A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, 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.
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
October 14, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan, Kalrav Joshi
After the tumult on the streets of New Delhi over the past few days, a clearer picture is emerging of the political dynamics at play.
Narendra Modi and his advisors are battening down the hatches and pretending they can get by with business as usual. Which means using lawfare against opponents, tightening their grip on the institutions and levers of power and relying on a pliant media to malign the movement for democracy and free and fair elections as anti-national.
Thanks to this pressure, the opposition is getting its act together and there is now the possibility that the Congress and the Cockroach Janata Party may put an end to their passive-aggressive one-upmanship. Rahul Gandhi and a host of prominent INDIA bloc leaders condemned the recent arrest and remand of CJP leaders, drawing messages of gratitude from CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke. The CJP has also now called a ‘wave the tricolour’ protest for Central Park, Connaught Place on October 16. If the Congress, Left and others mobilise for it, the game is on.
In its latest crackdown on dissent, Delhi Police has sought an extension until October 20 for the deployment of 273 companies of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) in the capital, citing the need to “maintain law and order and deal with any potential situation”. A total of 301 companies were approved for deployment – 221 on October 6 and another 80 on October 8. Of the latter, 28 had not reported to Delhi Police as of Monday, reports the New Indian Express citing sources.
For context, Manipur had 218 CAPF companies available for deployment in November 2024 amid an ethnic conflict that erupted in 2023 and continues to flare. The state is nearly 15 times the size of Delhi. The question, then, is: what threat, exactly, is the capital preparing for?
Meanwhile, in the “mother of democracy”, Delhi Police have registered four FIRs over social media posts allegedly spreading misinformation and inflammatory content about the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the subsequent police crackdown. More than 500 posts had been taken down by Tuesday evening, officials told the Hindustan Times.
Read journalist M Rajshekhar’s account of the abuse he witnessed and experienced after Delhi Police detained him and others during the recent protest.
If the filing of cases – against the CJP and other prominent protestors like the YouTuber Dhruv Rathee – and the denotification of Jantar Mantar as a protest site are inviting ridicule rather than inducing fear, the government’s institutional missteps are also laying the ground for a widening arc of protest. The appointment of former BJP state-in-charge of Uttarakhand Dushyant Kumar Gautam as governor of Sikkim has reopened the controversy over the 2022 murder of hotel receptionist Ankita Bhandari in Rishikesh. The murder had made national headlines due to the hotel’ owners’ questionable actions, the allegations of sexual coercion and the reported involvement of a politically influential ‘VIP’ in the case. Her parents on Wednesday staged a dharna at India Gate to protest Gautam’s appointment, alleging that he was the ‘VIP’ and had never been investigated. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi turned up at the dharna in solidarity, tweeting later,
“For four years, Ankita Bhandari's family has not received justice, but a 'VIP' accused has certainly been rewarded with protection and a constitutional position.
“Where rapists and murderers are welcomed with garlands and criminals are honored with the power of authority - no hope can be expected from such a misogynistic BJP either.”
Another Modi-appointed governor, Braj Mohan Ram, began his first day in a constitutional post (that is supposed to be above politics) by declaring that he would work to get more votes for the BJP.
Union home minister Amit Shah’s attempted a shaky rebuttal of Rahul Gandhi’s attacks on the SIR by making the claim that the goal of the Opposition’s campaign was to protect the ‘infiltrators’ supposedly being rooted out by the Election Commission.
Now that’s a hell of a lot of ‘infiltrators’, even by the standards set by the BJP
