A Spurious Yojana, Muslim Bashing and Other Tales from Nitish and Modi's Bihar; Yogi Wants Akhlaq's Killers Off the Hook; RSS's US Lobbying Denial Falls Flat
Pulwama demolition defies Supreme Court order and principles of criminal justice, farewell Kamini Kaushal
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. Today is that day. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.Snapshot of the day
November 14, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
In a result that confounded even the most optimistic of exit poll predictions, the National Democratic Alliance registered a dramatic victory in the Bihar assembly elections, winning 202 of the 243 seats. The BJP won 89 of the 101 seats it contested to emerge as the single largest party – the first time it has done so well in the state – with its partner, the Janata Dal (United) of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar winning 84 of the 101 seats it fought. The Mahagathbandhan led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal of Tejashwi Yadav was reduced to just 25 seats, down from the 80 it won in 2020, even though its overall vote share remained more or less constant at 23%.
The coming days will see plenty of analysis about the results but some thoughts come immediately to mind.
Indian election rules do not allow candidates and parties to hand over cash to voters. Why? Because bribery is incompatible with democracy. But what happens when a ruling party or alliance elevates bribery to government policy and raids the exchequer to purchase the support of the electorate? It goes on to register a record win without any questions asked. And this is what happened in Bihar today.
On September 25, the Union and Bihar governments announced a spurious ‘welfare’ programme called the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, or Chief Minister’s Scheme for Women’s Employment whose sole feature was to deposit Rs 10,000 in to the account of every woman in Bihar. On September 26, Prime Minister Modi ‘deposited’ this money – which amounted to 2.36% of Bihar’s annual budget – and 10 days later, on October 6, 2025, the Election Commission announced the schedule for assembly elections. Predictably, there was a never-before-seen surge in women voters.
No doubt there were other factors at play in the NDA’s win. Yogendra Yadav believes the NDA was more effective in building ‘social and caste based alliances’ than the opposition Mahagathbandhan’s largely ‘Muslim-Yadav’ coalition. The opposition also erred by focussing excessively on ‘vote chori’ rather than issues like unemployment. There is also the opaque electoral list revisions conducted on the eve of voting. And that wasn’t the only manifestation of the EC’s peculiar role. It also ignored allegations of the BJP paying for out-of-state voters to travel to Bihar on special trains.
Prime Minister Modi was quick to describe the NDA’s spectacular win as a vote for ‘vikas’, or development but he couldn’t resist the urge to remind his supporters that this was also a triumph over ‘Muslims’ and other ‘anti-nationals’. There is no other explanation for his description of the Congress as the “Muslim League Maoist Congress”. A BJP minister in Assam went so far as to evoke the memory of the 1989 massacre of Muslims in Bhagalpur with a shocking tweet:
As Alishan Jafri reminds us, the ‘cauliflower’ reference “is understood to point to the … village of Logain in Bhagalpur where 110 Muslims were buried in a farm and cauliflower saplings planted over their dead bodies. In recent years, this reference has been revived by alt-right groups.”
Elsewhere in the business of elections, the ruling National Conference (NC) suffered a major setback on Friday after losing the Budgam bypolls to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which termed the victory as a “referendum” on the policies of chief minister Omar Abdullah. The result in Budgam is being interpreted by some in Kashmir as a sobering reminder of the widespread anger and anti-incumbency against the Abdullah government which completed its first year in office last month. In an oblique reaction to the election result, the disgruntled NC leader from Budgam and Srinagar Lok Sabha member Syed Aga Ruhullah who has publicly criticised Abdullah for his alleged governance failures said that “arrogance is the recipe for disaster”. Jehangir Ali has more on it here.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Harmeet Singh Sandhu won the Tarn Taran bypoll in Punjab by over 10,000 votes. Though the seat was earlier held by AAP and became vacant after the death of MLA Dr Kashmir Singh Sohal, this victory carries deeper political meaning. For AAP, the result offers reassurance at a time when the party has faced growing criticism. Yet the initial fluctuations during early counting on Friday, November 14, underscored that the party’s dominance from the 2022 assembly elections can no longer be assumed. With the next assembly polls scheduled for February 2027, AAP has little room for complacency – especially as the bypoll outcome signals renewed momentum for the Shiromani Akali Dal, Punjab’s oldest regional party.
Meanwhile, in the Aland voter fraud case in Karnataka, the SIT has made its first arrest — “a man running two portals that provided phone numbers and OTPs to the Kalaburagi-based private firm to open untraceable accounts on Election Commission (EC) portals through which forged Form 7s to delete genuine voters of Aland were made in 2023”.
A day after his identity was confirmed by matching DNA with his mother, security forces demolished the house of Dr Umar Nabi, the prime accused in the Delhi blast in which 12 people were killed and many others injured. Jehangir Ali reports that security forces moved in the early hours, evacuated the inmates and then carried out a controlled explosion to demolish the house. The demolition took place despite the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that razing the homes of suspects or convicts without following due process. (See Long Cable)
The GST Council is now scrambling to form yet another Group of Ministers (GoM) – a belated attempt to clean up the mess created by its own rate rationalization exercise. States like Kerala and West Bengal had loudly warned of massive revenue losses, but their concerns were brushed aside until the numbers became impossible to ignore. As reported by The New Indian Express, Kerala alone is staring at an annual revenue wipeout of Rs 8,000–10,000 crore thanks to the so-called “reforms.” Now, with states demanding answers, the Centre appears to be waking up to the predictable fallout of its own policy decisions – and attempting damage control after the damage is already done.
Which is India’s superstar state? The Economist pits Gujarat against Tamil Nadu. And says Tamil Nadu shows why investing in human capital, from even before children are born, pays off.
“All across India politicians find it easier and more appealing to seek growth by laying concrete than by pumping up skills. New roads and bridges make for good front pages and bring immediate benefits. The fruits from improving schooling, by contrast, come much slower. Yet unleashing the power of India’s young and massive population will require investment in health and education. It will also mean fighting obstacles, such as sexism, caste and environmental degradation that keep people from fulfilling their potential. This is far from easy work. But, as Tamil Nadu shows, it would pay off in spades.”
As the special intensive revision of voter rolls takes place in West Bengal, numerous media outlets and YouTube channels have aired videos purporting to show “Bangladeshis” fleeing slums across Kolkata. This echoes insinuations made by firebrand leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP that domestic and daily wage workers who have not shown up to work recently have “returned to Bangladesh”. The media frenzy on this topic reached a low when journalists armed with cameras chased a Muslim man along a street in Kolkata’s Salt Lake neighbourhood. “They kept saying, ‘You are a Bangladeshi, what are you doing here?’ They kept coming in groups, over and over again. Even after I showed them my Aadhaar and voter ID, they wouldn’t stop,” Rafiqul Sardar, who is from a village south of the capital city, lamented to Joydeep Sarkar.
And across that border which people like Sardar are dubiously claimed to have crossed, chief adviser Muhammad Yunus announced yesterday that Dhaka will hold a referendum on constitutional reforms on the same day as the general election that is scheduled for the first half of February. Drawing from the ‘July National Charter’ that most major parties – barring the banned Awami League and the student-led National Citizen Party – signed last month, the referendum will ask Bangladeshis to vote on reforms including increased representation for women in parliament, creating an upper house of parliament, a strengthened presidency and term limits on prime ministers. Yunus’s announcement elicited a mixed response from political parties. The Awami League meanwhile called a bandh yesterday to protest deposed PM Sheikh Hasina’s trial on charges of crimes against humanity, the verdict of which will be delivered on Monday.
Now that Pakistan’s 27th constitutional amendment places the country’s nuclear arsenal firmly in control of Field Marshal Asim Munir, “every decision – signalling, threatening or holding back – would now be concentrated in the hands of a single commander steeped in the Punjabi military ethos of risk, pride and divine mission”, warns Rahul Bedi. However, “allies say Munir models himself on Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, as a tough reformer. A more likely and grim analogy for the future is Egypt’s suffocating military regime. Munir has to choose,” says the Financial Times in an editorial.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has denied hiring a lobbying firm in the US, after a report in non-profit news website Prism said that it had indirectly hired one. However, the evidence thoroughly contradicts the organisation’s denial. As the Prism report notes, two lobbyists from Squire Patton Boggs—Bill Shuster and Bradford Ellison—who have been officially registered since January as representing the RSS, even attended an RSS event in Nagpur in June. Their presence was not a secret; the RSS itself publicised their visit.
The Calcutta High Court, in a landmark ruling, cancelled the membership of senior leader Mukul Roy from the legislative assembly under the anti-defection law – the first such instance in West Bengal’s legislative history. In a judgment of wide constitutional significance, a division bench held that Roy had voluntarily given up his membership of the BJP when he appeared at a Trinamool Congress (TMC) press conference on June 11, 2021, announced his return to the ruling party of Bengal, and allowed the TMC to broadcast the event as his formal induction.
The Bombay high court earlier this week slammed the Union and Maharashtra government for what it termed as an “extremely casual” approach when it comes to dealing with the issue among infants in the tribal regions of the state. While hearing a string of petitions filed over the infant deaths due to malnourishment in Amravati district’s Melghat region, a bench comprising Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Sandesh Patil termed the situation as “horrific” and said that “the government should be concerned”.
The Centre is preparing to introduce new legislation to regulate the quality of seeds and planting materials in the market, aiming to curb the sale of substandard and counterfeit seeds by replacing the six-decade-old Seeds Act.
Women in the western Afghan city of Herat are reportedly being denied access to public hospitals unless they wear a burqa, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The aid group said the directive, introduced on November 5, requires female patients, caretakers and healthcare staff to don the full-body covering before entering medical facilities. The story was reported in English language Afghan media around the same time but has since been removed. According to the BBC, MSF warned that the new rules were further curtailing women’s already restricted access to essential healthcare.
Veteran Hindi cinema star Kamini Kaushal passed away at the age of 98 at her home in Mumbai. Kaushal, who starred in the 1946 classic Neecha Nagar, was among the industry’s most well paid actresses in her day. She starred opposite Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor with her last appearance in Amir Khan’s 2022 film Laal Singh Chaddha at the age of 95. She also appeared in the Shahrukh Khan starrer Chennai Express in 2013.
Yogi-led UP govt files application to withdraw charges in Akhlaq lynching case
A decade after Mohammad Akhlaq’s murder, the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government has sought to withdraw all charges, including murder, against the ten men accused of lynching him in Dadri in 2015. Akhlaq was killed by a mob after rumours circulated that he had slaughtered a cow and stored beef in his home. His lynching set the precedent for a slew of incidents of mob vigilantism in the Modi decade. According to an application filed before the upper sessions court in Gautam Buddha Nagar, the state has requested the withdrawal of prosecution under Section 321 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Among the accused is Vishal Rana, son of local BJP leader Sanjay Rana, Mohammad Ali reports.
Modi govt notifies data protection rules, paving way for India’s first privacy law amid criticism
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Friday notified India’s data protection rules, marking a major step toward implementing a functional privacy regime, eight years after the Supreme Court recognised privacy as a fundamental right and more than two years after the Digital Personal Data Protection Act received presidential assent in August 2023. Although the law has now formally come into effect, only selective provisions are operative.
On paper, the DPDP Act is India’s first law to preserve the privacy of individuals and lays the onus on platforms to secure informed consent from users. This is bound to change the way individuals interact with platforms, and will also make platforms liable to preserve – or delete on request – private information of all citizens. The staggered implementation of the rules, over the next 18 months, will give companies time to raise their standards to the level of the law. At the moment, the government has enforced terms related to setting up a data protection board (and the salaries and conditions of employment of its members), and its powers to enforce penalties, etc. Anjali Bhardwaj, prominent RTI activist, said on X:
“The government is clearly in a rush to destroy the RTI Act! Section 44(3) of the Data Protection Act, which amends Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI law to exempt disclosure of all personal information, has been operationalized with immediate effect. Why this rush to restrict people’s right to informationwhen many core sections of the DPDP law will come into effect only after 18 months?”
Under the law, journalists would need express permission before writing about people, including the subjects of their investigation, which is being seen as a major roadblock to their professional duties. The hefty fines – of up to Rs 500 crore per violation – are also being criticised for enforcing a chilling effect on free speech.
SC judge advises lawyers to appear virtually in light of Delhi pollution
Expressing concerns over the deteriorating air quality in Delhi, a Supreme Court judge yesterday asked lawyers to appear virtually before the court instead of in person, as it could cause permanent damage to their health. “Situation is very very serious! Why are you all appearing here? We have a virtual hearing facility. Please avail it. This pollution will cause permanent damage…,” said Justice PS Narasimha on Thursday. Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) continues to be “severe”, with toxic air being a constant since the beginning of the month. Later, when senior counsel Kapil Sibal said that lawyers were using masks, Justice Narasimha said, “Even masks are not enough. It will not suffice… We will discuss with the Chief Justice (of India) as well.”
The Long Cable
Pulwama Demolition Defies Supreme Court Order and Principles of Criminal Justice
Aswathy Madhukumar
The Pulwama home of Dr. Umar Nabi—the alleged prime accused and suicide bomber in the Red Fort attack—was razed on November 14, 2025. The irony is hard to miss: the demolition came a day after the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment on unlawful house demolitions (In Re: Directions in the matter of demolition of structures, Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 162 of 2022), delivered on November 13, 2024.
What the law lays down
In its 2024 judgment, the Supreme Court issued binding directions to all States: before demolishing any residential or commercial structure, authorities must serve prior notice, allow a minimum 15-day period for reply, and grant a personal hearing before passing a final order. This procedure applies specifically to unauthorised constructions, and notices must clearly spell out the alleged violation and grounds for demolition. The Court also warned that “violation of any of the directions would lead to initiation of contempt proceedings in addition to prosecution.”
Given that the Red Fort blast occurred only four days ago, and that Dr. Umar’s identity was formally confirmed just yesterday, it is virtually impossible that these mandatory steps—notice, response time, hearing—were followed. The demolition therefore appears as a retaliatory act dressed in the language of law-and-order.
Criminal justice or vengeance?
This raises a deeper question: what vision of criminal justice is the State now embracing? India’s criminal law has moved from a “penal code” to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), but mechanisms like punitive demolitions serve neither nyaya nor any penalty recognised under law. Neither the Indian Penal Code nor the BNS prescribes demolition of homes or businesses as punishment. The law does allow forfeiture of property—primarily a financial penalty and, in limited cases, a means of victim-justice under BNS Section 107. But forfeiture is not demolition. Demolition is designed not to recover anything from the accused but to inflict injury on those who live in the structure.
Typically, those driven onto the street in such demolitions are the accused’s family—elderly parents, women, children—none of whom may have any connection whatsoever to the alleged crime. Public sentiment rarely extends sympathy to the relatives of terror-accused, and the suffering of families is often rationalised as part of the “deserved” consequences of proximity to the perpetrator. But the BNS, and every criminal statute in India, is unambiguous: there is no offence of being related to an offender. Criminal liability requires participation—through direct action, conspiracy, abetment, attempt, or, in limited cases like waging war, even preparation. Liability cannot be presumed purely on the basis of kinship.
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), the procedural code, likewise contains no provision—none—for demolishing homes or destroying property of accused persons. It details the powers of police to enter, search, seize and arrest. But nowhere does it authorise executive vengeance. The process is not meant to be the punishment.
Due process and the Constitution
India has long claimed a due-process-based criminal justice system, one that guarantees a just and fair trial regardless of how heinous the crime. The accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty—in a court of law. Media reporting may remove all factual doubt, but “guilt in law” is established only through proper procedure and evidence. As Upendra Baxi noted in his critique of the Malimath Committee Report, the presumption of innocence is a principle of legal process, not a claim about factual innocence. It is a constitutional guarantee and a marker of a civilised State: that we follow procedure established by law, and that such procedure must be just, fair, and reasonable.
To deploy coercive State force against an accused—much less against the family of an accused—before trial or conviction, undermines the Constitution’s basic architecture. It substitutes the rule of law with the rule of anger.
The lure of “quick justice”
Initial reports suggest the demolition was intended as a warning to others who might share ideological affinity with terrorism. Such explanations may make emotional sense to an outraged public but should have no place in a principled State. India has in recent years witnessed public celebration of “quick justice”—from extra-judicial killings in rape-murder cases to retaliatory police actions after terror attacks. The 2019 Hyderabad encounter is a striking example of how such actions can generate widespread applause.
Acts of terror generate immense and understandable public anger, amplified by the toxic overtones of communal hatred. While domestic and international law clearly forbid collective criminalisation and collective punishment, public mood often moves in the opposite direction. In the haze of grief and rage, any State response that appears to “hurt” the perpetrator—or if he is dead, those associated with him—feels like justice. There is a sense, however flawed, that punishing the family punishes the perpetrator beyond the grave.
But anger-driven satisfaction is not justice. Justice in law, however inconvenient, must abide by the law. The State cannot act on emotion, however intense. Terrorism is barbaric. The State must not respond in kind. Terror does not follow due process; a constitutional republic must.
Epilogue
It is unfortunate that we now feel compelled to preface any critique of State overreach with ritual declarations of condemnation. Yet let it be said plainly: disagreeing with “demolition justice” is not an endorsement of the terror attack. One can, and must, condemn both. A society governed by the Constitution should be able to mourn its dead, pursue the guilty with full force of law, and still reject measures that violate the very principles that distinguish a lawful State from the violence it seeks to punish.
The author is an Assistant Professor of Law, School of Law, Christ University
Reportedly
Palak Shah writes about how the Gadkari family turned policy into profit. The father, Nitin, “pushed ethanol policy into the fast lane” while his sons run CIAN Agro, which makes ethanol:
“Revenues shot from ₹17 crore in Q1 FY24 to ₹511 crore in Q1 FY26 — a 30x leap. Profits? Up 52,000 percent in a single quarter. Stock price? From ₹40 to ₹3,138 in 16 months. Market cap? Had touched a peak of ₹9,222 crore. And this, in the exact years when Gadkari Sr. was lobbying for 20 percent blending. Coincidence? Or a well-timed family tune-up?”
Drawn and quartered
Deep dive
“Even as the world’s fastest-growing major economy bets on manufacturing to fuel its rise, the factory floor is no longer where many young Indians see their future,” says Bloomberg in a timely piece.
Prime number: 0
The Prashant Kishor-led Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) did not get a single seat in the 2025 Bihar assembly elections, with 98% of its candidates forfeiting their deposits.Opeds you don’t want to miss
Gautam Bhatia on how the mighty Indian courts are increasingly forgetting the basics of free speech:
“This case marks the latest instance in a disturbing trend of the higher judiciary failing to protect citizens from the abuse of State power, simply for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. In all these cases, judges appear to be more concerned about hectoring citizens for what they have said, written, or tweeted online, rather than performing their core function of enforcing the law and the Constitution.
…It is worth remembering that our courts are meant to function as courts of law, not courts of moral, social, or public opinion. Their task is to enforce the law, and not to discipline or punish individuals who, in their view, have said the “wrong” thing, or to try to shape individual opinion.
In this context, the judges’ views on the rights and wrongs of what an individual has said should play no role in their adjudication of the case before them. Judges could vehemently disagree with what an individual has said, while recognising that there is no cause for their prosecution by the State under criminal law.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the other toxic politics which is engulfing and choking the citizens in the capital and elsewhere. “Unless each actor in this chain of responsibility is named and shamed, “state incapacity” will continue to mask political choice. Toxic air is sustained by toxic politics.”
Enforcing a one-size-fits-all governance model in all technological institutions can hit India’s standing in science and technology, warns Dinesh C Sharma:
“These recent developments may seem isolated and unconnected, but they are not. They are part of a long chain in recent years during which our scientific, research and academic institutions have been losing their autonomy one by one. Some have been forced to fall in line, while others have decided to surrender voluntarily.
A fledgling Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had the courage to turn down a request from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1980 to send an Indian astronaut on a Soviet mission. It was not an act of defiance but a polite refusal based on sound arguments (ISRO was then busy making its first satellites and rockets and had no human flight programme on its agenda), which the PM was graceful enough to accept. She then assigned the task to the Indian Air Force, resulting in Rakesh Sharma’s space journey in 1984. ISRO is still autonomous on paper, but it has no courage left to correct the minister when he disrespects its founder publicly.”
In a searing piece, Harsh Mander on India’s fading insaniyat: “in Myanmar, deported refugees live in hiding. In India, their families wait for their loved ones or to be tossed into the sea themselves.
RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat recently counselled his audience not to perceive all Muslims in the same way: “only some Indian Muslims speak of ‘Ghazwa e Hind’ or practise ‘Love jihad’,” he clarified. But “this caution must, conversely, also teach us to desist from thinking all Hindus to be of one mind on all things that concern us as Indians”, Badri Raina points out. “Here too, Hindu baiters must learn to distinguish the ‘bad’ from the ‘good’,” he writes.
Noted human rights lawyer and senior advocate Indira Singh reminisces about the Surendra Koli case and remembers a Midnight Intervention.
Listen up
Does Mumbai’s Art Deco heritage have a future? Architect (and author and poet) Mustansir Dalvi wouldn’t bet on it. “It is one building away from being destroyed” and the beauty of it, he tells Sidharth Bhatia on The Wire Talks podcast, ‘lies in all of them seen as a cluster – if one gets redeveloped, then it is gone’.
Watch out
What does Naga rebel Thuingaleng Muivah’s return to his village in Manipur “mean for a conflict that is continuing for decades with no clear end in sight?” Ishadrita Lahiri and Antariksh Jain report for the BBC.
Over and out
B. Kolappan, a journalist in The Hindu‘s Tamil Nadu bureau, has experienced first-hand the challenges of translating as well of being translated. He writes about being stumped and imperilled by the task.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.