Donald Trump Hints he Could Visit India Next Year; SIR May Have Resulted in Increased Turnout in Bihar; Over 200 Flights Delayed at Delhi Airport Due to Technical Glitch in Traffic Control
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November 7, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
Did the Bihar special intensive revision – which removed 3.9% of names from the voter rolls in the 121 seats that voted yesterday compared to the general election last year – result in an increase in the voter turnout? Abhishek Jha and Roshan Kishore note that the number of people who turned out to vote in yesterday’s phase 1 assembly election (based on the Election Commission’s 64.66% turnout figure) was some 2.8 million higher than the corresponding number for the general election in these 121 seats. Plus, while the number of eligible electors in these seats between the 2020 and 2025 assembly polls increased by 1.1% (lower than in 2015-2020), the number of voters increased by 17.1% (higher than in 2015-2020). This, they argue,
“lends theoretical support to the logic that the SIR did not weed out a significant number of actual voters on the ground, and the deletions were largely confined to voters who migrated or were registered in more than one place and therefore overwhelmingly populated the ranks of voters who did not vote even in the past.”
For many of those who did vote, the experience evoked emotions ranging from anger to relief. Voters who had to traverse a flooded road to get to their booth in a Darbhanga seat said that bricks were laid on the problematic path only the day before. “When they needed votes, they laid these bricks here. Otherwise, people used to wade through water to reach here,” one person told PTI. Meanwhile in Munger in Bihar’s southeast, voters in one hamlet were relieved that they no longer had to go to another village to exercise their franchise – which they were compelled to do after a deadly Maoist attack in 2005. “Today, it feels good to vote again here in my village,” an elderly man told the news agency.
Numerous people who Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi pointed out were wrongly assigned someone else’s photo on Haryana’s voter rolls – of the elderly Charanjeet Kaur, which appeared 223 times, and of a Brazilian model, which showed up 22 times – were able to vote successfully despite the mistake by showing their voter IDs to officials at their booths, and the elderly woman herself said she voted just once, the Indian Express has reported. But the Congress’s Amitabh Dubey says his party is not accusing Ms Kaur of rigging the polls. Instead, the ‘real question’ is: how many of the 5,21,619 entries the LoP identified as ‘duplicate voters’ were actually genuine? “Haryana flipped with just 22,779 votes – less than 1% of the 25,41,144 dubious entries on the ECI’s own lists. This needs machine-readable rolls and CCTV, not a daytrip report crafted to please some people,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Gandhi doubled down on the allegations of “vote theft” in Haryana, unfazed by the BJP’s mockery of his claims, made a day earlier when he dropped his long-promised “hydrogen bomb”. Addressing rallies in Purnea and Araria as Bihar voted in the first phase, Gandhi reiterated how a Brazilian model’s picture had featured 22 times on the voter list across 10 booths in the Rai Assembly segment of Haryana. He further flagged how thousands of names had been deleted from the Bihar electoral rolls, claiming these were mostly Mahagathbandhan voters.
Signalling a thaw in recent trade strains, United States President Donald Trump said on Thursday that talks with New Delhi were going smoothly and suggested he could travel to India next year. While speaking to reporters, Trump hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “a great man” and “a friend”, while signalling that he may travel to India next year to bolster economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries. Addressing reporters, Trump said his recent conversations with PM Modi had been “going great”. He added that Modi had invited him to India and he was open to making the trip.
Once again with a pat on his own back for ‘stopping wars’, he claimed that as many as “eight planes” were “shot down” during the India-Pakistan military confrontation. He said: “India and Pakistan… eight planes were shot down, essentially.” He said that it was seven but the eighth one “was really badly wounded”. The Republican leader also claimed that his threats to impose trade restrictions compelled both the nations to agree to a truce. Previously, Trump has repeatedly claimed that military jets were shot down during the India-Pakistan conflict in May, although the Ministry of External Affairs has refuted this claim. He initially claimed the number to be five, increasing it a month later to claim “seven jets” were downed.
More than 200 flights were delayed at Delhi airport, one of the world’s busiest, after an air traffic control messaging system suffered a technical problem, India’s airport authority and a source
familiar with the matter said on Friday. The glitch, which delayed departures for dozens of flights by more than 30 minutes, could cascade and lead to logjams at other airports in the country.
Days after an anti-billionaire democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s mayor, Trump positioned Miami as a refuge for “exiles” from the city’s new leadership. At the America Business Forum, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the former president was lauded by FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, who hinted Trump could receive the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize next month during the 2026 World Cup draw – a consolation for missing out on the Nobel Peace Prize, reports Bloomberg.
Some 270 Indian nationals who worked in the exploitative ‘scam centres’ in Myanmar’s Myawaddy and had recently fled to Thailand arrived back home aboard two air force planes yesterday evening. But they will not be sent home immediately as the authorities are interested in the activities they were engaged in, how they got to Myanmar and how to prevent more Indians from landing up there, reports Kallol Bhattacherjee.
Left student organisations won all four posts to the JNU student union central panel yesterday, reasserting their dominance in the institute’s student politics and depriving the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad – which had won the joint secretary’s post in the April elections – of any presence in the top body.
With just about three months to go for the start of the tournament, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has shortlisted venues for the 2026 T20 World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka. The tournament is scheduled to begin on February 7 next year, with the final set to be played in Ahmedabad on March 8. According to a ESPNcricinfo report, the ICC is expected to release the full schedule next week, with just three months remaining before the start of the event. Most participating nations are reportedly waiting for details on team groupings and fixtures. Ticketing information for the tournament has also not yet been made public. As per an agreement between the BCCI and PCB, Pakistan will play all their matches in Sri Lanka, serving as a neutral venue during multi-nation tournaments hosted by either country. Should Pakistan reach the final, that match will also take place in Sri Lanka.
Speaking of which, the BCCI called the recent victory of the Indian women’s team in the World Cup a “1983 moment.” But while the men got Rs 125 crore for a T20 win, Indian women’s cricket team [including staff] got Rs 51 cr for a World Cup that comes once in 4 years. Sharda Ugra on BCCI’s gender bias — no victory parade for women, no parity.
“Today, it is the difference in the cash award after World Cup wins that has shown up the BCCI for its inability to put its money where its mouth indulges in non-stop, self-promotion about its contribution toward the progress of the women’s game. Which frankly is its job.
Never mind formalising state cricket contracts, the BCCI is loath to even institute a professional bonus structure for its national team for fear of surrendering the feudal power of releasing random amounts of cash. Yet it loses no time in cementing its own perks – those officials who dashed off to the ICC meeting in Dubai just after the Women’s World Cup final? They’re on an overseas allowance of US$1000 per day. The players are at US$250.”
Three Railway Protection Force police officers posted in Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district have been booked on murder charges and suspended after it was alleged that they tortured and killed a Dalit man in their custody. The man’s brother said speaking to Piyush Srivastava that the RPF personnel had taken him with them for questioning over an incident of petrol theft from a goods train. “We saw several deep injury marks on his body as if he had been hit by iron rods and knives,” he said. Srivastava cites police sources as saying that a large number of Dalit residents in the man’s village had gathered there to protest his death.
Forty-two years after the Nellie massacre of Assam, in which some 1,800 Bengali-speaking Muslims were killed by a mob of Assamese and Tiwa people during the Assam agitation against alleged foreigners on the voter rolls, chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said his government will this month table the report of the Tribhuvan Prasad Tewary commission that was formed to look into the circumstances of the incident. Rokibuz Zaman recalls what happened on February 18, 1983, what the Tewary commission’s report says and does not say and what local politicians have claimed has been done with it. Soleman Qasami, who lost 12 family members in the massacre, told Zaman:
“We don’t know why after 42 years, the government is releasing the report now … So many governments have come and gone. Himanta himself was a powerful minister in past Congress governments but it was not released then. There might be some ulterior motive … Maybe the government wants to suppress the protests around Zubeen Garg.”
Gurpreet Kaur, wife of British national Jagtar Singh Johal who has been in Indian custody since November 2017 on accusations of having ties to and funding Khalistani terrorist groups, has said she is “unbearably sad” about her husband’s prolonged incarceration that began immediately after they were married. “I think of the years, the life that has been taken away from us,” she said in a statement issued through a legal charity. Johal’s supporters have alleged that the Punjab police tortured and forced him to sign a confession; a UN working group on human rights had said in 2022 that his arrest was arbitrary. Johal was acquitted in one case against him earlier this year but eight others remain pending against him.
Media hype has driven demand for weight loss drugs among wealthier Indians, and with the patent for semaglutide set to expire in India soon, a ‘flood of cheaper generics’ could make the drug easier to access. But greater access could come with higher risk. Already, reports Soutik Biswas, “doctors tell stories of patients being put on high dosage of weight-loss drugs by gym trainers, dieticians and beauty clinics with no authority to prescribe them”. Using weight loss drugs for a long time without exercise or strength training can cause muscle loss too.
UK shared intel linking Indian agents of Modi govt to Nijjar killing
The United Kingdom was the first to provide the Canadian government with intelligence linking Indian agents to the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada and to plots targeting two others in the United States and the United Kingdom, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and Avtar Singh Khanda, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, British intelligence shared a file with Canada in late July 2023 containing details of conversations intercepted by the UK’s signals intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
“It was a summary and analysis of conversations intercepted by the UK’s signals intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters, between individuals whom British analysts believed were working on behalf of the Indian government,” the news agency said. The intercepted conversations, which took place earlier in the year, allegedly discussed plans to target three individuals – Nijjar in Canada, Pannun in the United States and Khanda in the United Kingdom. The document did not name Nijjar’s assassins or those whose communications were intercepted, “but British analysts concluded there was a strong likelihood that Nijjar had been murdered in an operation directed by the Indian state.” Within an hour of receiving the British document, Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Jody Thomas, briefed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the report adds, shedding new light on the intelligence trail behind Trudeau’s public accusation in September 2023 that Indian agents were involved in Nijjar’s killing.
Air India crash: Pilot cannot be blamed for accident, says Supreme Court
The Supreme Court verbally observed that no blame could be placed on the pilot who was among the 275 persons who died in the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad on June 12, reports The Hindu. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi clarified that no official report had held the cockpit crew responsible for the accident. It added that it was prepared to record this position formally, as it agreed to hear a petition filed by 91-year-old Pushkarraj Sabharwal, the father of late Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, the pilot-in-command.
Responding to the petitioner’s concern that his son was being unfairly blamed, the bench said it was “an extremely unfortunate accident”. It verbally observed that “nobody, and especially the pilot, can be blamed for the tragedy”. The judges noted that the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s preliminary report did not make any adverse findings against the pilot. “We have gone through the report,” The Hindu quoted the bench as saying. “There is no insinuation against the pilot at all…Whatever could be the reason for the tragedy, it is not the pilots.”
New H-1B rules pour cold water on job prospects of Indian students in US
Job application season has begun for university students set to graduate this coming May and the Trump administration’s new H-1B rules has rained cold water on the prospects of Indian students studying in America. For instance, data science student Ishaan Chauhan lamented to Bloomberg that “the question that always pops up is: Could you now or in the future need sponsorship? And that sort of just ends the conversation itself.” Similarly, finance student Nikhil Kumar shared that just checking the box on applications indicating that he will need visa sponsorship – Washington has mandated a $100,000 fee for employers hiring H-1B workers – has resulted in instant rejection. Others noted that the policy uncertainty resulting from the nine month gap between now and the typical job-onboarding time has made US employers even more hesitant. Indian citizens have far and away been the largest recipients of H-1B visas until now.
The Long Cable
Gandhi’s vision of the song Vande Mataram is inclusive, not divisive, like now
S.N. Sahu
On the 150th anniversary of the song Vande Mataram, adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the national song of India on January 24, 1950 , the BJP uttered an unabashed lie by saying that the Congress party “brazenly pandering to its communal agenda under the presidentship of Jawaharlal Nehru, adopted only a truncated version as the party’s national song in 1937.” Prime Minister Modi joined BJP in compounding that lie when he said that important stanzas of the national song ‘Vande Mataram’ were dropped in 1937 and then went on to distort history by adding that in doing so the seeds of partition were sown in the country.
Gandhi and Tagore on Vande Mataram
It is in this context it is important to recall what Mahatma Gandhi said in a prayer meeting in Calcutta on August 23, 1947 when someone said Allah-O Akbar and others in the gathering responded by uttering “Vande Mataram.” Gandhi asserted that the recitation of Vande Mataram was not a religious cry but a purely political cry and the Indian National Congress examined it by making a reference to Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore about it. He added that both the Hindu and the Muslim members of the Congress Working Committee took a decision as per the decision of Tagore that its opening lines were free from any objection and he pleaded that it should be sung together by all on due occasions. It was made clear by Gandhi that “It should never be a chant to insult or offend the Muslims”. Expressing very emphatically that Vande Mataram always had a place as “an ode to Mother India” he reminded that “it was the cry that had fired political Bengal” and many freedom fighters embraced suffering and even death by that national song.
It is salutary to recall that the resolution adopted by Indian National Congress in its 1937 session on Vande Mataram stated, “Whenever and wherever Vande Mataram is sung only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect freedom to the organizers to sing any other song of unobjectionable character in addition to, or in the place of, Vande Mataram song.”,
BJP and Modi should be mindful that it was Tagore who sang it in the 1896 session of the Congress in Calcutta organised under the leadership of its President, Rahmatullah Sayani.
Constituent Assembly’s Decision
It is indeed tragic Modi apart from insulting Tagore’s decision of 1937 to limit Vande Mataram to its initial stanzas is also frowning upon the wisdom of the Constituent Assembly which adopted those stanzas as the national song. President of the Assembly Rajendra Prasad made a statement on January 24, 1950 that “The composition consisting of the words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations in the words as the Government may authorise as occasion arises; and the song Vande Mataram, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it”.
Prasad clarified before making the above statement that, “At one time it was thought that the matter might be brought up before the House and a decision taken by the House by way of a resolution. But it has been felt that, instead of taking a formal decision by means of a resolution, it is better if I make a statement with regard to the National Anthem”.
Given such well documented history cataloguing that Tagore first sang it in 1896 and took a considered decision to recite only its first few stanzas, it is surprising to see Modi using the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram to peddle a divisive agenda.
While campaigning for his party BJP during 2024 general elections he had claimed that 80 to 90 per cent members of the Constituent Assembly were Sanatanis and because they supported Ambedkar and stood by him a great Constitution could be drafted for the country. When the same Constituent Assembly(CA) adopted a few stanzas of the Vande Mataram and its President Rajendra Prasad made a statement that it should occupy the same status as Jana Gana Mana, the national anthem, Modi is showing utter disrespect to the wisdom of the CA.
While in South Africa Mahatma Gandhi wrote an article “The Heroic Song of Bengal” in Indian Opinion on December 2, 1905 and described Vande Mataram as our national anthem and added, “It is nobler in sentiment and sweeter than the songs of other nations. While other anthems contain sentiments that are derogatory to others, Vande Mataram is quite free from such faults. Its only aim is to arouse in us a sense of patriotism. It regards India as the mother and sings her praises. The poet attributes to Mother India all the good qualities one finds in one’s own mother. Just as we worship our mother, so is this song a passionate prayer to India”.
Again, on April 27, 1915 while speaking at the YMCA in Madras he referred to the beauty and majesty of Vande Mataram which, when people heard it, they sprang to their feet. In that context he said that the patriotism meant to discard fear and said, “If our rulers are doing what in our opinion is wrong, and if we feel it our duty to let them hear our advice even though it may be considered sedition, I urge you to speak sedition-but at your peril. You must be prepared to suffer the consequences. And when you are ready to suffer the consequences and not hit below the belt, then I think you will have made good your right to have your advice heard even by the Government”.
Those words of Gandhi resonate when people point out the wrong doings of the Modi regime they face penal action. So what is the meaning of celebrating the 150th anniversary of Vande Mataram by the powers that be when they take stringent action against those who hold a mirror to them.
Writing in Harijan on July 1, 1939 Gandhi said that Vande Mataram should not be sung if on some grounds people object to it.
In his book Constructive Programme, he appealed to the students that, among others, Vande Mataram should not be imposed on others.
It is thus a shame that the 150th anniversary of the song becomes an occasion to deliberately target people on the basis of their faith and disfigure history to polarise society and the nation.
(S.N. Sahu served as an officer on special duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.)
Reportedly
Devendra Fadnavis has always been a man with an ambition-an ambition to look beyond the confines of Maharashtra. In 2019, he declared that Delhi had Narendra and Maharashtra had Devendra, which was considered too grasping by the BJP bosses. The BHP-Shiv Sena coalition collapsed after the elections and he had to sit in the opposition. Things changed half way through-first he was the Dy CM and then, after the 2024 elections, he emerged as the CM of Maharashtra. The old eagerness has returned. This time, he is pitching himself as a business-friendly politician. The Delhi edition of a newspaper on Friday carried a full page advertisement of Global Leaders Summit-India’s Most Powerful Economic Convergence. And, above several men in suits from top civil servants, large institutions and companies, both Indian and foreign, is the photograph of a smiling Fadnavis. The message seems to be—I too hobnob with business leaders. Is this his own initiative or is he getting professional advice on this positioning? And will the party bosses look at it benignly or otherwise?
Drawn and quartered
Deep dive
A new report by Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy (DAHRD), titled, ‘Algorithms of Exclusion: Meta’s Failure to Prevent Anti-Muslim Hate During Bihar Elections,’ reveals that Meta failed to curb anti-Muslim hate during the Bihar Assembly elections, allowing Facebook to become a platform amplifying dehumanising propaganda.
Prime number: Rs 12K cr
Since the Trump government’s new tariff came into force from August, Tamil Nadu’s Tiruppur textile hub — once a powerhouse of India’s export economy — has bled export orders worth nearly Rs 12,000 crore. Production has already plunged by about 30% and while units have not yet shut down or laid off workers, the strain is unmistakable. Exporters warn that the real blow is yet to come — next year could see the full force of Washington’s tariff hit, and New Delhi’s silence so far only deepens the sense of betrayal.Opeds you don’t want to miss
Pratap Bhanu Mehta says that Jawaharlal Nehru is the thread that binds Zohran Mamdani, Eugene Debs, civil liberties and the vision of cities as more inclusive and progressive spaces — as opposed to the playgrounds of the rich that they have become now, where “the cosmopolitanism of the city is the cosmopolitanism of labour, not of capital”.
In Bihar’s SIR, the Election Commission — constitutionally tasked with ensuring every eligible citizen is enrolled — effectively shifted that responsibility onto the people themselves. Extending such a dereliction of duty nationwide would only deepen the crisis of fairness in an already compromised political climate, where every major party evades accountability, argues Ashok Lavasa.
“Both ‘correctness’ and ‘completeness’ should be the goal of an inclusive electoral roll. With this in view, the ECI should also analyse the health of the draft electoral roll. This means identifying polling stations where there has been an unusual increase or decrease in the number of voters, or where there is a sudden change in gender ratio. These polling stations should be looked at in detail and the results should be made fully transparent.
One of the ECI’s strengths has been its use of thorough, transparent standard operating procedures, which limit discretionary decisions. To maintain this reputation, the ECI should ensure adequate disclosure of crucial data, such as voter turnout and information from Form 17C—a statutory form completed by the presiding officer at each polling station after voting ends. These had emerged as contentious issues in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Zohran Mamdani comes at a time when the “cheek-kissing posterior of the American right has been such a dismal failure, Mamdani shows us that there is another way,” writes Vir Sanghvi.
As the next phase of the SIR unfolds, the case of Assam stands out. By excluding Assam from the Special Intensive Revision, the Election Commission of India conveniently sidesteps uncomfortable questions about its jurisdiction as a citizenship verification authority, argues Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi:
“Why the CEC’s explanation that the citizenship ascertainment for Assam is about to be completed is a smokescreen is because the NRC in Assam had already been prepared under the Supreme Court’s monitoring over five years ago. On August 31, 2019, the Office of the State Co-Ordinator, NRC, Assam issued a press release titled “Publication of Final NRC on 31st August, 2019”, thereby notifying that the process of updating the NRC in Assam had concluded. This was a watershed moment for Assam and India, making Assam the only State after Independence to have conducted, and concluded, an exercise on such a large scale and under the monitoring of the top court of the land.”
Could the excessive focus on ‘dynasty’ be to just distract from the stranglehold of a few castes and powerful social groups on power? Gilles Verniers recast the question of dynasticism in its broader elitist context.
“The WTO is undoubtedly at a crossroads. Its members must decide whether it is doomed to extinction or whether it will re-emerge, like the phoenix, from its ashes”, writes KM Chandrasekhar.
The creation of seven posts in the Lokpal setup will only be a drain on the exchequer, says Julio Ribeiro. “The Lokpal can concentrate on defaulters favoured by the party in power. These offenders are mostly those who have switched parties so that they can continue with their corrupt ways.”
Sobhana Nair reflects on the experience of travelling alone as a woman to cover elections, how things are changing – but reminds there’s still a long way to go. “I am aware that the first generation of women reporters crossed higher barriers, travelling to the farthest corners without giving in to the farce of wearing socially acceptable clothes or limiting themselves to “softer beats”. They opened the doors for us. I am glad that field trips for women reporters are no longer the heroic adventure they once were. We have certainly come a long way. But we still have a long way to go.”
Listen up
Perhaps owing to its strategic mistakes in the recent past, the influence of the Indian Left today is a shadow of what it used to be even two or three decades ago. What can it do to remedy this? Saira Shah Halim, who has tackled this question in her new book Comrades and Comebacks, points to the need to rope in the youth and focus on contemporary issues. Speaking to Sidharth Bhatia on The Wire Talks podcast, she points to Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City: “I mean, this guy is unfazed, he is taking on Donald Trump, he is taking on these right-wing oligarchs, he is taking on these big capitalists, and he is winning because, you know, people are liking these new ideas, which are a far cry from the traditional morals of what the old communists stood for.”
Watch out
The Union government is planning an 11 gigawatt solar power project on Ladakh’s Changthang plain but for the territory’s Changpa herders, “whose Pashmina goats depend on these grasslands, the project raises questions about livelihoods and land”, notes the BBC. Dilnawaz Pasha and Prabhat Kumar report from Ladakh on the herders’ concerns.
Over and out
Having followed New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s campaign over the last nine months and spending ‘100+ rolls of film’ in doing so, photojournalist Jack Califano presents his favourite clicks from Mamdani’s run in this X thread.
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.