SC Asks Gauhati HC to Urgently Hear Plea Seeking FIR Against Assam CM; National Green Tribunal Clears Great Nicobar Project; ‘Cannot Be So Tolerant as to Let India Be Maligned Abroad’, Says Delhi HC
Plus: As Rubio’s Munich Speech Raises Colonial Echoes, Will Modi’s India Speak Up?; Taapsee Pannu’s Tongue-in-Cheek Reply
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February 16, 2026
Anirudh S.K.
Petitioners seeking action against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for his communal invective against his state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims and for a BJP video depicting him shooting at members of the minority community ought to have approached the Gauhati high court first, the Supreme Court said on Monday while declining to hear the plea. Chief Justice Surya Kant said that “in our anxiety to invoke one jurisdiction … [we] cannot undermine the jurisdiction of another”, reports Debayan Roy. But the CJI added that politicians must remain “within the boundaries of constitutional morality” and requested the high court to prioritise the case.
The same bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi, considered petitions challenging sections of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and its associated rules and referred the matter to a larger bench, with CJI Kant saying that “there’s an element of sensitivity” and “both sides will have arguable points”, reports Debby Jain. One impugned provision that is currently in force is the DPDP Act’s emendation of the RTI Act to much more broadly exempt information deemed to be of “personal” nature.
Speaking at a public event in Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Indian PM Narendra Modi will be visiting Israel “next week” and hailed the “tremendous alliance” between their two countries. While news houses have cited official Indian sources as saying that Modi will ‘likely’ visit Israel on the 25th, the norm in the Indian context is that a visit is announced by both sides simultaneously, prompting Congress MP and spokesperson Jairam Ramesh to not only recall the similarities between Washington first announcing the Indo-Pakistani ceasefire and the trade deal but also Netanyahu’s grim record in Gaza.
The AI Impact Summit opened in Delhi on Monday – the third such global essay after the UK and South Korea – where the Modi government is looking to “amplify the voices of developing nations in global AI governance”. But administrative troubles cropped up right out the gate as there was confusion around entry arrangements, security procedures and event schedules and as seating at the Bharat Mandapam was inadequate to host all prospective attendees, report Aditya Soni and Abhirami G. Modi was in attendance and many high-profile dignitaries and world leaders are scheduled to attend, including Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and French President Emmanuel Macron, who will co-host.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was also to attend but he cancelled his trip due to “unforeseen circumstances”; Bill Gates, who landed in Andhra Pradesh on Monday,
