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Snapshot of the day
September 21, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia, Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh S.K.
The Supreme Court-appointed SIT probing the alleged embezzlement of Ram Mandir donations has identified 105 distinct instances of suspected theft – 35 more than the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government’s first SIT found – and aims to file the charge sheet by September 25.
According to the Hindustan Times, the finding was based on an analysis of CCTV footage, witness statements and donation records. Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said it formed part of a status report submitted to the apex court on September 16. The first SIT, constituted by the Uttar Pradesh government on June 13 and led by Vijay Vishwas Pant, had recorded 70 instances in its interim report.
Meanwhile…
Following a days-long delay, Delhi’s election authorities have finally released the lists of people against whom notices are being generated under the special intensive revision, and their contents are nothing short of bizarre. Many officials at the very top levels of government are reportedly among those who have had to or must ‘prove’ their status as bona fide voters of India, including Election Commissioner Sukbhir Singh Sandhu, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, comptroller and auditor general K. Sanjay Murthy, foreign secretary Vikram Misri, SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey and Rajya Sabha MP-and-senior advocate Kapil Sibal. Then there is the list of former officials: ex-Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, ex-VP Jagdeep Dhankhar, retired Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur, ex-Union minister L.K. Advani and ex-Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra are just some of them.
But really, it is unlikely that any of these individuals – who have been flagged either for various ‘logical discrepancies’ in their data or because they are supposedly unmapped to a past benchmark voter roll – actually have to go out of their way to assert their claim to remain on the electoral list. Suruchi Kumari of The Hindu cites an unnamed senior election official as saying that prominent persons like the above will not need to physically go to hearing centres like the rest of us do. Their booth-level officers will pay them a visit and verify their records, the official said. That affirms the questions that were raised when election officials clarified that Delhi CM Gupta (and later others) have already been cleared and reserved for inclusion in the final rolls – even if the SIR sweeps up the haves and have-nots, will we all have an equally easy time proving our entitlements? VIP culture, it seems, is alive and unconstitutionally thriving.
Meanwhile, there are those people who are not
