India to Send Junior Delegation for Khamenei Funeral; Ram Temple Theft Takes Toll on BJP; Arunachal Tribe Warns of Chinese Land Grab; Modi Ridiculed for 'AI-Generated' Award
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Snapshot of the day
June 29, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Not only will Prime Minister Narendra Modi not attend the state funeral of Iran’s assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later this week but he has decided India will be represented by one of its junior foreign ministers, Pabitra Margherita, and the governor of Bihar, Lt Gen (retd) Ata Hasnain Khan. This is in contrast to the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sent his foreign minister, Narasimha Rao, and represents the Modi government’s conscious attempt to restrict contacts with Iran to the bare minimum. The government sent President Droupadi Murmu for the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 2022. And as recently as 2024, it sent the Vice President to attend the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s President who died in a helicopter crash.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Seychelles, the visiting and host governments did not discuss their currently shelved plan to jointly develop military infrastructure on Assumption Island, foreign secretary Vikram Misri said, adding that if the island nation expressed interest in resuming it, New Delhi would be all ears. Though the two sides had signed an agreement over the Assumption Island plan in 2015, the Seychelles revised it three years later amid domestic pushback. Seychellois President Patrick Herminie also awarded Modi the newly minted ‘Guardian of the Blue Horizon’ award – which that nation’s cabinet approved only three days prior – whose citation it turns out Victoria enlisted ChatGPT to produce, replete with spelling mistakes. This is the second time in four months that a foreign government has invented an award in order to satiate the Indian PM’s appetite for such ‘recognition’. In February, Israel ‘honoured’ him with a newly created ‘Knesset Medal’. Not surprisingly, Modi is being mocked on social media.
Modi also gave the Seychelles a number of ambulances – but, as Mohammed Zubair has pointed out, perhaps they may have been more useful closer to home.
News reports citing “sources” say that the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh Police “questioned” Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust’s general secretary and senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary Champat Rai on Monday, recording his statement as the crisis appeared to deepen for the Sangh. The developments come even as revelations continue to emerge from Ayodhya about how the Vishva Hindu Parishad allegedly expanded its control over local temples and mathas, institutionalising successions and appointments of VHP-compliant mahants while removing those considered non-compliant.
The alleged Ram Temple donation embezzlement has certainly raised serious questions about the Sangh Parivar’s moral credibility and could carry political ramifications ahead of the Uttar Pradesh 2027 Assembly elections. Anil
