Nuclear Bill Pushed Through Lok Sabha; Navlakha Bail Conditions Relaxed; From Macaulay to Modi: When Culture Becomes a Weapon, 'Homebound' Enters Oscar 2026 Race
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December 17, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
The Modi government’s controversial draft nuclear law was pushed through the Lok Sabha this evening. During the brief debate, the Opposition had questioned many of the provisions of the Sustainable Harnessing of Atomic Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill – especially the free pass given to nuclear suppliers in the event of an accident – and demanded that the draft be sent to a parliamentary standing committee for review.
The Opposition also intends to oppose the passage of the new law which remodels the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act.
Human rights defender Gautam Navlakha was allowed by the Bombay high court on Wednesday to return from Mumbai – to which he was confined as part of his pre-trial bail conditions in the Elgar Parishad case – to his home city of Delhi. On Tuesday the bench had said that at his age of 73 “a person … would be lost if he lives away from his family”. Navlakha had petitioned the court saying he was unable to afford living in Mumbai.
One of Navlakha’s co-accused, the former Delhi University English professor Hany Babu M.T., was also barred from leaving the Mumbai area when he was granted bail in the case earlier this month; he is now attempting to rebuild his life from the city unfamiliar to him. One way he wants to do this is by expanding on his studies begun during his over five-year stint in (pre-trial) jail, whose brutalities and peculiarities – including a close shave with an avoidable brain infection – he shared with Sukanya Shantha.
Gaurav and Saurabh Luthra, co-owners of the Birch by Romeo Lane nightclub, were brought to Goa from Delhi on Wednesday after being deported from Thailand in connection with the December 6 fire incident that killed 25 persons. According to the officials, they will be interrogated by the
