Opposition Protests as Bill to Replace MNREGA is Passed in Minutes; Kashmir Police Seize Wire Correspondent’s Phone Without Providing Reason; Nitish Kumar’s Crass Act Exposes the Crassness of Society

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

December 18, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

Two days after it was introduced in the Lok Sabha as a big surprise, the House passed the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill repealing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Thursday afternoon within minutes via voice vote as opposition MPs descended into the well of the House and tore up papers in protest. Discussion on the Bill in the Lok Sabha continued past midnight on Thursday and members were given a mere three minutes to speak on the purported grounds that many of them were in line to speak about it. Speaker Om Birla denied requests that the Bill be sent to a standing committee for examination. Union agriculture and farmer welfare minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a press conference accused the opposition of, among other things, insulting Gandhi but did not speak about the Bill’s hurried introduction and passage. Sravasti Dasgupta has the details.

In other important news, police in Kashmir’s Budgam district arrived at journalist and The Wire’s long-time Jammu & Kashmir correspondent Jehangir Ali’s home on Wednesday evening and seized his phone “without providing a reason, let alone the details of any FIR, case, warrant or court order”. Neither did they provide him a hash value for his phone in spite of universally accepted precedent. The police returned his phone on Thursday evening after twenty-long hours. It is pertinent to note that the seizure of Ali’s phone comes against the backdrop of his reporting on allegations of nepotism and corruption in the Ratle hydro power project in Kishtwar. At the time of the police raid, Ali was in the midst of another investigative story on the project.

Meitei social activist Malem Thongam set off on her cycle from the Qutab Minar two months ago as part of a mission to spread the word of peace for her home state of Manipur. Having biked over 2,300 kilometres now, she is scheduled to enter the predominantly-Kuki Kangpokpi district on Friday, but the Committee on Tribal Unity organisation of Kuki peoples has threatened that it will not be responsible for ‘any untoward incidents’ that take place if she moves through Kangpokpi.

Clearly all is not yet well in Manipur even as 31 months have passed since the ethnic violence broke out there. In another incident of violence, gunshots were heard in an area near the border of the Bishnupur and Churachandpur (predominantly Meitei and Kuki respectively) on Tuesday, prompting a group of people who’d returned to their homes in the area after over two years of being displaced to flee again. Meanwhile,