First BJP, Now Supreme Court Shows Disregard for Hindu Lungs; Why 'Urban Naxals' are Dangerous; US Says India Is Reducing Russian Oil Purchases

Justice who heads Ladakh commission of inquiry into death of civilians gave clean chit to UP police in Vikas Dubey encounter case;

Oct 17, 2025

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Snapshot of the day

October 17, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

The BJP may not care for the lungs of Hindus (or non-Hindus) but the Supreme Court’s order permitting the limited bursting of ‘green’ crackers in Delhi where the air quality index is already awful makes scarce sense, as Aathira Perinchery reports. In theory, ‘green’ crackers emit at least 30% less pollutants than regular crackers, but this “marginal gain will be entirely negated by the sheer volume of firecrackers being burst”, says expeert Sunil Dahiya. The government could implement technologies like cloud-seeding – whose effectiveness is not adequately studied – to improve the air, but Delhi would have been much better off with the ban on crackers remaining in place. While the court has allowed bursting crackers only during limited hours, the government’s ability —not to speak of willingness – to enforce this is in question. Plus, it is unclear what changed the mind of the court. Just just last year it had observed that “no religion encourages any activity that creates pollution” and impinges on citizens’ right to health.

The Modi government has announced a judicial inquiry into the killing of four civilians in police firing in Leh on September 24 when peaceful protests demanding autonomy for Ladakh turned violent. It will be led by former Supreme Court Justice BS Chauhan.

The Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance umbrella groups have been demanding a judicial probe into the violence as a precondition for resuming informal talks with the home ministry. The government has not only accepted the demand but chosen the best man for the job. The last commission of inquiry Chauhan headed was into the 2020 encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey by Yogi Adityanath’s police in Uttar Pradesh—as blatant a case of a fake encounter as there has ever been—where he concluded that ....drumroll.... the killing was lawful.

Of course, the Union home ministry will find it difficult to come up with a workaround for the other demands of Ladakhi groups: apart from the release of people detained and arrested following the incident – including Sonam Wangchuk – they want fair compensation for those killed and injured, as well as talks exclusively focussed on their demand for statehood and Ladakh’s inclusion in the Constitution’s sixth schedule.

New Delhi has said that the three Bangladeshi nationals who were killed in Tripura on Wednesday had crossed the border to steal cattle, following which they “attacked and injured local villagers with iron dahs and knives, and killed one villager”. The incident, said external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal in India’s now-characteristic brusque tone towards Bangladesh, shows it is incumbent upon Dhaka to “undertake necessary measures to uphold the sanctity of the International Boundary and support the construction of fencing where needed”. Earlier today, Bangladesh’s foreign affairs ministry had condemned the incident, calling it a “grave violation of human rights and the rule of law” while calling on India to investigate the incident and “take sincere efforts to stop [the] reoccurrence of such inhumane acts”.

Hot on the heels of the Taliban foreign minister’s visit to Delhi, India has waded into the standoff between Pakistan and Afghanistan with the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson accusing Islamabad of hosting terrorist organisations and sponsoring terrorist activities and calling it “an old practice of Pakistan to blame its neighbours for its own internal failures”.

The pre-test for the first phase of the upcoming and long-delayed census will be held next month, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner has announced. With only the house-listing and housing element of the census – as opposed to its population enumeration component – being tested, it is implied that a methodology for enumerating caste has not yet been finalised, notes Vijaita Singh.

Even as the Indian government “tiptoes around Trump’s latest claims on Russian oil purchases,” as The New York Times notes, Washington appears to be signaling a thaw in trade and energy ties with New Delhi is in the offing prompted by Modi giving in to Trump’s ‘crude’ pressure. A White House official told Reuters on Thursday that the United States and India have held productive trade talks, and that Indian refiners are already cutting Russian oil imports by as much as 50%. Indian officials, however, say that “the cut was not visible yet, though it could be reflected in import numbers for December or January. Refiners had already placed orders for November loading that included some cargoes for December arrival as well.”

Supriya Kumar travelled to Tirupur for a story on the impact of Trump’s tariffs and found that many of the garment factories in this Tamil Nadu textile centre “have ground to a halt, putting thousands out of work.”

Responding to the UK’s decision to sanction India’s Nayara Energy among other Russia-owned or -linked entities, the external affairs ministry yesterday reiterated its stance that India “does not subscribe to any unilateral sanctions” that affect third countries. New Delhi “considers the provision of energy security a responsibility of paramount importance to meet the basic needs of its citizens”, while Indian companies “source energy supplies from around the world while taking overall market conditions into account”. Russia’s Rosneft owns a 49.13% stake in Nayara, which operates one of India’s largest oil refineries in Gujarat’s Vadinar.

The Election Commission of India has denied that there has been a disproportionate exclusion of Muslims in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar and said that the petitioners “communal approach is to be deprecated”.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah hit back at Infosys founders-owners N.R. Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty for refusing to participate in the ongoing caste census, clarifying that the exercise was not limited to backward communities. “Just because they’re Infosys, do they know it all?” Siddaramaiah asked reporters. “That is left to them. This is not a backward classes survey. If they haven’t understood, what can I do? We have said it 20 times—this is a survey of the entire population,” he added.

Officials from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) who visited the Murthys’ home in Bengaluru were reportedly turned away, with Sudha Murty signing a self-declaration letter refusing to provide information under the pro forma issued by the Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission for the Social and Educational Survey 2025. In Kannada, Murty is said to have written: “We do not belong to any backward community. Hence, we will not participate in a government-conducted survey meant for such groups.”

Backward Classes Welfare Minister Shivaraj Tangadagi criticised the couple’s decision, remarking, “This shows their lack of concern for the welfare of backward classes.” By refusing to participate in the survey, “they may not violate the law, but they demonstrate a moral failure: the absence of constitutional morality and a disregard for the collective pursuit of social justice,” says The News Minute.

Even as Assam grapples with the untimely death of its beloved singer Zubeen Garg, his songs continue to echo across the state – from homes to tea stalls – keeping his spirit alive. His cremation site has turned into a shrine where fans gather daily to light candles and sing his melodies, reports Sourav Roy Barman. But the BJP state’s response to public emotion has turned harsh and horrifying. Fans who poured into the streets demanding justice now face arrest and detention – with one even charged under the draconian National Security Act (NSA). Others were released only after being forced to delete social media posts mourning or questioning the circumstances of his death.

Amid the mourning, Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi visited Zubeen’s family in Kahilipara, urging a full and transparent probe into the circumstances of his death in Singapore. “The sooner the truth comes out, the better, as the family needs closure,” Gandhi said, holding the Assam government responsible for ensuring transparency and justice.

The Modi government at the Centre has allowed Adani Power’s Godda Power Plant in Jharkhand – which supplies electricity exclusively to Bangladesh – to connect with the Indian electricity grid, reports The Indian Express. According to the report, the Ministry of Power has authorised Adani Power to lay an overhead transmission line that will link the Godda plant with the Indian grid through a Line-In Line-Out (LILO) connection of the Kahalgaon–Maithon B 400 kV line. The line will pass through 56 villages in the Godda district. To facilitate this, the Centre has given Adani Power the same powers as a “telegraph authority” under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. This allows the company from time to time to place and maintain a telegraph line under, over, along or across, and posts in or upon, any immovable property. The report also said that changes were brought in to grant approval in quick succession since Adani had pitched for the Godda plant to cater to the Indian market on August 6, 2024.

The BJP government in Gujarat undertook a major cabinet reshuffle on Friday, elevating state Home Minister Harsh Sanghavi to the post of Deputy Chief Minister and inducting Rivaba Jadeja – cricketer Ravindra Jadeja’s wife – as a minister. Governor Acharya Devvrat administered the oath to 26 ministers, including Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel. Each leader took the oath with a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in hand – a gesture widely seen as a strong assertion of the government’s ideological stance. The reshuffle reflects a calculated blend of caste balance, political strategy, and fresh optics. Nineteen new faces have been brought in, while several senior and Congress-origin ministers have been dropped. The new cabinet composition underscores social representation, featuring seven Patidars, eight OBCs, three Scheduled Castes, four Scheduled Tribes and three women.

The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre, CBI and others after registering a suo motu case relating to digital arrest scams resulting in defrauding senior citizens by fraudsters of their life savings. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi asked Attorney General R Ventataramani to assist the court, having regard to the manner in which such crimes were being committed across the country. The court also took a stern view of the fraudulent use of court’s authorities by the scamsters, striking at the very foundation of the public trust in the judicial system besides the rule of law.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said that 210 Maoists, including a central committee member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), surrendered in Jagdalpur on Friday. Among those who surrendered were four members of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, 21 from the divisional committee and 61 from area committees of the CPI(M). This came a day after union home minister Amit Shah announced that 258 persons associated with the Maoist movement had surrendered in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra between Wednesday and Thursday.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Katni district, a Dalit man has alleged he was assaulted by the local sarpanch and his aides for opposing illegal sand mining.

Earlier this week, we reported on the extraordinary lengths to which the Modi government has gone to ensure that Justice Atul Sreedharan—a senior judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court—has no say in the selection of judges. This clip from a recent hearing of his gives us an indication of what sort of judge he is. Justice Sreedharan pulls up the superintendent of police, Damoh, for his failure to register a proper case against the men who humiliated an OBC man on the premises of a temple.

Looks like Modi’s propaganda anthem “Modi Hai To Mumkin Hai” is hitting the wrong note – 101K dislikes and counting (amounting to 88% of all responses) show even the hype cannot escape a reality check.

India’s steel industry hit by a shortage of met coke in the first half 2025

India’s steel industry – once touted as a pillar of the Modi government’s “Make in India” drive – is now feeling the heat of its own policy missteps. In the first half of 2025, domestic producers managed to meet barely half of the country’s metallurgical coke (met coke) demand. Between January and June, Indian mills required about 3.09 million metric tons of met coke, yet domestic suppliers could produce only 1.5 million tons, according to internal government data reviewed by Reuters.

Despite the clear shortfall, the government doubled down on import curbs first imposed in January 2025 – restrictions aimed at boosting local production but which have instead strangled supply chains. In June, it tightened the noose further by introducing country-specific quotas and capping total imports at 1.4 million tons for the second half of the year.

California governor vetoes Bill shielding Sikh Americans from Indian-linked threats

California governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to veto SB 509 has drawn sharp criticism from Sikh American advocates, who say the move undermines efforts to protect diaspora communities from foreign intimidation and violence. The bipartisan bill sought to train local police to identify and respond to transnational repression – including threats allegedly linked to Indian government efforts to target Khalistan activists abroad. But Newsom, in his veto letter earlier this week, claimed the Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) already provides sufficient training and coordination to handle such threats.

The Sikh Coalition, which championed the bill, called the veto a setback and expressed “deep disappointment,” noting that it has not been given access to the training materials Newsom cited. “We’re engaging Cal OES to determine whether what exists is actually meaningful protection – or just bureaucratic lip service,” the group said. Meanwhile, some Hindu American organisations opposed SB 509, arguing it “would unfairly target Hindu and Indian Americans”.

In a first, court rules forest rights can be revoked — a win for Adani in Hasdeo

Chhattisgarh’s high court has dismissed a petition challenging the revocation of three community forest rights titles issued in parts of the Hasdeo forest where an Adani-owned entity is operating two coal mines. The titles were granted to villagers in 2013 even though the diversion of the land for mining purposes had been approved the year prior. A district-level committee in 2016 cancelled these titles saying they had been issued erroneously, which the petitioners in the case challenged. The high court earlier this month ruled that the titles were indeed ‘mistakenly’ granted and that the revocation was a ‘rectification’ of the same. Its decision is important, notes Abhinay Lakshman, because this is the first time that the question of whether forest rights under the 2006 Forest Rights Act can be cancelled or revoked – a grey area in the law – has been addressed.

The Long Cable

Why “Urban Naxals” are Dangerous

Badri Raina

Well, for a start, they insist that India achieved independence and became a sovereign state in 1947, not in 2014. What could be more subversive?

They believe that the Mughals were one warring group among many others of the time, who made India and Indians of all hues their own–as soldiers, administrators, artists, even blood relations–rather than expropriate Bharat’s wealth to furnish growth in some other land. They lived, built, died in India, generation after generation.

How can this be true?

“Urban Naxals” peddle the notion that prior to the coming of the British and the beginning of the “drain of wealth” from Bharat, India’s Gross Domestic Product comprised a quarter of global wealth, and that colonial exploitation and expropriation began after the British East India Company acquired the Diwani Right to levy and collect taxes from us after winning the battle of Plassey in 1757.

What could be a more treacherous exoneration of the cruelties of Muslim rule?

They hold that our first all-India national struggle against enslavement by a foreign power was the one that Indians across all religions, castes, gender divides, language affiliations and class distinctions waged against the British from 1857 all the way up to 1947, although some of our regional rulers, they rub in, had indeed taken on British forces in the 18th century as well (Tipu Sultan in Mysore).

Once again a view calculated to excuse the depredations wrought here by the Sultans and the Mughals.

Thus, perniciously, “urban Naxals” dub sporadic fights against the Mughals not as “national” upheavals but limited skirmishes in which many Hindu soldiers and Hindu generals fought on either side.

“Urban Naxals” are particularly dangerous because they propagate that those who did not support the alleged anti-colonial freedom movement against the British, rather abetted it, have no claim to lecture Indians on patriotism—a contrivance to weaken our assault on the liberals and Gandhians.

As is their view that real “Indianness” does not reside in any single denominational identity but in the supposedly time-tested, cohesive living of a vast spectrum of diverse cultures and more than one race (the Dravidian, the Aryan, etc). Such a notion is anathema to our nationalist conviction that India is in “essence” a “Hindu Rashtra”.

Following from that, they push the perfidious thesis that the Republic as wrought by the Indian Constitution supersedes civilisational constructions of identity, and furnishes the only valid definition of citizenship and of rights and obligations thereof;

and that these rights and obligations must be validated and protected by laws “fairly” enacted by “fairly” elected legislatures rather than by the diktats of Dharam Gurus, or Godmen and Godwomen of sundry self-appointed vintage.

Pray, how is Bharat to be Vishvaguru if Godmen and Godwomen are thus derided?

“Urban Naxals” , corrupted by wanton Western liberalism, believe that all branches of government—the legislature, the judiciary, the executive—must be co-eval, and that no leader, however popular, must be accorded the privilege to co-opt state institutions and agencies, nor appropriate the fourth estate to her/ his own “undemocratic” and “unlawful” purposes; and that all state institutions, including the military must remain answerable to “we the people”, and at all times be accountable to the rule of law.

Most heinously, “urban Naxals” point to allegedly relevant articles in the Directive Principles of State Policy which state that all resources belong to the people, that inequalities of income must be reduced to a minimum, that wealth must not be allowed to be accumilated to forge monopolies, (Articles 38,-43); that recourse to the provisions of the Directive Principles must not be selective, picking a provision that may suit the ideological fancy of some dominant section of the polity but ignoring others that seek to further values that seem subversive to “majoritarian” (their word) fancies.

“Urban Naxals” most perniciously wish to turn educational materials, institutions, pedagogies into tool kits calculated to enhance what they call free and critical thinking, such as is, in their distorted opinion, enshrined in the provisions of the Constitution, rather than mass producing, they calumniate, unquestioning foot-soldiers for “nationalist” purposes.

Even more criminally, “urban Naxals” insist that the right to peaceful assembly and mass protest against constitutional “transgressions”, “usurpation” of people’s rights, executive “excesses”, violation of “human rights”, “sectarian” applications of law, official corruption, citizen “surveillance”, “fraudulent” data etc. must remain an ineluctable feature of democracy at all times, barring episodes of external aggression etc.

They thus hold that such people’s rights must be lawfully distinguished from what they demean as “vigilante” activism and forms of “vigilante” justice so indispensable for aiding the exertions of the state to keep the polity in proper nationalist check.

And worst of all, it is the sacreligious opinion of the “Urban Naxals” that religious faith and observance must remain strictly private matters, as if the enforcement of morality and the cementing of the collective warrior spirit could be entrusted only to a secular constitution and to educational institutions, however rigorous in high-minded introspections and evaluations.

In short, these “Urban Naxals” spell disaster for a land which for millenia has taught the virtues of obedience to and compliance with the edicts of realised souls whose truths remain far too sui generis to require either a constitution or a democratic order of things for certification.

Thus we say, have at them if you be a true Bharatiya.

Reportedly

Justice DY Chandrachud, former Chief Justice of India, has been giving a spate of interviews since retiring and saying many controversial things but the right-wing has latched on to one of his claims in particular – that Umar Khalid and his lawyers are themselves to blame for delaying his bail hearing at the Supreme Court. Oishani Bhattacharya takes up his claim that Khalid’s lawyers sought seven adjournments and finds that Chandrachud was not being entirely truthful.

Drawn and quartered

Deep dive

Four scholars led a media literacy experiment in partnership with the Bihar government involving some 13,500 students across 583 villages. Although the experiment was mostly based on health misinformation, Sumitra Badrinathan writes that “students became better at discerning political news also”, while their parents too made gains in identifying false news. Their findings also point to gender differences, with boys being “way more likely to report intentions to engage in [misinformation] countermeasures, while there was no effect on girls”. She has distilled their findings in an X thread – and their full paper is available here.

`Prime number: 40.8%`

That proportion of medical students surveyed by the Federation of All India Medical Association reported suffering a toxic work environment. Less than three-quarters (71.5%) of respondents – mostly from government medical colleges – said they had adequate patient exposure, 69.2% found lab facilities adequate and 54.3% confirmed having regular teaching sessions.

Opeds you don’t want to miss

When women journalists – following their total exclusion from the Afghan foreign minister’s presser in Delhi – occupied the front rows during his next conference, it is not only one battle in the struggle for gender equality in the media that was won that day, but also a battle for media access, writes Suhasini Haidar, noting that this win occurs at a time when the press is being curtailed in many parts of the world including India. At the same time,
“Sadly, the much larger, and in some ways, more vital battle for millions of Afghan women to go to school, college, or work, and even gyms and public parks has not even begun to be fought.”
Delhi University professor Shobhit Mahajan writes of how his colleague was phoned by a caller offering to publish his research in a certified journal for a fee and even write the paper for him if paid extra. Peculiar as the offer was, it wasn’t surprising, Mahajan writes, given how India’s education policy mandates college teachers to publish research to get promoted even as faculty are hobbled by poor infrastructure and weighed down by administrative work. On top of this came the NEP’s fourth-year UG programme, which only adds to the resource constraint:
“In this state of affairs, it was only natural that some dodgy entrepreneur would step in and provide a useful service. Teachers paid a small fee to get the required number of papers, the organisation facilitating this made money and everyone was happy.”
“In just two years,” writes Andy Mukherjee, “India has gone from being the best-loved emerging market to the most sold, and now investors are bracing themselves for yet another quarter of disappointing corporate earnings.”
Ather Zia writes about the glut of state-driven political, cultural, and academic works “that aim not just to erase but also replace Kashmiri counter-memory of resistance histories.”
Roshan Gede looks at the question of whether it is time to have a two-tier system in Test Cricket, with the top six comprising Australia, South Africa, England, India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, and bottom six being Pakistan, West Indies, Bangladesh, Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe
Sanjay Hegde takes a critical look at the attempt in some quarters to present BN Rau as the real author of the Indian constitution rather than Dr BR Ambedkar:
“The campaign to elevate Rau and sideline Ambedkar is not driven by scholarship alone. It reflects a discomfort with the idea that a Dalit thinker could stand at the centre of the Republic’s founding moment. Recasting Rau as the Constitution’s principal author is an attempt to reclaim authorship for caste privilege. It tames Ambedkar’s radical legacy and turns a social revolution into a bureaucratic exercise.”
The death by suicide of a senior Scheduled Caste police officer in Haryana has “laid bare the burdens carried by those historically marginalised,” writes Akhil Yadav in a powerful piece on ‘caste denial’.
As a number of Indian states pass laws lengthening a day’s work beyond eight hours and as gig workers are forced to work well over ten hours a day to earn a living wage, it is worth recalling, as Bharat Bhushan writes, that “the time to live a fulfilling social and family life as civilised human beings must not be snatched away from employees by the state siding with the employers in the name of development”.

Listen up

What’s behind the recent proliferation of digital scams, including digital arrests and cases of sextortion, and what makes senior citizens especially at risk of falling for them? Sidharth Bhatia discusses the issue on The Wire Talks podcast with Ruby Dhingra, a former journalist and founder of the Saksham Senior organisation that works to digitally empower elderly persons.

Watch out

Delivering the annual Romanes Lecture at Oxford University, Bloomberg Weekend editor-at-large Mishal Husain explored the “symbolism of the election of Britain’s first Asian MP Dadabhai Naoroji in 1892”. Coincidentally, the prestigious Romanes lecture was launched in 1892 and the first speaker was William Gladstone.

Over and out

Kanchha Sherpa, described as the last surviving member of the mountaineering team that first climbed Mount Everest in 1953, “passed away peacefully at his residence” on Thursday, the Associated Press quoted the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association as saying. AP says he was “one of three Sherpas to reach the final camp before the summit” with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, but decided not to make the final ascent to the peak as his wife considered the climb too risky.
‘Grow hair quick’ schemes are usually scams that prey on men’s insecurity over their receding hairlines, inflicting not only monetary losses but also health problems on their victims. Naveen Kumar reports on the journeys of a number of Hyderabadi men whose anxieties made them victims of such scams – and painfully so – but who also emerged out of their experiences with a sense of acceptance and heightened confidence.
Ahead of his 34th birthday this weekend, Zohran Mamdani, the Indian-origin Democrat leading the race for New York City mayor and son of filmmaker Mira Nair, shared an amusing post downplaying his critics’ favourite jab – his age – into a comical campaign, even as the political climate intensifies in New York City, leading up to the mayoral polls.

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