Faced With Unflattering Realities, Officials Resort to Census Chicanery; SEBI Blows Lid off Jeweller's Rs 15 Lakh Crore ‘Scam’; Year After Expulsion, Elderly Assamese Woman Awaits Return in Dhaka
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Snapshot of the day
June 4, 2026
Anirudh S.K.
Faced with unflattering ground realities such as prevalent open defecation and the continuing use of low-quality fuel, officials are asking census enumerators not to record data that could embarrass the government, The Hindu‘s Vijaita Singh reports. She cites two accounts from enumerators in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh and they are worth reading as quoted:
“In the mobile app, if we enter that a household has a tin roof, we are asked by our superiors to change it to concrete. Are we supposed to lie? Similarly, if the house does not have a toilet and occupants are defecating in the open, we are told to check if there is a toilet nearby, even that of a neighbour or a relative, which they may be using occasionally or even a public urinal. Then the entry can be changed from ‘open defecation’ to having access to a toilet. […]
“Being government officials, we have been asked not to select options that may show the government in a poor light.”
Official comms too indicate that census personnel – currently carrying out the first, house-listing phase of the exercise – are being nudged to ‘revisit’ data points that point to ‘discrepancies’ with government data. Singh obtained a letter showing that Rajasthan’s census operations director asked district functionaries to ‘verify’ enumerated data in cases where most households were found to practice open defecation; where the use of wood, dung cakes, crop residue and kerosene as fuel was recorded apparently even when homes have LPG connections; and where houses were not found to draw tap water from treated sources.
As bad as such data doctoring can be, perhaps we ought not to be surprised. Almost three years ago now the Modi government suspended K.S. James as director of the International Institute for Population Sciences after expressing displeasure with data that the fifth National Family Health Survey conducted under his leadership had produced. Among other things, that survey had indicated India was certainly not open defecation-free despite the government’s claims that it is so on account of Swachh Bharat, and that over 40% of households did not have clean cooking fuel, casting a shadow over the PM Ujjwala scheme. Just last month the sixth round of the survey conspicuously dropped a few indicators, including clean cooking fuel access.
Opening the lid off one of the largest cases of alleged financial misrepresentation in recent corporate history, SEBI has said that jeweller Rajesh Exports prima facie inflated revenue amounting to some Rs 15.15 lakh crore, or 99.8% of its revenues from its subsidiaries between FY2020-21 and FY2024-25. The market regulator has banned the company’s chairman Rajesh Mehta from trading in the company’s stocks until further notice. Rajesh Exports has denied the allegations.
The firm’s shares hit their daily lower limit of 5% in the report’s wake; LIC, which holds a 10.8% stake in the company, saw its shares decline by 1% too. But the slide in share prices is only the tip of the iceberg. The central concern goes deeper: how did the company manage to allegedly consistently report such extraordinary revenues year after year with so little independent verification? Vibes of India‘s Deepal Trivedi has an analysis here.
Meanwhile, SEBI recently carried out search-and-seizure operations in Kolkata and nearby locations as part of an investigation into alleged insider trading linked to IndusInd Bank, covering residential and commercial premises linked with Samir Agarwal, a former zonal head at the bank, as well as members of his family. The investigation follows an internal vigilance inquiry initiated after a whistleblower complaint. As Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta had reported earlier this year, the inquiry found that Agarwal allegedly traded in shares of companies that were clients of the bank using information obtained through his role – but that IndusInd did not tell SEBI about it.
Nearly five months
