‘Vote Chori’ is the Biggest Anti-National Act, Says Rahul Gandhi; IndiGo Cuts Over 400 Flights to Stabilise its Schedules; Be Careful When Visiting or Passing Through China, Indian Govt Tells Citizens

Amnesty Concerned Over Modi Govt’s Review of Location Tracking, IndiGo Shows How Airline Crisis Creates a Communication Crisis, Indian Multiplexes Are Worried About Netflix Takeover of Warner Bros

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 9, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

During the discussion on electoral reforms in the Lok Sabha today, leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi accused the government of trying to capture the Election Commission and committing vote chori (theft). “When you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country” and the “idea of India” and commit the “biggest anti-national act”, charged Gandhi. He also questioned the EC’s new rule requiring earlier disposal of poll-related CCTV footage while Congress MPs held up photos of the Brazilian model whose face appeared multiple times in Haryana’s voter rolls.

Opposition MPs led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam today submitted a notice to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla to move a motion to impeach Madras high court Justice G.R. Swaminathan. According to The News Minute, 167 MPs signed the notice alleging that the judge’s decisions seemed to be aligned with a particular ideology. He had recently ordered that a lamp near a dargah on the Thiruparankundram hillock in Madurai be lit, but the lamp that has traditionally been lit is located elsewhere, notes TNM.

Yesterday the House dedicated a full day to discussing the pressing issue of… Vande Mataram. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his predecessor Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress had ‘bowed under pressure from the Muslim League’ in shortening Vande Mataram and that “for this reason [they] had to one day bow to accepting India’s partition”. Historical records show that the song was truncated on Rabindranath Tagore’s advice to Nehru. Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi retorted that the PM ought to list all of Nehru’s mistakes and dedicate a special session to discussing them once and for all so that they could get past it. Sravasti Dasgupta notes that even though the PM had accused the opposition of using the ongoing session as a ‘warm-up’ for upcoming elections, BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj said yesterday in the House that “Bihar is just a trailer and that Bengal is still left”.

IndiGo has decided to cut somewhere between 400 and 500 flights in order to ‘fully stabilise’ its schedules, reports Jagriti Chandra; earlier on Tuesday the Directorate General of Civil Aviation had ordered the airline to slash 5% of its flights as it had “failed to demonstrate the ability to operate all” of them. Passengers will be informed 72 hours in advance if their flight is among the cancelled ones. CEO Pieter Elbers was due to respond to the DGCA’s show cause notice yesterday but asked for additional time on top of a 24-hour extension on the claimed grounds that it was “not realistically possible to pinpoint the exact causes” of its operational meltdown.

Thousands of travellers were left in the lurch over the last week due to the IndiGo debacle owing to its failure to prepare for revised pilot duty and rest norms. The railways had organised special trains to help stranded passengers, but