Supreme Court Suggests Stay on Modi's Controversial New Waqf Law; Centre Silent as Fadnavis Encroaches On Nuclear Turf; Farooq vs Dulat

Tocqueville in America and India: Echoes of Democracy's Peril

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

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Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

April 16, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

As far as bad days in court go, things have never gone so awfully for Messrs Modi and Shah as they did today during the Supreme Court’s hearings on the government’s controversial Waqf (Amendment) Act. The bench led by Chief Justice of India Sanjeev Khanna was quick to get to the heart of the problem: the new law envisages dispossession on a large scale, including the scrapping of land use by Muslim bodies that date back over a century or more. The court also wondered about the merits of a curious provision introduced by