EU Imposes Sanctions on Guj Refinery with 49% Russian Shareholding; Ease Rules for Chinese Investments, Says NITI Aayog; Delhi HC Quashes FIR Against 16 From Tablighi Jamaat Arrested During Lockdown
EC’s Bihar Move Violates Nehru, Patel’s Enlightened Views on Citizenship; Ex-Chhattisgarh CM Baghel’s Son Arrested by ED; Razia Sultana, One of Jahangir’s Wives go Missing in New Class 8 Text Book
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
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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable
Snapshot of the day
July 18, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
In a historic and hard-hitting move, the European Union has, for the first time, sanctioned a refinery operating in India – the Vadinar refinery in Gujarat, operated by Nayara Energy (formerly Essar Oil), in which Russia’s largest state-owned oil giant, Rosneft, holds a commanding 49.13% stake. This latest sanctions package follows months of negotiations among member states on how to balance economic impacts within Europe while ensuring Russia’s war funds are curbed effectively.
The move is part of the EU’s 18th sanctions package against Russia, designed to tighten the noose around Moscow’s oil revenues amid its ongoing war in Ukraine. European Commission’s vice president Kaja Kallas, also the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said the new measures target 105 additional shadow fleet ships, restrict Russian banks’ access to funding, and ban the Nord Stream pipelines. The EU has also lowered the oil price cap, blocked tech exports used in drones, and imposed sanctions on Chinese banks enabling Russian sanctions evasion. “We are putting more pressure on Russia’s military industry and hitting those indoctrinating Ukrainian children. We will keep raising the costs so stopping the aggression becomes the only path forward for Moscow,” Kallas said.
Equally significant is the EU’s unprecedented move to sanction a flag registry in India, a direct rebuke to how Russian oil is being masked and rebranded in global shipping networks. The Indian flag – now singled out – has become, in the EU’s eyes, part of a shadow fleet system that helps Russian oil evade restrictions. The EU has also slashed the oil price cap by 15% below market rates – a direct attempt to further dent Russian revenues, much of which has quietly flowed through refineries like Nayara’s.
But the sanctions represent a red flag – a signal India’s much-touted “strategic autonomy” may be over. As global pressure mounts and the Russia-Ukraine war enters a more volatile phase, India must ask itself: is the cost of discounted crude worth the price of being seen as a loophole in the global sanctions regime?
Meanwhile, the EU’s latest sanctions targeting Nayara Energy’s Vadinar refinery may have torpedoed Reliance Industries’ – owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani – bid for a stake in the Rosneft-backed company, reports Bloomberg. Any deal risks dragging Reliance into EU crosshairs, jeopardising its fuel exports to Europe.
The Government’s chief think tank, NITI Aayog, has reportedly put forward a proposal to relax the stringent rules that currently require extensive scrutiny for investments in India by Chinese companies. Presently, any investment by Chinese entities in Indian firms necessitates a security clearance from both India's home and foreign ministries. According to a report in Reuters that quoted government sources, these regulations have led to delays in significant deals. The NITI Aayog has reportedly suggested that Chinese companies be allowed to acquire up to a 24% stake in Indian firms without requiring any approval, as per sources.
In a politically charged atmosphere, Chaitanya Baghel, son of Congress leader and former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case linked to an alleged liquor scam. On Friday morning, the officials from the central agency directly under the Modi government had conducted a second raid this year at the Baghel family’s residence in Bhilai. In response, Chhattisgarh’s former CM and Congress MLA Bhupesh Baghel took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, calling the move a ‘birthday gift’ for his son.
Baghel claimed that this has been done to prevent him from raising the issue of felling of trees for the Adani Group’s coal mine project in Tamnar tehsil in Raigarh district of the state. “ED has arrived. Today is the last day of the assembly session. The issue of trees being cut in Tamnar for Adani was supposed to be raised today. “At Bhilai Niwas, “Saheb” has sent the ED,” he said in a post on X, earlier this morning. The mine project has been reportedly allotted to Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Limited (MAHAGENCO), which has contracted the MDO (mine developer-cum-operator) to the Adani Group. Meanwhile, Congress workers clashed with police personnel as they tried to stop ED vehicles from taking Chaitanya into custody.
Maharashtra has just passed a law that could imprison individuals for peaceful protests. The BJP-led government claims it targets “Urban Maoists,” but critics warn the MSPS Bill poses the greatest threat to free speech since the Emergency, reports Amey Tirodkar.
During the Covid lockdown in 2020, the Delhi Police booked several Indians associated with the Tablighi Jamaat “for disobeying prohibitory orders”. The media went full throttle with the story and in those tense times, word quickly spread that the Tablighis had not bothered about the spread of the dreaded disease. Now, the Delhi High Court has quashed the FIRs against 16 of them in “a strongly worded judgement”. “Justice Neena Bansal Krishna, who heard a series of petitions, held Thursday that no prima facie offence was made out under the Indian Penal Code” in all the laws they had been booked under.
While the courts found no crime, will the Indian mainstream media, including from the likes of India Today and Zee TV, apologise and retract their communal reports? Was that journalism?Here is a rewind to when some TV news anchors turned a health crisis into a communal conspiracy from Newslaundry.
The United States government designated The Resistance Front (TRF), considered an offshoot of the Pakistani extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, as a “foreign terrorist organisation (FTO)” and “specially designated global terrorist (SDGT)” over the April 22 islamist militant attack in Palgham that killed 26 people, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday. The Resistance Front, also known as Kashmir Resistance, initially took responsibility for the attack in Pahalgam before denying it days later. Rubio called the TRF, which emerged in 2019, a “front and proxy” for Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is considered an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a Delhi-based think tank. India said it appreciated the move, with Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar calling it a “strong affirmation of India-US counter terrorism co-operation,” in a post on X.
In a striking display of indifference - or perhaps strategic denial - Indians appear far less concerned about US interference in their domestic politics, military dominance, economic competition, or even Washington’s selective human rights sermonising than citizens in eight other middle-income countries, according to new research by Pew Research Center. Whether this signals blind trust, geopolitical pragmatism, or a worrying complacency, the message is clear: when it comes to American power, India seems unusually unbothered – if not willfully unaware.
US President Donald Trump’s engagement with Field Marshall Asim Munir, even as Pakistan goes further into China’s orbit, complicates India’s calculus, writes Sushant Singh arguing that Modi’s narrative of global leadership has been exposed as a house of cards, vulnerable to the whims of stronger powers.
Amid serious concerns raised by several lawmakers over issuance of Aadhaar to several probable migrants from outside the country, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Thursday was asked to ensure that it is only provided to bonafide citizens of the country. These concerns were flagged during the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament, headed by Congress Lok Sabha MP KC Venugopal, where UIDAI and officials of the ministry of IT and electronics were called to depose before it on the issue of "Functioning of Unique Identification Authority of India”. The Hindu reports that people aware of the development said some members mentioned that every country is serious about legal migration and it is the duty of the state to provide facilities only to its citizens. They further said that it should be ensured that Aadhaar is provided only to citizens and not to 'residents', which could also contain illegal immigrants.
Delhi Sultanate ruler Raziya Sultana and one of Jahangir's wives do not figure in the relevant timeline in the NCERT's class 8 social science textbook, although they were mentioned in the council's previous class 7 textbook (whose new version now ends before the Delhi Sultanate came into being), Maitri Porecha points out. Instead the class 8 book bears mention of Gondi queen Rani Durgavati, Maratha warrior-queen Tarabai and Awadh's Begum Hazrat Mahal. Michel Danino, who chaired the group that developed the book, claimed that “we would have liked to include more such influential women icons, however, at one point the question was that of space. We also have a mandate of reducing the syllabus.”
Meanwhile, the class 8 book's claims that Central Asian rulers invaded India out of iconoclastic drive and of Akbar's motives behind carrying out the Chittor massacre have also been contested, reports Basant Kumar Mohanty.
Three years ago, amid much fanfare and patriotic rhetoric, Madhya Pradesh’s BJP government proudly launched the MBBS course in Hindi – because nothing says progress like forcing future doctors to learn medicine in the “national language.” Yet, after all the pomp, not a single student has dared to write their exams in Hindi. A senior official from the Medical Science University, Jabalpur, revealed the unvarnished truth: almost all medical students prefer English, leaving Hindi stranded in the dustbin of impractical policies. Perhaps the students intuitively understood that when lives are at stake, clarity trumps nationalism. Or maybe they just refused to perform a linguistic circus for political theater.
Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, and PM Kisan, are among nine of the Modi government’s flagship schemes that the government has decided to keep outside the ambit of the ongoing appraisal process for central sector programmes, The Economic Times reports. Speaking to The Wire, a former secretary in the finance ministry has called this a move by the government to block doors to a professional socio-economic appraisal of schemes.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has announced that Scheduled Caste (SC) certificates obtained fraudulently by individuals from religions other than Hinduism, Buddhism, or Sikhism will be cancelled. He said strict action would follow in cases where reservation benefits, such as government jobs or electoral wins, were availed using such certificates. Speaking in the legislative council during a discussion on a ‘calling attention’ motion, Fadnavis said the state government was acting in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling dated 26 November 2024, which reaffirmed that SC reservations apply only to Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs.
A day after India expressed willingness to help restore what was described as filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s ancestral home in Bangladesh, Dhaka issued a rebuttal asserting that the house in question had no familial or historical connection with the Ray family. The clarification came after India’s Ministry of External Affairs offered to collaborate with Bangladesh on restoring the property, calling it a symbol of shared Bengali cultural heritage.
A spate of murders in Bihar – prominently in Patna, where a group of armed thugs shot dead a man inside a hospital yesterday and walked away unchallenged – has “not just left the state in shock but also prompted NDA allies like Chirag Paswan to remark publicly on the deterioration of law and order under Nitish [Kumar]”, JP Yadav notes. The events, occurring months before assembly elections are due, have also seen the ‘jungle raj’ tag originally used by Nitish to target the Rashtriya Janata Dal boomerang back to hit his government. Meanwhile, sample ADGP Kundan Krishnan's explanation for the spike in violent crime:
“Recently, a lot of murders have happened in the whole of Bihar. Most murders happen in the months of April, May and June. This continues until the rains come, as most farmers do not have work [till then].”
The folks at the BBC's India bureau tried to piece together what we know so far about the mysterious Russian woman and two of her daughters who were discovered living – ostensibly happily – a spartan life inside a Karnataka cave earlier this month.
When Jasprit Bumrah first arrived at his cricket academy aged 16, his fellow trainees were unsure if his bowling action was right or if he was throwing the ball. “I observed his action closely for three days,” his coach Kishore Trivedi recalled in this interview with Will Macpherson. “So many boys are changing their actions, so many coaches [are] trying to change them. But I gave my advice: don’t change.” Since then, Bumrah's action has earned him his spot among the greatest bowlers of all time. Macpherson spoke to Trivedi and others who observed or shared the field with the young Bumrah in a bid to “see how the world’s best bowler was made”.
Putting crores of voters through rigorous SIR to weed out ‘handful’ of undocumented immigrants ‘not good’: ex-CEC
“Throwing crores of voters” – an estimated 2.97 crore people are not named in the 2003 Bihar voter roll – into the “rigorous” exercise of a special intensive revision “just for identifying a handful of illegal immigrants” is not a good thing, said former chief election commissioner OP Rawat. Speaking to Sravasti Dasgupta, he pointed out that “you can identify them separately and you can do that continuously”, for which there are provisions in the law. Former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa also noted that this is probably the first time the EC has used the term SIR – Rawat said that the commission's use of ‘special’ suggests that its revision “[does] not conform to the template of the revision under the law but tinker[s] with certain elements”.
RSS tightens grip as BJP struggles to name President, Modi backers warn of party’s decline without him
The power equation between the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – its parent organisation – has undergone a complete turnaround in the past one year. The best example of the tussle between the current BJP leadership and the RSS is the party’s inability to elect a new national president so far. The fact that the world’s largest political party has not been able to find a suitable candidate despite the names of leaders close to Modi and Shah such as Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Manohar Lal Khattar doing the rounds as the potential contenders for the post since a long time, indicates that the Sangh, after a gap of 11 years, is finding its voice back.
Even as the impasse over the post of the party president has not ended, the RSS has continued to mount the pressure on the BJP. RSS Chief’s recent remarks on stepping aside at the age of 75 is now followed by frantic reactions from BJP leaders such as MP Nishikant Dubey, who recently told a news agency that he can see Modi at the helm for 15-20 years, if Modi is not the leader, the BJP won’t win even 150 seats and it is not Modi who needs the BJP but the BJP that needs him. The response of BJP leaders such as Dubey indicates that Bhagwat’s statement has resulted in creating ripples within the party. Subsequent organisational changes in the BJP have also indicated towards the growing say of the RSS in party matters.
Troubles persist year and a half after glacial lake flooding in Sikkim
Many Sikkim residents have become familiar with a piece of geographical jargon: ‘GLOF’. Standing for glacial lake outburst flooding, the term entered their lexicon after the events of October 2023, when the South Lhonak lake in the state's north breached its boundary and sent icy waters and silt running down the Teesta river, destroying a hydropower project, washing away roads and buildings, and damaging livelihoods. Among those impacted are drivers, river rafting entrepreneurs, sand dredgers, horticulturalists, pastoralists and people who had their establishments damaged by the flood, reports Vaishnavi Rathore.
The Long Cable
EC’s Special Intensive Revision move in Bihar violates Nehru and Patel’s enlightened views on citizenship
SN Sahu
On April 28, 1947, almost three months before India’s independence Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while speaking on the citizenship issue in the Constituent Assembly said, “It may be that a time may come soon when it will be the highest honour and privilege for anybody, whether he is a Ruler or anybody else, to be a free citizen of a free India and to be called by no other appellation or title.”
A day later Sardar Patel while replying to the discussion on the Interim Report on Fundamental Rights in the Constituent Assembly on April 29, 1947 very thoughtfully said, “It is important to remember that the provision about citizenship will be scrutinised all over the world. They are watching what we are doing…..Therefore, our general preface or the general right of citizenship under these fundamental rights should be so broad-based that any one who reads our laws cannot take any other view than that we have taken an enlightened modern civilised view.”
Nehru’s words that the highest honour and privilege for any body flowing from she or he being a citizen of India or Patel’s utterances that our right of citizenship should be anchored in an enlightened modern civilized view got reflected in article 10 of the Constitution dealing with continuance of the rights of citizenship. It states, “Every person who is or is deemed to be a citizen of India under any of the foregoing provisions of this Part shall, subject to the provisions of any law that may be made by Parliament, continue to be such citizen”.
SIR in Bihar violates enlightened views on citizenship law
Those articulations of Nehru and Patel in 1947 and the continuance of citizenship of every person of India who is or is deemed to be citizen of India under Article 10 assume enormous relevance in 2025 in the context of Special Intensive Revision(SIR) of electoral rolls launched by the Election Commission of India(ECI) on 25th June. Its order that those not included in the 2003 electoral roll of the State would have to provide documentary proof which, inter alia, would determine theirs and their parents’ status as citizens of India. Those unable to submit such evidence and other documents listed by the ECI could be referred to the Citizens’ Tribunal as suspected foreign nationals.
When the Supreme Court heard the petitions challenging SIR in Bihar on 10th of July and asked ECI why Aadhar card of people are not considered for the revision of electoral rolls in the State, it very shockingly replied that Aadhar card does not determine who is a citizen of India. To a further query of SC that ECI has no mandate to ascertain who is a citizen of India and it is the task of the Union Home Ministry to do so the ECI maintained a deafening silence. Now the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has raised questions over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar and said, "The scope of the SIR must be clearly defined and must be limited to electoral roll recorrection and inclusion. It should be explicitly communicated that the exercise is not related to citizenship verification, and any field instructions must reflect this distinction."
It called for "the presumption of inclusion", and said voters enrolled after the previous revision must not be required to reestablish their eligibility "unless specific and verifiable reasons are recorded" and called for a third party audit under the CAG to identify anomalies.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment, the TDP asserted that the prior inclusion of a person in electoral rolls creates a presumption of validity and any deletion must be preceded by a valid inquiry. "The burden of proof lies with the ERO or objector, not the voter, especially when the name exists in the official roll”, it asserted.
Those questions raised by TDP and often asked by civil society bodies after the SIR was launched in Bihar are anchored in the liberal and enlightened views of Patel on the citizenship issue and, as stated above, in article 10 of the Constitution mandating continuance of the rights of citizenship.
Those Indians who have voter ID cards issued by ECI are deemed to be citizens of India. Such citizens as per article 10 are entitled to have the rights of citizenship without any burden of proof thrust upon them to establish their identities as citizens of India.
Difficulties of submitting birth certificates flagged in Constituent Assembly
The insistence of ECI that voter id cards are not valid for those registered as voters after 2003 in Bihar goes against the Constitution guaranteeing continuance of rights of citizenship and against the liberal and enlightened views of Sardar Patel.
On August 11, 1949 a distinguished member of the Constituent Assembly K T Shah while participating in the discussion on several articles of the draft Constitution including that of 5-C (corresponding to Article 10 of the Constitution) flagged the point that it would be difficult for people to submit birth certificates of theirs and their parents for proving their citizenship status in view of the poor record of the country in that respect. He said, “…especially in view of our country’s very poor registration system, where the, evidence of birth and death is not easy to obtain, I am afraid that the extension in this manner to inheritance of citizenship is bound to create difficulties especially in view of the circumstances that led to the partition of this country, and the aftermath of terror and migration that has followed that partition”.
Those utterances are resonating in the context of the deepening trouble people are facing on account of ECI’s order to voters registered in Bihar after 2003 to produce theirs and their parents’ birth certificates to enlist them in the electoral roll of the State being prepared de novo under SIR. The ECI order to do so is contrary to the Constitution and aforementioned vision of Sardar Patel. It must reverse its order to make it in tune with the liberal and enlightened views sustaining citizenship laws.
(SN Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to former President KR Narayanan.)
Reportedly
The Modi government has stepped back from wanting to be seen in the forefront of going after Justice Verma, after he has filed a petition in the top court. Events in Justice Verma’s outhouse created a sensation when wads of currency notes were found by the police, who were there to put out a fire that had broken out. Now, the Law minister Arjun Meghwal has said that the move to remove the Allahabad High Court judge “was not related to the government but with Parliament as a whole and members of Parliament.” A sitting Allahabad High Court judge Yashwant Varma approaching the Supreme Court is anyway without precedent. Verma has also sought to quash the recommendation made by former Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna to initiate impeachment proceedings, alleging denial of a fair hearing and overreach by the judiciary into legislative powers. In his writ petition filed before the apex court, Justice Varma contended that the in-house panel acted in a “pre-determined manner” and denied him a fair opportunity to defend himself. The Modi government is under fire for its anxiety to be running with the Justice Verma matter, while letting Justice Yadav, who made a whole lot of insulting and Islamophobic remarks at a VHP event, get away scot-free.
Pen vs sword
Deep dive
One year and two days ago student activist Abu Sayed was killed in Rangpur, Bangladesh. His death became an inflexion point for the protests against Sheikh Hasina's regime, which went on to spur her deposition. The authorities had claimed that Sayed was killed by protesters, but the Bangladesh-based Drik Picture Library and the Britain-based Forensic Architecture's analysis points instead “to deliberate police actions and contradicting claims of protester violence”.
Prime number: 238 killed, 9,467 shot
In the last eight or so years the Uttar Pradesh police have shot dead 238 people in ‘encounters’ where the deceased allegedly fired at the police, and shot 9,467 others in the leg, it announced yesterday.Opeds you don’t want to miss
No one is responsible for where they are born or for creating documentation of the date and place of their or their parents' birth. That responsibility lies with the relevant authority under law. The Election Commission is not that authority and as “broad [as] the EC's shoulders are, they may not be strong enough to carry someone else’s burden”, writes former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa in reference to the ongoing Bihar SIR.
Richard Eaton, doyen of early modern South Asian history, writes that “the profound legacies of the Mughal Empire, forged through a remarkable fusion of Persian and Sanskrit worlds, are now under siege from a mythical vision of India’s past”.
RSS and BJP leader Ram Madhav's new book The New World contains various implicit – and unprecedented – criticisms of the Modi government's ten-year rule. Christophe Jaffrelot writes that “if it turns out that in Modi’s India, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, Madhav’s book may be paving the way for the post-Modi era – a highly anticipated milestone for the RSS.”
“We must accept that in this matter, we are virtually alone at the moment, and it would be difficult to face this humongous task without friends and adequate resources for our armed forces,” writes Gurbachan Jagat in a candid piece about how further provocation is “more likely in Kashmir and in India.” What would happen if the “next Pahalgam occurs”, he asks.
Andrew Cuomo, who failed against Zohran Mamdani to get the Democratic nomination for the election of the Mayor of New York, is still fighting the mayoral election as an independent. He has been raising millions for his campaign. But they are fighting against “deep demographic and political shifts in New York”, writes Errol Lewis, which won’t be stopped by a few million dollars worth of ads.” He further writes: “In a town where all politics is tribal, Mamdani has emerged as a leader of New York’s South Asian community, 600,000 strong, which is now following its Irish, Italian, Jewish, Black, and Latino predecessors in demanding a seat at the table inside City Hall.”
“This is a complex, if not a delicate, issue. On the one side are human beings and, on the other, dogs.” T M Krishna writes on the vexed problem of community dogs, after the Supreme Court said: “if you are so interested in feeding them, feed them at home.” He admits that many people have been attacked by these dogs, but there are reasons behind that. “On most occasions, these attacks are a result of continuous abuse of these dogs which includes stoning them for fun and beating them with sticks.”
Listen up
The Hindu's aviation reporter Jagriti Chandra speaks with Anupama Chandrasekaran about the findings of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau's preliminary report into the Air India flight 171 crash, specifically what seems to have occurred in the flight's final seconds and whether the deadly crash may have been caused by a technical problem or a human problem.
Watch out
Ghazala Wahab's new book The Hindi Heartland has hit the stands. She talks about its main argument with The Wire's editor Seema Chishti, making a “case for the region’s innate pluralism, diversity and culture that unites more than it divides. She tracks its history, culture and politics and discusses her hopes for the region being able to rejuvenate itself and break free of its divisive history of ‘about 200 years’ to rediscover its roots”.
Over and out
Decades of innovation by farmers and agricultural technologists along with an increase in urban living and disposable incomes have contributed to India's success in the french fries market, finds Priti Gupta. Still, challenges remain, including a lack of modern cold storage and transportation facilities.
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