A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
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Snapshot of the day
November 12, 2026
Anirudh S.K., Kalrav Joshi
“I have a request for the media,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a gathering of journalists in Delhi today. “Communication is the strongest tool in the 21st century and we need to tell the ‘India story’ to the world.” Amen. Well, today’s ‘India story’ is that the Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng, whose pointed (and unrequited) question to Modi earlier this year in Oslo again spotlit his aversion to the press, has said that his government cancelled her Indian visa just before she was to board her flight to Hyderabad for the Congress’s Bharat Summit. Though she was granted political clearance and subsequently a visa to speak about the freedom and future of the media at the event, she was informed at the eleventh hour on Wednesday that her visa’s been cancelled, Lyng said.
But perhaps this is not the India story that the prime minister wants the world to hear. Actually, he was pretty clear that it isn’t: “I request the Indian media to work on the success stories of the country,” he told the gathering in Delhi today. “A lot of such work is already being done.” Allowing Lyng to ask questions in India could have allowed the government to project confidence but maybe its press relations is fated to remain a work in progress for some more time.
As it happens, Lyng was not the only foreign guest of the Bharat Summit to be ultimately denied an opportunity to visit. Over 110 of the 315 speakers whom the external affairs ministry had cleared for the event slated to start Friday ended up being refused entry to India. A source close to the summit’s organisers told The Wire that the government’s FAQs on hosting such events mention only two circumstances under which Indian embassies are required to refer cases to the external or home affairs ministries: when participants hail from China, Pakistan or Sudan, and if the foreigners concerned must visit Jammu and Kashmir or parts of the northeast.
Inventor-activist Sonam Wangchuk says he has virtually been placed under house arrest, with security personnel and vehicles surrounding his residence in Leh for over a day now. He was picked up by police – some of whom wore hoodies and masks but not their nameplates, he says – from his protest site yesterday. Wangchuk’s Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance had announced protests against hill development council polls being scheduled in the dead of winter; against the abrupt halt in talks with the Union government over constitutional safeguards; and against the lack of a final report into the deadly September 2025 violence in Leh. The authorities have responded by banning protests in the run-up to the elections.
Asaduddin Owaisi and Chandrashekhar Azad have announced an alliance between their Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections – this is the first outwardly declared front comprising a third one other than the NDA and the INDIA bloc. But Azad said the alliance would be more than just some third front: it is a coalition for social change, he asserted. “As more people from the marginalised, deprived, oppressed, exploited, and downtrodden sections join, this front will become an even more formidable force.” The BJP and CM Adityanath’s principal opponent, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, has welcomed the alliance. “People who used to fall for emotional slogans and deception and vote for communal forces will no longer turn to them … This will cost the BJP another 2–3% of the vote,” he claimed.
For the BJP, the political challenge is that even a relatively small shift in votes could matter in a tightly contested election, particularly if the alliance draws support from Dalit, Muslim and other marginalised communities.
A day after militants opened fire at CRPF jawans in Kashmir’s Kulgam, injuring three of them, the dead bodies of two special police officers were recovered from the upper reaches of the Chenab valley in Kishtwar and contained bullet wounds, reports Peerzada Ashiq. They went missing while accompanying soldiers in the area, where one of the police’s temporary operating bases set up in view of increased militant activity was located. The authorities have not issued a formal statement or confirmed the involvement of militants in the incident.
Air pollutant measurements around Diwali did not really go missing from its online portals but were instead excluded from calculations because they were out of range, the Central Pollution Control Board has claimed. It also sought to justify capping AQI readings at 500 on the grounds that any figure above that would fall within the ‘severe’ category anyway and point to the same health effects. Aathira Perinchery explains all that is wrong with the CPCB’s arguments.
Among the measures Delhi’s government takes when the air turns toxic is halting construction activities. Experts point out that this is not a long-term solution, but there is no end in sight to this practice for now, and in the meantime the city’s construction workers are suffering. No work means no pay, which for some labourers in turn means no meals
