suspected they were being trafficked,” Raj Singh Mallik, Cuttack Railway Police Force station officer, told Scroll.

The children intercepted on April 1 were allowed to continue their journey after they produced proof of their parents’ consent, Mallick said.

Those detained in the two other instances were kept in a local children’s shelter home.

Abid Hussain, a resident of Rajokhar village in Araria district, was accompanying one group of children, including his 12-year-old son, when they were detained on April 14 at the Cuttack station.

“Since I was with my son, he should not have been taken away. But the police did not listen,” Hussain told Scroll. He had to return home after waiting for a few days because he could not afford meals and a hotel in Cuttack.

Eventually, all the children were sent back to Bihar after a month, as the authorities failed to find any evidence that they were being trafficked, Manas Ranjan Biswal, chairperson of Cuttack child welfare committee, told Scroll.

Several madrasa heads told Scroll that the interceptions have risen sharply after the BJP came to power in the 2024 state elections.

Qazi Shaikh Sharif, who heads the Jamia Islamia Riyaztul Uloom madrassa in Jagatsinghpur, said 59 children headed to the institution were detained in Cuttack.

“No case of child labour has ever been filed against us,” he said. “If the police and the child welfare committee had done a quick check, they would have discovered our credibility. But there seems to be a motivated attempt to disrupt madrassa education,” Sharif said.

Runaway children, and a false alarm

In the early hours of April 18, 24 children ran away from a madrasa in Tumakuru, Karnataka. They hopped onto a train and reached Bengaluru where a railway police force constable spotted them.

“The RPF handed the children to us. When they came, they were all shabbily dressed and very hungry,” district child protection officer Asha HK told Scroll.

Asha, who recorded statements of all children, said that they complained about tasteless food and physical abuse at the Jamia Arabia Hasinia Trust madrasa.

Asha filed a first information report with the railway police.

Nine days later, the parents of the 24 children, from Palasi block in Araria, reached Bengaluru.

Several of them told Scroll that the children, when caught by the police, lied about being assaulted. “They thought they would be allowed to go back home if they blamed the madrasa,” said Mohammad Mojim, an autorickshaw driver. “But when I asked my son Najmuddin, he said he was missing home and decided to run away.”

Rais, a labourer from Araria and the father of a 14-year-old who fled the Tumakuru madrasa, had a similar story. “I asked him why he ran away, he said he didn't like the food and missed home.”

Hazrat Usman, who heads the madrassa, said all the 24 children were new to the madrasa and were struggling to adjust to the new environment. “We don’t keep our gates locked. They ran away at night and we realised they were missing at 5.30 am when other children were woken up,” he said.

The allegations of children being hit and put to child labour are “false”, he said.

An inspection at the madrasa found Usman’s claim to be true.

Pavithra G, a child protection officer in Tumakuru who visited the madrasa on May 17 along with the local police, confirmed that no evidence of labour or abuse was found. “We spoke with the children in the madrassa. It is hygienic and well maintained. There have been no complaints in the past,” she said. But she also found that the madrasa has no tie-up with any school. It taught religious texts and a little bit of English and mathematics.

Pavithra added that the 24 children later requested that they be allowed to change their statement.

A campaign against madrasas

The detentions are taking place in the backdrop of a sustained campaign against madrasas by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights’ sustained campaign.

In May 2024, the NCPCR chairperson Priyank Kanoongo wrote to all chief secretaries to be vigilant against children being illegally transported from one state to another. It specifically made note of an April 26 incident that year in which 95 children travelling from Bihar’s Araria to Uttar Pradesh to study in a madrasa were “rescued” in Ayodhya.

It added that action must be taken under both Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and sections pertaining to trafficking of children in such cases.

The same year, in two separate directions on June 7 and June 25, the NCPCR asked the Uttar Pradesh government to stop funding and recognition of madrasas and again asked for students to be moved to schools. These directions were stayed by the Supreme Court.

The commission did not relent. In October 2024, it came out with a report titled ‘Guardians of Faith or Oppressors of Rights?: Constitutional Rights of Children vs. Madrasas’ in which it recommended stopping state funding for madrasas and closing madrasa boards, claiming that it provided inadequate secular education. Kanoongo stated that the report took nine years to be prepared.

This was not the first time the NCPCR took a stand against madrasas.

In 2022, it directed all state chief secretaries to conduct a detailed inquiry into government-funded madrasas that admit non-Muslims and to transfer them to schools, and a mapping of all unrecognised madrasas.

The commission based its direction on “various complaints” it had received against madrasas and noted that states were funding such institutions.

A protocol for travel

Child welfare officials involved in the “rescues” said that the children from Araria did not have credible documents to suggest that they were travelling for education.

In at least three cases, Scroll found, teachers were carrying a letter from the mukhiya of a local panchayat mentioning the name of the child, where he was traveling, and for what purpose. The documents also included the Aadhaar cards of the children and their parents and a letter from the madrasa with details of admission.

“These documents are adequate to facilitate smooth travel,” pointed out advocate Rameez Reza, who helped the families involved in the Katni incident.

But several child rights experts were divided on this. Santosh Shinde, former child welfare official and currently director at child rights NGO Vidhayak Bharti, said the documents are not legal under the Juvenile Justice Act and a child found without his parents “is a child in need of protection”.

He, however, agreed that such rescues lead to acute difficulties for the child and parent. “The respective state minority commissions should map this migration and lay down a protocol to allow a child’s travel,” he said. “Unfortunately that is not happening.”

Madrasa heads in both Odisha and Maharashtra told Scroll that the scrutiny was making them uncomfortable. “We gave admission to Bihar children because they are poor and in need of free education. But if we have to face so many issues, it is better we stop admission of children from Bihar,” said Maulana Azizur Rehman, the head of the Udgir madrasa.

Also read:

Why parents from Bihar’s poorest district send children to madrasas hundreds of miles away

The astonishing rise of the Cockroach Janta Party in India has captured the country’s imagination. An initiative that began as a satirical response to a judge’s reported remarks in court has quickly become a digital symbol of the anger and frustration of the country’s youth.

Millions of Indians have embraced the cockroach as an ironic emblem of survival in a political system that many increasingly view as dismissive, arrogant and indifferent to their future.

The anger behind this phenomenon is unquestionably real. Youth unemployment remains a crisis, examination leaks have shattered trust in merit-based opportunity and the rising cost of living has deepened insecurity among an already anxious generation.

The emotional energy behind this movement is not manufactured, nor should it be casually dismissed.

Yet political history offers a difficult but essential lesson. Anger, however intense, does not automatically create political transformation. Viral outrage may generate attention, but attention alone does not change political systems.

The central confusion surrounding the Cockroach Janta Party is the assumption that digital popularity equals political power. Social media can create extraordinary visibility in a short time, but visibility is not organisation and followers are not necessarily participants.

Political systems are not destabilised by online excitement unless that excitement is converted into disciplined collective action.

As I argued in my book Struggle Against the State (2010), grievances alone never produce successful protest movements. Shared anger exists in almost every society at almost every moment. What determines success is whether that anger is transformed into organised collective action through strong social networks, effective leadership, shared political identity, coordinated strategy and sustained pressure on the state.

That has not happened in the case of the Cockroach Janta Party. For now, there is a highly visible digital expression of frustration but not an organised social movement. Unless this changes fundamentally, the Cockroach Janta Party will remain a short-lived cyberspace sensation that fades as quickly as it emerged.

One of the greatest illusions of the digital age is that symbolic participation feels like meaningful participation. Clicking follow, sharing a meme, posting sarcastic comments or adopting a trending hashtag creates a sense of engagement without demanding sacrifice.

This emotional satisfaction often creates the illusion of political action while leaving underlying power structures entirely untouched.

Real movements demand much more. They require people willing to leave their comfort zones, commit time, accept risk and repeatedly participate in coordinated and sustained collective action. The transition from emotional expression to organised resistance is precisely where most online eruptions collapse.

My research in Struggle Against the State emphasised the critical role of social networks in successful protest mobilisation. People join risky collective action when trust exists, when they believe others will show up and when local networks sustain participation. Without these formal and informal structures of trust, even widely shared grievances remain politically inert.

The Cockroach Janta Party currently lacks that infrastructure. It has impressive digital reach, but digital reach is not the same as embedded social networks capable of mobilising collective defiance. That distinction explains why comparisons with Bangladesh and Nepal are both premature and flawed.

The youth mobilisations in Bangladesh succeeded not because of clever memes alone. They succeeded because organisers were physically present, strategically adaptive and deeply embedded in student networks and local protest structures. Social media amplified those movements, but it did not substitute for organisation on the ground.

The same holds true for Nepal’s youth-led mobilisations. Protest success there depended on leadership rooted in local realities, trusted organisational relationships and sustained physical presence in public space. Political movements succeed when people organise where grievances are actually lived, not merely where hashtags circulate.

This is where the Cockroach Janta Party faces its most serious weakness. Political mobilisation does not happen spontaneously through digital emotion alone. It requires strategic actors who can recruit participants, frame demands, coordinate actions, manage risks, build coalitions and sustain momentum under pressure.

A movement mobiliser cannot effectively perform this role from a foreign country. A serious challenge to entrenched political power in India cannot be remotely managed by someone based in Boston while millions of supposed supporters remain digitally dispersed across India.

Effective movement mobilisers must be embedded in campuses, neighborhoods, housing societies, workplaces and communities where political anger can be transformed into organised civic action.

Proximity matters because political mobilisation is built on trust. Trust cannot be manufactured through satire alone nor can it be sustained through remote symbolism. People are more willing to accept risks when leaders stand beside them rather than speak to them from another continent.

India presents particularly difficult terrain for protest mobilisation. This is not a socially unified political environment waiting for a single spark to ignite collective action. India has long remained deeply fragmented by caste, class, religion, language, regional loyalties, and partisan identities, all of which complicate efforts to transform common frustration into unified resistance.

The present ruling dispensation has not merely inherited these fractures but has systematically deepened them, using polarisation, majoritarian politics and partisan institutional control to sharpen social divisions and weaken the possibility of broad-based collective mobilisation.

In such an environment, converting widespread anger into a unified youth led political movement becomes far more difficult and demands exceptionally sophisticated organisational strategy.

Shared anger over unemployment does not automatically erase these divisions. In fragmented societies, people often experience similar grievances while remaining politically isolated because trust across social boundaries remains weak. That is why movement mobilisers become even more essential, because someone must actively construct bridges across fragmented constituencies.

At present, the Cockroach Janta Party has not done this. Its support appears concentrated among digitally connected urban youth who are culturally fluent in meme politics and online satire. That creates visibility, but visibility confined to a narrow demographic rarely produces structural political pressure.

The movement could become relevant only if it connected with unemployed graduates, examination aspirants, teachers, farmers, workers, lower middle-class families, women’s organisations, informal labour groups and marginalised religious and ethnic communities confronting similar forms of systemic exclusion.

Political systems become vulnerable when grievances converge across several sectors rather than remaining socially compartmentalised.

Another weakness lies in the movement’s strategic ambiguity. Ambiguity helps viral growth because different groups can project their own frustrations onto a flexible symbol. But successful protest mobilisation requires clarity, because citizens mobilise most effectively around specific, understandable and actionable demands.

Generalised rage against corruption, institutional arrogance, democratic erosion or economic injustice may create broad emotional sympathy but political establishments rarely respond to abstract dissatisfaction alone. Successful movements create leverage when they articulate clear, concrete and transformative demands that are capable of unifying otherwise fragmented constituencies, giving participants a shared political purpose and a defined objective around which sustained mobilisation can be organised.

The political establishment is not a passive observer in this process. It actively shapes the terrain on which protest movements operate, creating openings in some moments while imposing severe constraints in others. Successful movements must understand this reality and prepare strategically for confrontation, disruption and delegitimisation.

We are already witnessing this process unfold in India. Accounts have been blocked, digital platforms disrupted and national security narratives invoked. A movement built entirely on digital infrastructure is structurally fragile because its operational environment remains vulnerable to direct intervention.

Satire itself also has limits. Humor can puncture authority and expose elite arrogance in powerful ways, but satire alone rarely sustains disciplined political mobilisation. What feels electrifying and subversive today can become repetitive and politically exhausted tomorrow.

The movement could remain a brilliantly entertaining expression of generational frustration, or it can attempt the far harder work of becoming a serious transformational force. That makeover requires abandoning the illusion that virality itself constitutes victory.

History changes only when outrage stops performing and starts organising.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden, and author of the book: Struggle Against the State: Social Networks and Protest Mobilization in India.

Congress leader Siddaramaiah resigned as the chief minister of Karnataka, saying that he was following the party leadership’s decision. “I am making way for a new chief minister,” he added.

Siddaramaiah said that he had submitted his resignation letter to the governor’s office and that it would be accepted in due course. He said that the Congress leadership had offered him a Rajya Sabha seat but that he declined it as he wants to remain in state politics.

Shivakumar is reportedly expected to become the next chief minister. Read on.

The Centre acknowledges discrepancies in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s On-Screen Marking evaluation process and accepts responsibility for them, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said. He said that strict action would be taken against anyone found “intentionally responsible” for irregularities in the process.

The on-screen marking system for evaluating Class 12 answer sheets has come under criticism in the past two weeks following complaints about alleged glitches and irregularities during the evaluation process. Several students alleged that scanned copies of answer sheets uploaded by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns about possible answer sheet mismatches.

However, Pradhan claimed that it is a globally-accepted and “student-centric” system aimed at increasing transparency. He said that experts from the Indian Institutes of Technology in Kanpur and Chennai had been roped in to help the board’s technical team in resolving the glitches. Read on.

Retired judge Giribala Singh was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case pertaining to the alleged dowry death of her daughter-in-law Twisha Sharma. This came a day after the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday quashed the anticipatory bail granted to Singh by a trial court on May 15 on the grounds that the allegations were against her son.

The state government and Sharma’s parents had challenged Singh’s anticipatory bail. The High Court noted that Sharma’s family had also made allegations against Singh.

Sharma, a 33-year-old model-turned-actor from Noida, was found dead at her marital home in Bhopal on May 12. While her husband’s family claimed that she died by suicide, Sharma’s family alleged that she was harassed for dowry and murdered. Read on.

Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar accused party colleague Kalyan Banerjee of repeatedly verbally abusing her in Parliament, and sought permission from Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to file a complaint against him. She claimed that similar conduct had also been directed at other women legislators.

Banerjee asked why Dastidar had not approached the speaker immediately if she believed that he had made disrespectful remarks about her in Parliament.

A day earlier, Dastidar resigned from all her organisational posts in the TMC. The four-term Lok Sabha MP also stepped down as the party’s Barasat district chief earlier this week. Read on.

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Congress leader Siddaramaiah on Thursday resigned as the chief minister of Karnataka.

The announcement came after a breakfast meeting at his official residence in Bengaluru, which was attended by Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and several party leaders including HK Patil, Priyank Kharge, KJ George, MB Patil and Ramalinga Reddy.

Shivakumar is reportedly expected to become the next chief minister.

On Thursday, Siddaramaiah said that he was following the Congress leadership’s decision asking him to step down. “I am making way for a new chief minister,” he said.

He added that he had submitted his resignation letter to the governor’s office and that it would be accepted in due course.

Siddaramaiah also said that the Congress leadership had offered him a Rajya Sabha seat but he “politely told them no, saying I want to remain in state politics”.

“I am not interested in national politics,” he told reporters. “I have two more years as an MLA, I will serve my people. I will continue in active politics.”

Siddaramaiah is the longest-serving chief minister of Karnataka with a tenure of more than eight years across two terms. The 78-year-old served as the chief minister between 2013 and 2018. His current term began in May 2023.

Karnataka CM and Deputy CM, Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar, respectively, share a hug at the CM residence in Bengaluru at the breakfast meeting. Deputy CM DK Shivakumar also touched the feet of CM Siddaramaiah.

(Pics: CMO Karnataka) pic.twitter.com/qIATmAwj8a

— ANI (@ANI) May 28, 2026

Speculation about a leadership change in Karnataka had resurfaced after the Congress government completed half of its five-year term in November.

After the Congress defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections in May 2023, reports claimed there had been a competition between Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar for the chief minister’s post.

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

The Congress never confirmed that there had been such an agreement. In July, Siddaramaiah said that he would remain in office for the full five-year term.

In April, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said there would be no change in Karnataka “for now”.

Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar were in Delhi on Tuesday for meetings with the Congress’ central leadership.

Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal had that day described reports of a leadership change as speculation and said that the talks with the party leadership were focused only on the Rajya Sabha polls and Karnataka Legislative Council candidates, The Hindu reported.

The next Assembly elections in Karnataka are expected to be held in May 2028.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Approximately 30 lakh beneficiaries of Lakshmi Bhandar, a cash transfer scheme for women implemented by the previous Trinamool Congress government, were ineligible for it, The Indian Express quoted West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari as saying on Wednesday.

This was because the women had either been deleted from the voter rolls after the special intensive revision, or they had not applied for Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act, added the Bharatiya Janata Party leader.

The remarks came weeks after Women and Child Development Minister Agnimitra Paul said on May 12 that women whose names were deleted during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls will not receive benefits of the Annapurna Bhandar scheme, which is set to replace the Lakshmi Bhandar programme from June 1.

Under the new scheme, women will receive a monthly cash handout of Rs 3,000. Beneficiaries were getting Rs 1,500 per month under Lakshmi Bhandar.

On Wednesday, Adhikari claimed that the new government’s objective was to “create a clean list” before implementing the new scheme. The administration would have “a clear idea” once fresh application forms were submitted and reviewed, he added.

Adhikari said that fresh forms would be issued for the Annapurna Bhandar scheme and that verification would be carried out by the Women and Child Development Department, The Indian Express reported.

He clarified that until the verification is completed, the beneficiaries of the Lakshmi Bhandar scheme will continue to receive payments.

Describing the transition to the new scheme as a “huge task”, Adhikari said several departments would assist in preparing a transparent beneficiary list.

The Assembly elections in West Bengal followed a special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission.

By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of the electorate before the process began, had been removed. Ahead of the polling, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before the tribunals. Of these, seven lakh were against names being included in the rolls and 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded. Appellate tribunals set up as part of the special intensive revision process had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

Edited by Sneha.

When she saw me walking into her home in Assam’s Barpeta district, Amina Begum attempted valiantly to get up from the bed.

Her body shook as the 68-year-old tried – and failed – to raise herself.

When I had visited Begum in June last year, she was not this infirm. She was walking, her eyes alert, her memory vivid.

But a year later, she is a shadow of that self. She cannot walk without support, or sit up straight. She is mostly confined to her bed. Her face is vacant, but it is her sorrowful eyes that speak of hopelessness and fear.

“Everything has changed in one year,” her husband, Ajmal Khan said. Both their names have been changed to protect their identity.

Exactly a year ago, Begum was secretly “pushed back” into Bangladesh by Indian authorities at gun point in the dead of the night amid a renewed crackdown on undocumented migrants. At least 300 Assam residents have been expelled from Indian territory in this fashion.

After a month, Begum managed to cross the border with the help of residents of the borderlands of India and Bangladesh and came back home to her village.

Since her return, Khan said, Begum has been wasting away. She falters while recalling incidents from her past, and loses the train of her thought while speaking. She has withdrawn from regular life and does not speak much, her daughter-in-law told me.

“But she remembers how she was dumped across the barbed wire, the days at the detention centre,” Khan said. “She is afraid that the police will pick her up and throw her in Bangladesh again.”

In 2012, Begum was declared a non-citizen by a foreigners tribunal, a decision later upheld by the Gauhati High Court in 2015, despite the fact that all her brothers and sisters are Indian citizens.

Foreigners tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam that rule on citizenship cases, relying on documentary evidence to decide if a person is a citizen of India.

In the last four decades, the tribunals have stripped about 1,30,000 people of Indian citizenship through a process that has been criticised by courts, legal experts and human right groups as arbitrary and loaded against the poor and marginalised.

Those who lose their cases at the foreigners tribunals have the right to challenge the orders in the higher courts. Sometimes, they have been sent to the state’s detention or holding centres. But, until May last year, they were rarely deported to Bangladesh, as a tribunal order is not proof that they are citizens of another country.

An ordinary life

Khan and Begum have spent over 20 years fighting a citizenship trial, leaving them devastated financially and emotionally.

But for nearly six decades of her life, Begum had barely stepped out of a couple of villages in Barpeta district.

“I have lived my entire life here,” Begum said. “I have not even seen any other country. How could they send me to Bangladesh?”

Khan added: “All her nine brothers and sisters live here as legitimate citizens. Her father and mother died in this country. We have been together for more than 50 years now. So how can she be a Bangladeshi?”

Begum was born into a typical Bengali Muslim peasant family in Tetlirtal village in Barpeta, a district that is home to a large number of Muslims of Bengali origin, who are also known as Miya Muslims.

According to Khan, Begum’s grandfather had come to the village before Partition from the Mymensingh region of colonial Bengal. Hundreds of Bengali Muslim peasants had been settled in the region at the time by the British, who wanted labour to expand agriculture in Assam.

“Her forefathers cleared the forest and started to live and cultivate the land – paddy, jute, among others,” Khan said.

Begum, one of nine children, was married off to Khan before she turned 18. She never went to school.

“I travelled outside my village for the first time on my wedding day,” she said.

Khan drove buffalo carts and grew paddy for a living. They had a son and a daughter.

The couple looks back on that ordinary life with longing. “We did not earn a lot,” Khan said. “But it was enough for a peaceful life. Allah gave us a lot.”

The case

Their ordeal began in 1998, around the time thousands of Bengali-speaking residents of the state – both Hindus and Muslims – were hauled up before foreigners tribunals and asked to prove their citizenship.

The border police of Barpeta district made a reference against Begum, asking her to prove her citizenship before the foreigners tribunal.

In Assam, the border police can flag any person as a doubtful citizen, much like the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency in the United States, and report them to foreigners tribunals.

“Their life changed completely with the case,” Khan’s 45-year-old nephew said. “For about five decades, they had lived together, like a pair of roosting pigeons. The fear that they would be separated started to affect their health and lives.”

Khan and Begum fought the case at the tribunal and lost. “We went to the High Court but there too we lost,” Khan said.

The cost of a legal battle was prohibitive. “This case destroyed our lives,” Khan said. “We had to sell everything. They turned us into beggars.”

A woman without documents

Both the tribunal and the high court found Begum’s documents wanting.

As Begum was married before the age of 18, she did not have any documents that could show she was the daughter of her father – no birth certificate, no school certificate. Nor did she have a name in any land documents.

This was hardly unusual in the state – or across India.

Women, especially those from marginalised Bengali-origin Muslim families, have struggled to prove their identities in Assam, especially during the 2019 exercise to update the National Register of Citizens, because of this lack of documentation. Many of them, like Begum, had not attended school, got married before being registered on the electoral roll with their parents and had no property in their name.

Begum’s name appeared on the electoral roll for the first time in 1985, as Amina Khatun, the 24-year-old wife of Ajmal Khan, a resident of a village in Barpeta.

Four years later, the family shifted to another village and her name was recorded in the 1989 voter list. However, there was an error in the spelling – ‘Amin Khatun’, her voter card said. Her husband’s name too was recorded as ‘Ahmed Ali Kha’, not Ajmal Khan.

In the voter list of 1997, her name appeared as a resident of that village again.

The only other identity document she had was a certificate issued by the headman of Tetlirtal village, which said that she was the daughter of her father and married to Khan. However, the foreigners tribunal did not take this into account.

At the tribunal, Begum submitted a voter list of 1966 featuring her father’s name and a voter list from 1997 in which she was included as Khan’s wife. The tribunal said these “two voter lists were not sufficient” to prove her nationality.

The tribunal also pointed out that she had delayed in responding to the case, which “cannot be taken lightly”.

The Gauhati High Court held that Begum “has failed to establish her linkage” with her father.

The court noted the discrepancies in her names on the voter lists while rejecting her plea, saying she had not been able to meet the burden of proof as demanded by Section 9 of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

Advocate Sauradeep Dey, who has represented hundreds of people in citizenship cases before the Gauhati High Court, pointed out that divergences in spellings on voter lists are “quite common and normal”. “But it has become a Herculean task to make the courts understand that,” he said.

“The courts refuse to believe that the two names with some distortion can belong to one person,” Dey said. “This is despite the fact that the state authorities do not conduct any field verification nor do they adduce any other evidence to rebut the document provided and the person’s claim.”

Detention centre

The high court order led to Begum’s arrest. On August 8, 2015, she was taken to Kokrajhar detention centre, one of six such centres in Assam at the time.

All the centres were inside jails, although the detainees were separated from convicts and criminals.

A 2018 National Human Rights Commission report on the detention centres for suspected illegal immigrants in Assam said the camps are known for “the enormous and unending human tragedy of the detainees, and the extensive flouting of national and international laws.”

The NHRC mission, which also visited Kokrajhar camp, found a “situation of grave and extensive human distress and suffering”. “The [detainees] were held in a corner of the two jails for several years, in a twilight zone of legality, without work and recreation, with no contact with their families, rare visits from their families, and with no prospect of a release,” the NHRC report said. “In the women’s camp, in particular, the women wailed continuously, as though in mourning.”

Begum remembers her days at the detention camp with a shudder. “I only thought of my home, my grandchildren and my husband,” Begum said. “I wept thinking of my husband. I could not eat. I only screamed and cried.”

Khan regularly visited her for the four years she was in the detention centre. “There was not a single month when I did not visit Kokrajhar,” he said.

On each visit, he carried fruits and food from home. “I had to pay bribes at three gates to meet her,” he said. “Sometimes, she would scream and weep and become senseless during these visits. I cannot express the suffering and pain we endured.”

In September 2019, Begum was released on bail after the Supreme Court ordered that inmates who had spent over three years in detention centres be let go.

“It was a respite,” Khan said. “We thought that we were saved, but we had a horrible thing waiting for us.”

‘I am old. I could not run’

Begum’s bail conditions demanded that she report at the Barpeta police station every Thursday, which she religiously followed from September 2019.

On May 25 last year, she was asked to visit the police station again.

She was surprised.

“It was a Sunday, not Thursday,” Begum told me. “I had already visited on Thursday.”

“The police told us that they will completely withdraw the case against her,” her son said. “When we went to the office of the Barpeta superintendent of police office, it was full of people who had [foreigners’ tribunal] cases.”

By evening, Begum along with others, was arrested and taken to the Matia transit camp, the largest detention centre in India.

Her son said he feared the worst. “We thought that they would be thrown into the water or sea.”

For 15 days, they had no news of where Begum was.

Begum recalled being herded with about 50 other declared foreigners and forced beyond the “barbed wire” by the Border Security Force.

She spent the night in the swampy marshes in no man’s land, somewhere along Assam’s Mankachar-Dhubri border. “The others ran away to save themselves. I am old. I could not run.”

The next morning, she was found by the roadside, her clothes soaked with water and mud, by a Bangladeshi family. She had landed up in an area called Rawmari in Bangladesh’s Kurigram district.

“They let me have a bath, gave me clothes and food,” she said. But, fearing trouble, they soon asked her to leave.

Another woman then stepped forward. She was the wife of an elected official in the village, Begum said. “She said she will face whatever trouble comes her way. ‘You will stay with us,’ she told me.”

Begum lived with them for close to a month. “They kept me as one of their own,” she said. “Whenever I wept and said I wanted to come home, they kept my hopes up.”

Back in Assam, Khan spotted Begum in an interview by a journalist in Bangladesh.

“Until then, we did not know her whereabouts,” he said. “We got in touch with her with the help of journalists there.”

Khan spoke daily to her and began taking steps to arrange her return.

First, he wrote a letter to Barpeta district commissioner urging him to bring Begum back. “My wife is an Indian,” Khan wrote on June 19 last year. “She was sent to Bangladesh wrongfully. We have got to know that she is taking refuge in Kurigram district of Bangladesh. We request you to take necessary steps to bring her back."

There was no response from the district authorities, her family said.

The return

Khan did not rest there. With the help of activist Faruk Khan, he went to Mankachar, which shares a boundary with Kurigram district. “We went to the local police station and BSF offices in Mankachar but they chased us away,” Khan said.

He returned to Barpeta without her.

On June 27, Begum was able to cross the border with the help of residents from either side of the border.

“Two people from the Bangladesh village helped me cross a river,” she said. “We waded through chest-deep water. They left me on the Indian side. Then, our villagers picked me up in a vehicle. They dropped me at Goalpara, from where Faruk Khan brought me home.”

Her return cost the impoverished family Rs 60,000, but they fear that their ordeal is far from over. “We are glad she is home now. But everything is uncertain,” Khan said.

Then, as if giving in to despair, he said: “If the police catch her again, they should kill her. It is better to die than live this suffocated life.”

Begum, too, considered the future with dread. “I am scared they will take me away again,” she said.

She said she has been praying to Allah “to take me for good”. “It is better to die now,” she said. “I don’t want to die in a foreign land. Let me die at home.”

The two factions of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Wednesday withdrew disqualification petitions against each other’s MLAs, and reached a truce two weeks after the rift surfaced, the Hindustan Times reported.

The rift had taken place after 25 AIADMK MLAs led by former ministers CV Shanmugam and SP Velumani voted in favour of the new Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government during the floor test on May 13. Of the 25, four MLAs – Maragatham Kumaravel, Sathyabama P, Jayakumar S and Esakki Subaya – resigned from the party and joined the TVK.

Twenty-two MLAs led by former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami had voted against the government led by Chief Minister Vijay.

On Wednesday, Velumani said that both factions had withdrawn petitions before the Assembly speaker that had sought that the legislators from the other group be disqualified, The Hindu reported. Speaker JCD Prabhakar confirmed that he had received the letters seeking withdrawal, and said that he would announce his decision on Thursday.

Velumani maintained that there had been no division or split among the AIADMK MLAs.

“We have urged the general secretary [Palaniswami] to constitute a committee to introspect on the electoral defeats faced by the party,” the MLA said, according to The Hindu. “He said he would take it up step by step.”

There had only been “differences of opinion” among the legislators, the Hindustan Times quoted Velumani as having claimed.

“Edappadi K Palaniswami is still our party’s general secretary,” he asserted. “Victory and defeat are natural in politics and within a party. There is no difference of opinion on that.”

On Monday, the day when three AIADMK MLAs joined the TVK – five other rebel legislators – SM Sukumar, P Hari Bhaskar, K Mohan, Dileepan Jaishankar and NSN Nagaraj – had crossed over to the faction led by Palaniswami, The Hindu reported.

On Tuesday, Subaya resigned as an AIADMK MLA and crossed over to the TVK, while another MLA, P Balakrishna Reddy, extended support to Palaniswami.

With this, the strength of the rebel group came down to 15 from 25.

In the Assembly elections, the AIADMK won 47 seats out of the 167 constituencies it contested.

The TVK emerged as the single-largest party on its electoral debut, winning 108 seats in the 234-member Assembly. However, it fell short of the majority mark of 118 and required the support of smaller parties to form the government.

Vijay took oath as the chief minister on May 10, and won the vote of confidence three days later.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Enforcement Directorate officials who raided the house of former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday were attacked and their vehicles vandalised allegedly by Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers, The Indian Express reported.

The officials were attacked while leaving Vijayan’s house after completing the seven-hour-long raid.

The central agency had carried out searches at the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader’s residences in Kannur and Thiruvananthapuram as part of a money-laundering investigation.

It is investigating whether Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited, a private company, paid around Rs 1.7 crore to a now-defunct information technology firm run by Vijayan’s daughter, T Veena, between 2017 and 2021.

The mining company, in which the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation has 13.4% stake, had allegedly made the payments to Veena’s Exalogic Solutions with no evidence of any services rendered in return.

On Wednesday, the ED carried out searches at 12 locations in the state, including the homes of his daughter and son-in-law, former minister PA Muhammad Riyas, in Kozhikode. Offices linked to Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited were also raided.

Exalogic Solutions had entered into a contract with the CMRL in 2017 for providing software and marketing services, The Wire reported.

#WATCH | Keralam: Commotion outside the residence of former Chief Minister and present LoP Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram, as CPI(M) workers attacked a vehicle of ED officials.

The workers are protesting against the central agency over its searches at 10 premises in… pic.twitter.com/fx7Y4xutLB

— ANI (@ANI) May 27, 2026

The case came to light after the income tax department carried out searches on the premises of the Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited in 2023, when Vijayan was the chief minister of Kerala.

The raids came a day after the Kerala High Court dismissed a petition by CMRL seeking to quash the ED proceedings.

Following the raids on Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) workers led by party state secretary MV Govindan had conducted a march and staged a sit-in in front of Vijayan’s house in Thiruvananthapuram, The Indian Express reported.

Party workers allegedly threw eggs and bricks at the vehicles used by the ED officials. Protesters also reportedly smashed the windshields of the cars with sticks.

Personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force and the Kerala Police struggled to control the crowd, PTI reported.

Additional Director General of Police H Venkatesh asserted that a team has been sent to arrest those accused of engaging in violence, but did not say how many persons had been taken into custody, ANI reported.

“The police are not backing away from here,” the official was quoted as saying by the news agency. “None of the accused will be let off. The police will act strictly according to the law.”

Vijayan reacts to raids

Speaking to reporters after the raids, Vijayan alleged that the ED searches were part of a “targeted crackdown” on Opposition leaders across the country, The New Indian Express reported.

The searches may provide “mental satisfaction” to leaders like the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi, the CPI(M) leader said. Vijayan alleged that Gandhi had repeatedly questioned why his home had not been searched and why he had not been arrested.

The former chief minister asserted that the action would not weaken him or the CPI(M).

“This is only a beginning,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “Nobody should harbour the illusion that such actions can intimidate or weaken us.”

Vijayan further claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government had been using central agencies against Opposition leaders since it came to power, and claimed that the action against him was also part of that strategy.

Earlier in the day, Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary A Baby condemned the searches, describing them as “a targeted attack on a top Opposition leader by the Bharatiya Janata Party government”.

“Such actions will not intimidate Pinarayi Vijayan or the CPI(M),” Baby added.

He also questioned whether the new Congress-led United Democratic Front government in Kerala was complicit in the action.

In the Assembly election results announced on May 4, the UDF won 102 seats in the 140-member Assembly, defeating the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front after a decade in Opposition.

Another protest in Delhi

In a statement, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said that it had also organised a protest against the raids at the ED headquarters in New Delhi, adding that the demonstration was led by the party’s general secretary.

The Delhi Police detained more than one hundred demonstrators during the protest, the statement said. Those detained included party leaders Brinda Karat, Ashok Dhawale, Mariam Dhawale and Vijoo Krishnan, it added.

“Addressing the gathering, MA Baby strongly condemned the action carried out by the ED under the direction of the central government and stated that the raid on Pinarayi Vijayan’s residence was a politically motivated act of vendetta,” it said. “He pointed out that courts have repeatedly observed that Pinarayi Vijayan has absolutely no connection with the Exalogic case, yet the political witch-hunt against him continues unabated.”

Baby also said that such an action taking place after Chief Minister VD Satheesan’s recent meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi raised serious questions and appears to be a “politically orchestrated drama”.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Assam Assembly on Wednesday passed the Uniform Civil Code bill seeking to ban polygamy and make the registration of live-in relationships compulsory, even as the Opposition demanded that it should be sent to a select committee for scrutiny.

The passing of the 2026 Uniform Civil Code Bill paves the way for Assam to become the third state, after Uttarakhand and Gujarat, to introduce such a code after independence.

The Uniform Civil Code refers to a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.

On Wednesday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that the tribal population in the state would be kept outside the purview of the Uniform Civil Code. “It does not interfere with the religious practices of any community or traditional practices of our indigenous”, he said on social media.

The code will override personal laws and will “ensure national integration by removing disparate loyalties to law, which have contracting ideologies”, Sarma added.

The bill was tabled in the Assembly on Monday, and was taken up for consideration and passing on Wednesday. It was introduced nearly two weeks after the proposed legislation was cleared by the state Cabinet on May 13.

Today, with the passage of the #UCCAssam bill, every person from every religion across any region of Assam (except 6th schedule areas), will be equal before the law in terms of these civil matters.

I thank all NDA legislators for wholeheartedly supporting this crucial Bill. pic.twitter.com/xQrCGXedCJ

— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) May 27, 2026

Key changes

The bill proposes to make it mandatory for live-in relationships to be registered within one month.

Failing to register a live-in relationship within one month may lead to imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to Rs 10,000. Concealing material facts or submitting false information while registering a live-in relationship may lead to imprisonment of up to three months and a fine up to Rs 25,000.

“[The bill] protects vulnerable individuals by declaring that any child born out of a live-in relationship is fully legitimate, and by granting a deserted live-in partner the explicit legal standing to claim financial maintenance through the courts,” a government note on the draft legislation said.

According to the draft legislation, the minimum age of marriage would be 18 years for women and 21 years for men.

The legislation will also make the registration of marriages and divorces mandatory “to prevent fraud”.

Couples will be required to submit a marriage memorandum to the sub-registrar within 60 days of the marriage ceremony. The deliberate non-registration of marriage or divorce within the two-month period may lead to a penalty of Rs 10,000.

A person making false declarations or submitting forged documents may be punished with up to three months of imprisonment or with a fine of up to Rs 25,000, or both.

The failure to register a marriage or submit a memorandum for divorce deliberately despite being served a notice by the sub-registrar to do so, may be punished with a fine of up to Rs 25,000.

The bill also codifies uniform grounds for divorce such as cruelty, desertion or mutual consent. The draft law proposes to ensure that the early childhood custody of children who are below age five “ordinarily remains with the mother”.

BJP and the Uniform Civil Code

Introducing a common personal law has long been on the BJP’s agenda and several states ruled by the party have been making advances towards implementing it.

In January 2025, BJP-ruled Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the Uniform Civil Code after independence. The Gujarat Assembly cleared a similar legislation on March 24 amid protests by the Opposition. A common civil code has been in place in Goa since the Portuguese Civil Code was adopted in 1867.

In its campaign for the Uniform Civil Code in Uttarakhand, the BJP had mainly targeted Muslim personal law, arguing that it discriminated against women as it allows Muslim men to practice polygamy, inherit a greater share of property, initiate divorce and deny alimony.

Legal experts have said that Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code is drawn primarily from Hindu personal law and could lead to the erasure of the personal law practices of minority communities.

In the run-up to the Assembly elections in Assam, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on March 29 also said that a Uniform Civil Code would be introduced in Assam if the BJP retains power in the state.

On May 4, the BJP secured its third consecutive term in Assam. Sarma was sworn in as the chief minister for the second term on May 12.

Separately, the Assembly had in November passed the 2025 Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill to ban polygamy, the practice of having more than one wife.

The legislation proposes up to seven years of imprisonment for persons convicted of polygamy. Further, those found guilty of having concealed their previous marriage can face punishment of up to ten years’ imprisonment.

The introduction of the legislation was viewed as a step towards implementing the Uniform Civil Code in the state.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

There comes a moment when the gap between propaganda and reality becomes too large to conceal with slogans. India appears to have reached that moment with Narendra Modi’s recent appeal for austerity. Urging citizens to reduce fuel consumption, avoid foreign travel, work from home, and even postpone gold purchases, Modi invoked wartime sacrifice and recast economic hardship as patriotism in the face of the Iran war.

The oil shock is real. India imports nearly 85%-88% of its crude requirements, much of it through the Strait of Hormuz. Every $10 rise in crude prices increases India’s import bill by roughly $13-$15 billion annually, widens fiscal and current account deficits, weakens the rupee, and fuels inflation through transport, fertiliser, logistics, and food prices.

But the crisis Modi asks Indians to sacrifice for is not fundamentally a product of the Iran war. The war has only exposed India’s vulnerabilities. A structurally stronger economy could have absorbed an external shock far better.

Instead, India enters this crisis weakened by demonetisation, chaotic GST implementation, stagnant manufacturing, high unemployment, declining private investment, rising inequality, institutional erosion, and governance driven more by spectacle than economic strategy.

Serious trouble

The most politically damaging response to Modi’s austerity appeal came not from the opposition but from Surjit Bhalla, long regarded as sympathetic to the government and once part of its economic establishment.

Bhalla bluntly acknowledged that India’s economy is in serious trouble: private investment has weakened sharply, foreign direct investment has turned negative on a net basis, and repeated electoral victories have pushed the government into a “comfort zone” that discouraged structural reform. Most strikingly, he questioned the continued claim that India remains the world’s “fastest-growing major economy”.

What makes Bhalla’s intervention significant is that it validates what critics have argued for years: beneath the headline GDP numbers lies a structurally weakening economy sustained more by public expenditure and propaganda than productive private investment.

Capital outflows, weakening investor confidence, and the rupee’s sharp decline since the Iran war reflect not merely external shocks but the deeper vulnerabilities produced by over a decade of spectacle politics, institutional erosion and economic complacency.

Spectacle and slogans

The fundamental problem with the Modi government is that it never possessed a coherent economic strategy beyond spectacle and slogans. “Make in India,” “Startup India”, “Digital India, “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, and “Amrit Kaal” generated publicity but failed to transform the productive structure of the economy. Unlike East Asian developmental states that systematically built manufacturing capacity, technological competence and employment-intensive industries, the Modi regime relied heavily on image management while neglecting structural transformation.

Indeed, almost every major economic intervention weakened productive capacities. Demonetisation in November 2016 was perhaps the most disastrous economic decision in independent India outside wartime disruptions. Nearly 86% of the currency in circulation was invalidated overnight in an economy where over 90% of employment depended on the informal sector and cash transactions.

The government claimed the move would destroy black money, counterfeit currency, and terror financing. None of these objectives materialised. The Reserve Bank of India’s data later showed that more than 99% of the demonetised currency returned to the banking system, demolishing the official justification.

As the original claims collapsed, the government shifted the goalposts toward the promise of a “cashless economy”. But here too the evidence exposes the hollowness of the claim. Currency with the public stood at around Rs. 17.97 lakh crore before demonetisation in 2016. By early 2026, it had crossed Rs 40 lakh crore – more than double the pre-demonetisation level. Digital transactions expanded, but cash usage expanded simultaneously because the regime fundamentally misunderstood the structure of the Indian economy. Digital payments supplement cash; they do not eliminate dependence on cash in a highly informal and unequal society.

The economic damage, however, was immense. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy estimated that nearly 1.5 million jobs were lost soon after demonetisation. Informal enterprises collapsed, small traders shut down, migrant labour was disrupted, and rural consumption weakened sharply. Many sectors of the informal economy never recovered fully. Yet the regime transformed this economic disaster into a nationalist spectacle where suffering itself became proof of patriotism.

The Goods and Services Tax introduced in 2017 compounded the damage. A tax reform of such magnitude required careful transition and administrative preparedness. Instead, GST was implemented chaotically with multiple slabs, technological instability and enormous compliance burdens. Large corporations adapted because they possessed accounting infrastructure and financial buffers. Small and medium enterprises – the real generators of employment – were squeezed out. Formalisation occurred not through productivity gains but through the destruction of smaller competitors.

The consequences are visible in India’s employment data. The country faces one of the gravest employment crises in its history. CMIE estimates suggest youth unemployment among those aged 20-24 has hovered around 40%-45% in recent years. Graduate unemployment is even higher. Female labour force participation remains among the lowest in the world for a major economy.

Hollow ‘India Story’

The slogan of being the “fastest growing major economy” itself is a carefully manufactured propaganda phrase. The qualifier “major economy” excludes dozens of smaller countries growing faster than India while diverting attention from more meaningful indicators such as employment, wages, nutrition, and per capita income. India’s nominal per capita income remains barely around $2,800, below Bangladesh, according to recent estimates by the International Monetary Fund.

A country celebrated as an emerging superpower still has income levels comparable to some of the poorest regions of the world. Nearly 80 crore people continue to depend on free foodgrain support for survival. Growth concentrated among billionaires, metropolitan elites, and stock markets cannot be mistaken for broad social development.

The structure of growth itself reveals the hollowness of the “India story.” Manufacturing remains stagnant at roughly 15%-17% of the GDP despite repeated promises of industrial transformation. India prematurely became a service-dominated economy without building a broad manufacturing base capable of generating mass employment. Consequently, GDP growth increasingly coexists with stagnant wages, precarious employment, and collapsing employment elasticity. Growth without jobs is not development; it is statistical abstraction.

Private investment – the real indicator of business confidence – has also remained sluggish. Gross fixed capital formation has failed to sustain levels necessary for long-term high growth. Corporate India increasingly prefers speculative financial gains over productive investment. Foreign direct investment inflows have weakened significantly in recent years despite aggressive publicity campaigns because investors seek institutional credibility, legal predictability, and stable governance – not merely political slogans.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

"India will also need to create 78.5 lakh new non-farm jobs annually till 2030." -- Economic Survey 2024-25.

As per the government’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (2023-2024, from July 2023 to June 2024), the proportion of the labour force working in…

— शिक्षित बेरोज़गार (@kaul_vivek) February 1, 2025

Agriculture presents another dimension of structural crisis. Nearly 45% of India’s workforce still depends on agriculture while the sector contributes barely 15%-16% of the GDP. This massive imbalance reflects hidden unemployment and chronic rural distress. Farm incomes remain unstable, input costs continue to rise, and climate volatility has intensified vulnerability. The historic farmers’ movement that forced the repeal of the three farm laws revealed a deeper crisis of legitimacy: large sections of rural India no longer trusted the government’s economic intentions.

At the same time, inequality has exploded. The top 1% now controls over 40% of India’s wealth while the bottom 50% owns barely 3%. Economic power has become increasingly concentrated among a handful of large corporate groups closely aligned with political power. Crony capitalism has deepened under the language of nationalism and development.

The deterioration is also reflected in the rupee’s long decline and rising fuel burdens on ordinary people. In 2014 the rupee traded around Rs 58 – Rs 60 to a dollar. It now hovers over Rs 95, representing one of the steepest depreciations among major emerging-market currencies during the period. A weaker rupee has increased import costs, inflationary pressures, and external vulnerability.

Ironically, even during periods when global crude prices declined sharply, Indian consumers rarely received proportional relief because the government repeatedly raised excise duties to compensate for fiscal stress. During some of these periods, fuel prices actually declined in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal while Indian consumers continued paying historically high prices.

Where is our garrulous Finance Minister?
Whenever I debated her Budget Proposals for 3 years as an MP,
— She would rudely grimace, mock and sneer at Opposition for bringing the Rupee Dollar exchange to ₹66 in 2013
— Taunting that India was a Fragile Economy.
What’s it NOW? pic.twitter.com/BPy7rCyerW

— Jawhar Sircar (@jawharsircar) May 25, 2026

Economic cost of communal politics

More fundamentally, the regime’s communal polarisation has itself imposed enormous economic costs rarely acknowledged in mainstream discussions. Sustained attacks on institutional autonomy – whether in universities, research institutions, statistical systems, media, judiciary, or law enforcement – have weakened those foundations on which modern economic development depends.

Educational institutions increasingly shaped by ideological intervention undermine the production of skilled human capital. Statistical opacity weakens policy credibility. A judiciary perceived as inconsistent or selectively responsive undermines investor confidence and contractual certainty. Law-enforcement agencies deployed for political intimidation rather than impartial governance distort the rule of law necessary for stable economic activity.

No major economy can sustain long-term growth while simultaneously degrading its institutional foundations.

The current Iran crisis therefore strikes an already weakened economy. If crude prices remain above $100 per barrel for a sustained period, India could face severe macroeconomic stress: rising inflation, widening current account deficits, rupee depreciation, fiscal pressures, and slowing growth. The danger is not merely recession but stagflation – a combination of slow growth and persistent inflation that simultaneously destroys employment and purchasing power.

More importantly, the global environment itself is changing. The era of easy globalisation that sustained post-1991 growth is fragmenting. Supply chains are being reorganised, protectionism is rising, and automation is reducing labour absorption globally. India needed a long-term developmental strategy focused on manufacturing, education, healthcare, scientific capacity, and employment generation. Instead, the regime prioritised media management, centralisation of power, religious mobilisation, and permanent electioneering.

The most astonishing feature of this period is therefore not economic decline itself but the political insulation of the regime from economic accountability. The answer lies in the transformation of Indian politics itself. Electoral outcomes are increasingly detached from material economic performance. Hyper-nationalism, communal mobilisation, welfare symbolism, digital propaganda, personality cults, and media capture have shifted politics away from livelihoods toward emotional and civilisational anxieties. Economic suffering no longer automatically produces political accountability.

Meanwhile, the Opposition remains fragmented, ideologically uncertain, and organisationally weak. It criticises policies episodically but has failed to present a coherent economic alternative capable of mobilising broad social majorities. This creates dangerous conditions. Economic crises in functioning democracies can generate reform and redistribution; under majoritarian-authoritarian conditions, they often produce intensified repression, communal polarisation, and further concentration of power.

That is the deeper danger before India today. The Iran war did not create India’s crisis; it merely exposed how fragile the economy had already become after a decade of governance that privileged propaganda over production and spectacle over structural transformation. The gravest threat is therefore not the immediate oil shock but the possibility that economic decline and political majoritarianism may continue reinforcing each other.

Societies can survive economic crises. What is far harder to survive is the convergence of economic decline, institutional decay, and unchecked political dominance. India today confronts that convergence.

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

From Punjab to West Bengal, leaders of major Opposition parties such as the Samajwadi Party, the Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have voiced support for the Cockroach Janta Party over the past week. The satirical political campaign has gone viral, amassing more than two crore followers on Instagram so far.

But the largest Opposition party has yet to jump on the bandwagon. Though the Congress has for years been raising the same issues that the cockroach campaign is focused on – judicial independence, media freedom and election integrity – it has chosen to keep its distance from the initiative.

Scroll spoke to representatives from various parties which constitute the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance to understand how they view the campaign. Most of them said that the significant support for the Cockroach Janta Party on social media signalled growing discontent against the Modi government, especially among young Indians.

However, Sandeep Dikshit, a former MP who liaisons with civil society on behalf of the Congress party, remained sceptical of the initiative. He questioned the ideological moorings of those supporting the campaign and aired his doubts about their commitment to political activism. The youth wing of the Congress has even claimed that its workers are the “real cockroaches” because they protest on the ground and not just on social media.

This divergence between the largest Opposition party and its allies has once again brought the INDIA bloc’s internal divisions to the fore.

For ‘the lazy and unemployed'

The Cockroach Janta Party began as a tongue-in-cheek response to a comment made in the Supreme Court by Chief Justice Surya Kant. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, was among those who took exception to the chief justice’s remarks likening unemployed youngsters to the insect.

The chief justice later clarified that he was only censuring seemingly ill-motivated lawyers and had nothing against the youth.

Dipke floated social media accounts under the name of Cockroach Janta Party and started a website to reach out to “the lazy and unemployed” in India with his five-point manifesto. The campaign began to make headlines because of the swift rate at which it acquired followers online. Opposition politicians such as Mahua Moitra were quick to endorse it.

Though the Cockroach Janta Party’s X account was restricted in India, on Instagram its follower count eventually exceeded that of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It also came up with an internet petition demanding that Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s education minister, be sacked because of the repeated instances of paper leaks under his watch. The petition has received nearly six lakh signatures thus far.

Dipke, the man behind this social media storm, is a 30-year-old political communications strategist from Maharashtra and currently lives in the United States of America. He has worked with the Aam Aadmi Party in the past, but denies having any present links to it. BJP leaders have pointed to his history with the political party to raise questions about his independence.

A platform that was needed?

Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, a national spokesperson of the Aam Aadmi Party, acknowledged Dipke’s previous association with his outfit and admitted to having met him before. However, like Dipke, he too rejected the accusation that his organisation had propped up the Cockroach Janta Party. “We have nothing to do with them,” he said.

Even though he denied any links, Singh welcomed the initiative taken by Dipke and extended his best wishes to the campaign. “The youth needed an alternative platform to express their anger,” he added. “We will wait and see how big of a revolution this spark can ignite.”

Singh contended that the “economic crisis” caused by the US-Israel war on Iran, which in his view had been made worse by the Modi government’s foreign policy, was to blame for the Cockroach Janta Party’s online popularity. Inflation, driven by the rising cost of fuel, was pinching people’s pockets, he argued.

“Narendra Modi has brought this inflation upon us,” Singh alleged, claiming that the Modi government had reduced oil imports from Iran and Russia under US pressure. “The Cockroach Janta Party reflects people’s anger against his policies. The Opposition should stay out of this. If we try to stand behind them [Cockroach Janta Party], it will put their credibility at risk.”

Samajwadi Party leaders in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh made a similar point.

“There is resentment among the youth for a lot of reasons,” said Udaiveer Singh, a spokesperson from the party. “When an issue is taken up outside a party forum, it gets a lot more support. If any political party raises the same issue, it is asked what it did when it was in power. The discussion becomes ideological and divisive.”

Besides tackling questions about their past record at governance, Opposition parties are also expected to put forth policy ideas and plans when they criticise the government, he pointed out. A social media campaign, on the other hand, is not encumbered by such expectations.

This is perhaps why, on May 20, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav pitted the Cockroach Janta Party directly against the ruling party at the Centre. “BJP versus CJP,” he wrote on X.

Derek O’Brien, who represents the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha, echoed what Yadav had written. In his view, the Cockroach Janta Party had the potential to go beyond social media and bring all non-BJP parties on one page.

“In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got only 37% of the vote,” O’Brien told Scroll. “They are 32 seats short of a majority. Any platform which takes the BJP on is welcome. Many like-minded parties will be on board.”

In a social media post, the MP even wrote that former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the party’s National General Secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, had “expressed their fondness and full support for cockroaches”.

‘A fad’

The Congress party, though, is not pleased with the cockroach trend. The Indian Youth Congress, which is the party’s youth wing, has created its own website mirroring that of the Cockroach Janta Party. It has also made a new X account by the name of Indian Youth Cockroaches. “Real cockroaches fight on the streets, not just on timelines,” reads its bio.

Well done IYC Cockroaches 🪳

क्रांति सिर्फ सोशल मीडिया से नही, भारत की सड़कों पर उतरकर ही आएगी। pic.twitter.com/2GDzCYcpbM

— Indian Youth Cockroaches (@iyccockroaches) May 22, 2026

While top Congress leaders continue to lend their support to causes that concern the youth, they have so far avoided supporting the Cockroach Janta Party.

“I don’t take this seriously,” said Sandeep Dikshit, a former MP from the party who was twice elected to the Lok Sabha. “People clicking on something and thinking they are political – it’s nonsense. I think it’s a fad like the Aam Aadmi Party.”

Dikshit is supposed to engage with the civil society to “link Congress with what is happening on the field” as the chairperson of the Rachnatmak Congress, the revamped avatar of the party’s outreach cell. Rachnatmak means constructive or creative in Hindi.

The manner in which the Cockroach Janta Party had presented itself was also creative, but it was mostly benefiting from the curiosity of social media users, Dikshit assessed.

“You go and follow an Instagram account because others are following it,” he elaborated. “The number of people following it is what is attracting you. In the olden days, more people used to go and watch a film when it completed its golden jubilee. It’s like that.”

In stark contrast with his party’s allies, who have welcomed the Cockroach Janta Party as an avenue for the youth to express their frustration, Dikshit framed it as a threat.

“If people use this platform to vent, then they will stick to the same options,” he surmised. “Once a hungry person has satiated his hunger at a new restaurant, they will go back home.”

And “home”, Dikshit contended, was the BJP.

Four All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MLAs have resigned from the Tamil Nadu Assembly over two days, with three of them joining the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, The Hindu reported.

Three of them, Maragatham Kumaravel, the MLA from Madurantakam, Sathyabama P from Dharapuram and Jayakumar S from Perundurai, resigned from the Assembly on Monday. The Speaker later announced that the resignations had been accepted.

Later in the day, the three leaders met Public Works Department Minister Aadhav Arjuna at the Secretariat and joined Chief Minister Vijay’s TVK.

On Tuesday, a fourth MLA, Esakki Subaya from the Ambasamudram constituency, met the Speaker and resigned, The Hindu reported.

The resignations have triggered a political row with respect to the speaker’s decision to accept them while disqualification proceedings against the MLAs are pending.

The resignations have reduced the AIADMK’s strength in the Assembly to 43.

Subaya said he had taken the decision “keeping in mind the welfare of the people” of his constituency and would issue a detailed explanation later, The New Indian Express reported.

The other three MLAs also said their resignations were taken in the interest of their constituencies and were not motivated by any “selfish agenda”.

The resignations came amid an internal split within the AIADMK.

All four MLAs are part of the faction led by former ministers CV Shanmugam and SP Velumani. The other faction is led by the party’s general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami.

On Monday, Palaniswami criticised the defections, accusing the ruling TVK of engaging in “horse trading” and “underhand dealings”, The Hindu reported.

Without naming the chief minister, Palaniswami accused a “cinema celebrity” who had promised purity in politics of introducing “vulgar politics” in Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile, AIADMK leaders submitted a representation from Palaniswami to the Speaker objecting to the acceptance of the resignations, The New Indian Express reported

The faction argued that petitions seeking the disqualification of 25 MLAs for allegedly defying the party whip during the confidence vote on May 13 were still pending, and that the Speaker acted in haste by accepting their resignations.

In the Assembly elections, the AIADMK won 47 of the 167 seats it contested, while the TVK emerged as the single-largest party in its electoral debut with 108 seats in the 234-member House, falling short of the majority mark of 118.

On May 13, the Vijay-led government won a confidence motion in the Assembly with support from 144 MLAs, including 105 from the TVK, five from the Congress, Two each from the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Indian Union Muslim League, along with 25 rebel AIADMK MLAs led by Velumani and one Independent MLA.

Congress leader quits citing party principles 

Meanwhile, Congress youth wing national secretary V Srinidhi resigned from the party’s primary membership after the TVK inducted the three former AIADMK MLAs, The Hindu reported on Tuesday.

In her resignation letter, Srinidhi said the move by the Congress’ post-poll ally had raised concerns about the party’s political principles and consistency, especially as the Congress had maintained it would not align with “divisive forces”.

“This is not just a resignation from a post; it is a response born out of conscience that can no longer accept the breakdown of trust between leadership,” she said.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Every year, Saddam takes children from his village in Bihar’s Araria district to a madrasa in Maharashtra.

In April this year, parents of 100 children from Bagdahara village gave Saddam the responsibility of taking them to the madrasa in Latur district, where they would be educated for free – and where Saddam is a teacher.

“That is how I studied too,” he said. “My friends and I studied at a madrasa in Gujarat for 10 years. Every year, an elder from our village dropped all of us by train.”

On April 11, Saddam boarded the Patna Purna Express from Patna station with the children. His six-year-old son, who too had been enrolled at the madrasa, his wife and three daughters were with him.

Three hours later, at Deen Dayal Upadhyay junction in Uttar Pradesh, a team of the Railway Police Force asked them to get down. A few more groups of children, who were travelling to madrasas in other states, were asked to alight too.

“We showed our documents. We also made a few parents talk to the police on the phone. They let us board the same train and continue,” Saddam said.

Eight hours later, as dusk fell, they were again disembarked in Madhya Pradesh.

A team of officials from the Government Railway Police, Railway Police Force and Madhya Pradesh child welfare officials stood waiting at Katni station. “This time nobody was ready to listen. They had decided that we were taking the children so we could put them to work,” Saddam said.

A first information report filed at Katni’s government railway police station accused Saddam and seven other adults of trafficking 163 children.

Saddam’s son Afaan was whisked away to a shelter home and his wife and daughters were put in a women’s home.

The child welfare committee called it a rescue.

“It was not a rescue. Afaan was taken away from us,” Saddam’s wife, Bibi Noor Saba said angrily. “I kept saying I am his mother.”

The police released Saba after three days. But Afaan and the children were detained in two government-run children’s homes in Jabalpur and Katni for 13 days.

During this time, child welfare officials in Araria carried out investigations and realised that the children were travelling with their parents’ consent.

In Madhya Pradesh, the local police found that all the children were indeed going to study at madrasas in Maharashtra and Karnataka. Checks at the madrasas, too, showed no evidence of child trafficking or child labour.

Vijay Gothariya, deputy superintendent of police with the Government Railway Police in Katni, told Scroll that the complaint of child trafficking “was false”.

“The FIR will be quashed and we will file a closure report,” he said.

Eventually, on April 23, Saddam and his family and the 100 children returned to Araria in a train.

In this April alone, Scroll found that authorities had intercepted and detained 375 Muslim children in nine separate instances in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Most of these children belonged to Araria in Bihar. Except in two cases, children were headed to madrasas in various states.

Manish Tiwari, chairperson of Jabalpur’s Child Welfare Committee, who was part of the Katni “rescue”, told Scroll that government officials were required to carry out checks if they were tipped off about “a large movement of children”. “If so many children travel without a parent, it is bound to raise suspicion,” he said.

Tiwari pointed out that large groups of children going to madrasas raises several questions. “Why don’t they join a local madrasa or a school in Bihar? Why do they have to travel so far? Why can’t parents accompany them?” he asked.

Scroll travelled to Araria to find answers to those questions.

We found that sending children as young as 10 hundreds of miles away is not an easy choice, and never the first one for parents here. But they are desperate for their children to get a chance at a better life.

Hard times

The first hint was in the landscape.

As we approached Bagdahara village in Araria from National Highway 327E, brick houses gave way to mud-and-straw huts. Half-clothed children ran on the roads, the elderly sat on chairs staring at nothing, and men and women were in their fields, counting the losses to the wheat crop which had been damaged by unseasonal rain in late April.

Araria is located in Bihar’s Seemanchal region, where migration for work and education is fairly commonplace. According to Niti Aayog’s National Multidimensional Poverty report, with 52.07% population below the poverty line, this is the state’s poorest district.

Over 42% of the district’s population is Muslim. Economically and socially backward Pasmanda Muslims – pasmanda means “those left behind” in Persian – form the bulk of the population.

Ashish Ranjan, an activist with the trade union, Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, said, “Since there are no industries, those living in Araria rely on farming or manual labour to earn.”

As we crossed a bridge, Munazir Khan, a young PhD student from Aligarh University who had agreed to be our guide, pointed to the river Parman. The hot summer had shrunk the river to a trickle. Vast swathes of land on either side were dotted with mud-and-brick huts.

“During monsoons, floods bring large-scale destruction,” Khan said.

Cattle drown, crops are destroyed and huts are torn away by flood water. “Sometimes local residents are able to salvage the bricks before they are carried away by the flood,” Khan said. “People suffer losses every year. They rebuild each time.”

Bagdahara is one such village.

Poor parents here find it easier to send away one or two kids to a madrasa, Khan said, where they believe the children have a better chance at not just education but also survival.

Take Mohammad Najim, for instance. A daily wager from Bagdahara with six children, he earns Rs 300 a day. He said he struggles to feed his children three meals a day, let alone afford private schools.

So when he saw other parents sending their children to madrasas outside Bihar, he made up his mind about sending his son Nasir with Saddam.

“The madrasas in other states offer free food, lodging and education,” Ranjan, the trade union activist, said. “If children don’t have money to travel, they also buy their tickets.”

Over the last few decades, a well-oiled system has been set in place, said Araria’s child welfare committee’s chairperson Deepak Kumar Verma. “Many from the district study outside and become madrasa teachers,” he said. “They come back and vouch for the madrasa and take other kids with them. We have found that several madrasas also pay commissions ranging between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000 per child to such teachers because they get donations by showing greater enrolment.”

In the half-a-dozen villages in Araria that we visited, many residents were open to the idea of sending their children outside the state.

Most families had about four or more children. The parents were either school drop-outs or had never been to a school – the district’s literacy rate is 53.5%. Several owned a tiny piece of land on which they grew wheat and built a house.

Verma said that most parents take a leap of faith and send their children. “People trust easily here due to low literacy. They don’t even go and check the madrasa before admission,” he added.

Often, parents are too poor to travel and inspect the madrasas, residents told us.

In rare cases, children sent for an education were found to be forced into labour, Verma said. “We have seen cases of children forced into the carpet making industry in Bhadohi, Uttar Pradesh, and into farm labour in Punjab,” he said.

‘They learn nothing here’

Guddu is a shy 12-year-old from Bagdahara village, the youngest of his father Jalal Khan’s five children.

When he turned eight, Guddu was admitted to a nearby government primary school.

Jalal Khan, a 42-year-old landless labourer who struggles to find daily work, said he wanted at least one of his children to get educated and earn well. His eldest son had dropped out of school long ago to support the family.

But Guddu would often run away from classes. He would hesitate to speak up if he did not understand what the teacher taught in class. At home, nobody was educated enough to help him in his subjects.

“The teachers were there, but they were not really paying attention. Guddu was learning nothing there,” Jalal Khan complained.

The teacher at the government primary school, Mohammad Sawwood Hassan, admitted his students often played truant. “Children run away after attending school for 10 to 15 days,” Hassan said. “They would rather play in the fields. The parents don’t pay attention at home.”

While there are seven sanctioned teachers for the school’s 300 enrolled children, we found only two had turned up when we visited.

This appears to be an endemic problem in the region.

A 2023 survey by Jan Jagran Shakti Sanghathan of 81 government primary and upper-primary schools in Katihar and Araria district found only 23% of children enrolled in primary schools present at the time of the survey. In upper primary schools, the attendance was only 20%. Teacher attendance was 44% for primary schools and 40% in upper-primary schools.

Hassan, who has considerable non-teaching work deputed by the state government on a regular basis, admitted that it is difficult to pay close attention to each child.

A few months ago Hassan was busy with the special intensive revision of the electoral roll before Bihar went for polls. “And now the census work has begun,” he pointed out.

It took months before Jalal Khan realised that Guddu was bunking classes and running off to play with his friends. He blamed the school for failing to keep his child interested in learning.

However, his first option was not to send Guddu outside the state.

Jalal Khan considered sending him to a residential madrasa 6 km from their home. The madrasa, run by Maulvi Mohammad Amiruddin, teaches Urdu, Arabic and basic Hindi, English, and mathematics.

But even there, Amiruddin told Scroll, children often scaled boundary walls and ran back home. Their parents would then return with the crying, unwilling child.

Araria’s residents said there were not enough schools or madrasas in the district. They were also sceptical about the quality of education in those institutions.

Bagdahara panchayat, which includes several villages, has about five government schools and a madrasa, where 900-odd students study. “There are over 1,100 children living in the panchayat,” said the panchayat head Kulsum Rehman. “That leaves about 150 to 200 children who go outside the state to study,” she said.

Qazi Atiqullah Rahmani, from Imarat Shariah, a social organisation of Muslims in the state, said the number of government aided madrasas in Bihar (1,128) was not enough for the state’s large Muslim population. “[That’s why] the migration to madrasas in other states is decades old,” he said. “Earlier, young children travelled to Gujarat, specifically Surat’s madrasas. Over the last decade, the quality of education has dipped in Gujarat. Now children travel to UP, Maharashtra and Karnataka.”

Mohamed Ali, a teacher at one of Araria town’s largest madrassas, Darul Uloom, said he too had studied in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. “Children who want a better education do move out,” he said.

The residents in Araria also pointed out that several young men had benefited from being educated in madrasas outside the state.

Mohamad Faizal, an alumnus of the Udgir madrasa where Saddam was taking the children, said he started his own cloth store in Bagdahara after finishing school, and now earns well.

Munazir Khan, our guide, too, studied at a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh. He is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and plans to become a teacher. “Many madrasas have begun to focus on subjects taught in English-medium schools. Even they realise the importance of education,” Khan said.

‘Want my son to be a hafiz’

Two years ago, having grown weary of Guddu’s adventures out of school, Jalal Khan decided to do what most parents in the village did – send his son to the Ashrafia Anjuman-e-Islamia madrassa in Maharashtra’s Udgir.

Among Guddu’s peers was Nasir, the son of the daily-wage worker Najim. “I wanted my son to become a hafiz like Saddam,” Najim said.

Hafiz is a title given to someone who has learnt the Quran by heart. Several families told Scroll that they wanted at least one child to gain Islamic education and become religious scholars.

Till now, Khan has been satisfied with his son’s education. As promised, fees, meals and boarding were free. “Guddu was learning well there. And he could not run away like he did in school,” he said.

The madrasa had also enrolled Guddu and Nasir in a nearby government primary school so that they would learn English, Hindi, mathematics and one regional language – in addition to religious education.

This April, both were going back to the madrasa for their third year of education after the Eid holidays, when they were stopped at Katni railway station. They returned home after a fortnight.

Now Guddu is too scared to return. “My son’s entire year is wasted,” Khan said angrily.

Reunited with his family but left shaken, their teacher Saddam, too, is unsure if he will help children enrol in madrasas in other states. His son, Afaan, does not want to leave home either.

‘What life can they have here?’

Child rights activists point out that while Bihar’s parents often do not have the luxury of choice, many madrasas have often flouted basic rules.

Nagarathna R, former chairperson of the child welfare committee in Bengaluru, said on several occasions they had found unregistered madrasas admitting children from other states. “When madrasas only provide religious education, that is a problem under the Right to Education Act,” she said.

Santosh Shinde, former chairperson of Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, said he had found cases of children being put to work in some madrasas. “To avoid such a situation, we feel it is better for children to remain with their parents. They are the safest with them,” Shinde said.

“Don’t you think we know all this?” asked Mohamed Waris, a driver in Araria’s Belwari village. “We worry too that our child will be kidnapped or forced to do illegal work.”

The risk they take is a price for a better future, the parents told us.

Waris’s wife explained: “We have discussed whether we should stop sending our kids outside Bihar. But, tell me, what life can they have here?”

She pointed to the half-destroyed wheat crops, the tiny road running through them, and the desolate faces of the local residents circling us.

Waris’s two children were detained by the railway police in 2023, while on their way to a madrasa in Maharashtra, suspecting they were being trafficked.

The children were kept at a shelter home for a month before being released. His younger son, Nisar, was too scared to travel by train after that. He now studies at a village school.

All photographs by Tabassum Barnagarwala.

This is the first of a two-part series.

Opposition parties in Kerala accused the Congress of double standards after Kerala’s former chief electoral officer assumed charge as the secretary to Chief Minister VD Satheesan on Sunday, PTI reported.

Rathan U Kelkar, a 2003-batch Kerala cadre Indian Administrative Services officer, was transferred a day earlier from the Election Department to the chief minister’s office

As Kerala’s chief electoral officer, Kelkar had supervised the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, as well as the recent Assembly elections.

On Sunday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary MV Govindan pointed out that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had strongly criticised the new Bharatiya Janata Party government in West Bengal for appointing Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal as the state’s chief secretary after the Assembly elections.

“But when a similar move happens in Kerala, [Congress leader] KC Venugopal says it is the responsibility of those in power,” Govindan was quoted as saying by PTI. “This is a clear double standard.”

Keralam | Dr Rathan U. Kelkar, Chief Electoral Officer, Kerala & Secretary, Election Department, is transferred and posted as Secretary to the Chief Minister. pic.twitter.com/eZxnsBuhhS

— ANI (@ANI) May 23, 2026

After Agarwal’s appointment as chief secretary in West Bengal, Gandhi had said on social media that in the “Bharatiya Janata Party-Election Commission’s ‘chor bazaar’ [thieves’ market], the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward”.

Referring to the statement, K Surendran, the BJP’s former Kerala unit president, asked on social media: “So Rahul ji, what happened in Keralam, is it still ‘reward for theft’ or suddenly the beauty of democracy?”

When BJP appoints former West Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal as Chief Secretary, @RahulGandhi screams:
“The bigger the theft, the bigger the reward.”

But exactly 10 days later, the Congress govt in Keralam led by @vdsatheesan appoints Keralam CEO Rathan Kelkar as Secretary.

So Rahul… pic.twitter.com/wfzmuJXpxQ

— K Surendran (@surendranbjp) May 23, 2026

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader P Rajeev said the appointment was a “serious issue” and argued that election officials are generally relieved of other responsibilities to maintain the credibility of the electoral system, The News Minute reported.

On the other hand, Congress leaders defended the appointment, saying there was “no politics” behind the decision and that the government had the authority to appoint capable officers to key administrative posts, PTI reported.

Venugopal, the Congress’s general secretary, described the matter as administrative in nature and said such decisions were for the government to make.

Edited by Sneha.

In the English translation of Franz Kafka’s short story, Metamorphosis, published in 2007, Michel Hofmann translated the famous opening line (which included the German word “Ungeziefer”, generically meaning insect) in this manner: “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed.”

The story is about a deep sense of alienation in the modern world where people have been reduced to cogs in the machine.

Kafka’s entomic tale looms large in the imagination this week as Abhijeet Dipke, a political strategist who once volunteered with the Aam Aadmi Party’s social media team, announced the launch of a satirical political movement called the Cockroach Janta Party.

The party’s name is a response to a remark by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant during a hearing earlier in May when he said some unemployed youths are like “cockroaches” and “parasites” who attack the “system”. They do this by using fake degrees to enter professions such as law and media, and deploy the Right to Information. Kant later claimed that he was misquoted.

CJI Surya Kant says there are "parasites" attacking the system.

"There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment and don't have any place in the profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists, some… pic.twitter.com/gwwOq8VcaK

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) May 15, 2026

Within a week, the Cockroach Janta Party gathered 22 million followers on Instagram – more than the combined numbers of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress – before its account was blocked. So too was its presence on X (formerly Twitter).

It wasn’t long before its website became unavailable. The Intelligence Bureau had warned that there were “national security concerns” about the social media handles, a senior government official told The Indian Express.

Dipke described the Cockroach Janta Party as secular, socialist and democratic – and said it was a party of the lazy. This inclusion in the founding principles is not surprising. Kafka’s Samsa, after he is transformed into an insect, rebels against the monotony of capitalist labour.

Samsa’s transformation can be read as a defense mechanism against the humdrum routine of modern work culture. By turning into a repulsive insect, he manages to get his family and society to leave him alone. Samsa recovers his right to be lazy.

Dipke’s assertion of an anti-work ethic also has resonances with anti-work anarchists such as David Graeber and John Zerzan, who have critiqued the soul-crushing nature of modern productivity. Graber coined the term “bullshit jobs” to describe unproductive labour and toxic work environments.

The poem Procrastination by Fernando Pessoa’s alter ego Álvaro de Campos is a quasi-Kafkaesque poem where the poet daydreams about work without actually doing anything. “Tomorrow I’ll start thinking about the day after tomorrow” writes Campos. It is an act of postponement, delaying the ordeal.

It would seem that for many unemployed youth, the hyper-productive world has caused mass psychological exhaustion.

The Cockroach Janta Party phenomenon has caused excitement and drawn critique from India’s left-liberals. Some have expressed concern that the movement has no political vision. They note that it is circumscribed by its origins – the digital platform has no real structure on the ground.

The Cockroach Janta Party is seen as a forum where subjective energies such as rage can thrive without ushering in any meaningful structural change. Not only is the angry-young-person phenomenon limited in scope, it could provoke negative energies.

The government has taken down our iconic website - https://t.co/l6i6Ry8h5S.

10 Lakh cockroaches had signed up on our website has members.

6 Lakh cockroaches had signed a petition to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan.

Why is the government so scared of cockroaches?…

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) May 23, 2026

Some commentators have questioned the quick comparisons being made between the Cockroach Janta Party and the Gen Z uprisings in Bangladesh and Nepal. They say that it bears no resemblance on the ground with these movements.

That is unfair and simplistic. The novelty of these movements does not have to be measured by their failure or success in introducing possibilities of structural change. They often have a longer impact on social and cultural mores that is not immediately visible and decipherable.

Some reservations about the Cockroach Janta Party are grounded in conventional expectations and ideas of politics in an era that has defied convention. Some leftists have claimed that the people behind this parodical movement are drawn from a class that is too comfortable to actually be political anarchists.

However, the precarious nature of private sector employment and the prevalence of freelance economy, have created a diversified working class, particularly in urban areas. They resemble what the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called “fused groups”, a spontaneous, organic formation of people in response to a crisis.

In such cases, ideology is less important than purpose. Such movements are less defined by what they are, but what they stand against. The political objective they serve may not correspond logically with their core principles.

When political spaces for dissent have shrunk, and any language and act against the ruling order can be criminalised on flimsy grounds, politics can no longer be measured by conventional yardsticks. Political imagination is always born of constraining situations.

It would be harsh to judge the Cockroach Janta Party by its constraints. For now, what must be acknowledged is the novelty of its satirical content and its metaphoric potential.

Like Kafka’s Samsa, another novel comes to mind: The Revolt of the Cockroach People published in 1973 by Mexican-American attorney, writer and activist Oscar Zeta Acosta. It is an auto-fiction based on the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and ’70s in Los Angeles. The writer transforms a derogatory term used for his people into a combative one.

There has been an alarming rise of pejorative political vocabulary in the country in the last few years. In most cases, it has been about dog-whistling and labelling ideological opponents and marginalised groups – especially Bangladeshis. The Cockroach Janta Party might manage to arrest that troubling phenomenon by owning the epithet as a counter-political move. This, at least, poses a challenge to the degradation of political language.

The cockroach is a symbol of survival. It is a scavenging insect that can resist radiation more resiliently than any other species. Whatever happens to the Cockroach Janta Party, it has managed to formulate a new political language. Its satirical beginning has been acknowledged as threatening. That confirms the idea’s potential.

Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Gandhi: The End of Nonviolence.

Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Debangshu Panda secured an overwhelming victory in West Bengal’s Falta Assembly repoll on Saturday, according to data from the Election Commission.

Panda defeated his Communist Party of India (Marxist) rival Sambhu Nath Kurmi by 1,09,021 votes. The Trinamool Congress candidate had withdrawn from the contest days before polling.

According to the Election Commission, Panda had secured 1.49 lakh votes, while CPI(M) candidate Sambhu Nath Kurmi had polled 40,645 votes.

On Tuesday, TMC’s Jahangir Khan withdrew from the race, just as the 48-hour silence period came into effect in the constituency. He claimed that he took the decision “for Falta’s development and the public good” after a special package announced by Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.

The TMC said that the withdrawal of the candidature was Khan’s “personal decision and not that of the party”.

However, since his withdrawal came after the nomination deadline, Khan’s name remained on the ballot and he also polled over 7,400 votes.

While voting in Falta was held on April 29, the Election Commission on May 2 ordered repolling in the constituency citing “severe electoral offences” and alleged “subversion of the democratic process”. There had been allegations of electoral malpractices in the seat.

The fresh vote was held on May 21 and votes were being counted on Sunday.

The poll panel said that it had received complaints from political parties and candidates, and there were reports “alleging application of black adhesive tape/perfume on ballot unit buttons of EVMs [Electronic Voting Machines] in favour of or against particular political parties”.

A probe report by the poll panel found that voting machines in at least 60 of the 285 polling stations in the constituency had been tampered with.

On May 4, the BJP defeated the TMC in the state polls, ending the 15-year rule of the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

The TMC alleged that since the election result, more than 100 of its workers had been arrested in Falta. “Several party offices have been vandalised, shut down and forcibly captured in broad daylight through intimidation, while the EC continues to turn a blind eye despite repeated complaints,” the Banerjee-led party alleged.

On Sunday as well, Trinamool Congress General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee alleged that over 1,000 political workers had been forced to flee their homes in Falta in the past ten days, to which he claimed that the Election Commission had turned a blind eye.

Banerjee also claimed that there were “glaring inconsistencies” in the counting process. “By 3:30 pm in the afternoon today all 21 rounds were completed,” he said in a social media post. “On 4th May, till the same time, only 2- 4 rounds had taken place. The country deserves an explanation from the ECI.”

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read:

• How slow counting of votes in Bengal helped BJP win a lost seat from Trinamool
• One mostly Muslim booth flipped a controversial Bengal seat – 97% of its vote went to BJP