The judgment, delivered by Justice Neena Bansal Krishna on May 29, 2026, represents a comprehensive rejection of the allegations that formed the basis of nearly six years of investigation into the news portal’s foreign investment transactions. The Court not only found that the allegations failed to disclose the commission of any cognisable offence but went considerably further, characterising the proceedings as mala fide, arbitrary and an abuse of investigative powers directed against independent journalism.

The Court observed:

“Not only are the present proceedings only mala fide, but also an arbitrary attack and abuse of powers on the free and impartial journalism of the Petitioners.” (Para 121)

The finding is remarkable both for its breadth and for the language employed by the Court. While courts frequently examine the legality of investigations, it is comparatively rare for a constitutional court to explicitly connect the exercise of investigative powers with concerns regarding press freedom and the functioning of independent media.

The Background: Foreign investment, criminal allegations and ED action

The case arose out of an investment received by PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt. Ltd., the company operating NewsClick, from US-based Worldwide Media Holdings LLC.

According to the allegations, NewsClick received approximately USD 1.5 million, amounting to around ₹9.59 crore, in April 2018 through a share subscription arrangement. The EOW alleged that the shares had been deliberately overvalued in order to circumvent restrictions governing foreign direct investment in news media entities. It was further alleged that the funds received through the investment were siphoned away through salaries, consultancy fees, rent and other operational expenditures.

Based on these allegations, an FIR was registered in August 2020 under Sections 406, 420 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code. Shortly thereafter, the Enforcement Directorate registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), treating the offences alleged in the FIR as scheduled offences capable of triggering a money laundering investigation.

The ED subsequently conducted extensive searches and seizures, raided NewsClick’s offices and the residences of journalists associated with the platform, and repeatedly summoned Purkayastha and other employees for questioning.

However, after examining the factual and legal basis of the allegations, the High Court concluded that the prosecution’s case suffered from fundamental defects at every stage.

No FDI restriction existed in 2018

The central allegation underlying the prosecution’s case was that NewsClick had received foreign investment in violation of restrictions applicable to news media organisations.

The Court found that this allegation was fundamentally misconceived. The judgment records that before receiving the investment, NewsClick had sought clarification from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting regarding the applicability of foreign investment restrictions to online news platforms. In response, the Ministry clarified on January 5, 2018 that online publication through websites and web portals did not fall within the ambit of print media.

Relying on this clarification, the Court observed that there was no cap on foreign investment in digital news platforms at the time the investment was received.

The Court held:

” From the response received from the Ministry in respect of FDI Policy, it was clearly evident that there was no cap on the online publication of news and thus, the Agreement between the Petitioner and M/s Worldwide Media Holdings LLC and, therefore, the Investment Agreement dated 20.03.2018 cannot be said to be in violation of any law or disclosing any criminal offence. The receiving of 1.5Million USD that were remitted on 11.04.2018 in exchange of 7.69% shares of the Petitioner Company.” (Para 70)

Consequently, the Investment Agreement dated March 20, 2018 and the remittance received on April 11, 2018 could not be said to violate any law or disclose any criminal offence. This finding strikes at the heart of the prosecution’s case. The allegation that NewsClick structured the investment to evade foreign investment restrictions necessarily depended on the existence of such restrictions. Once the Court concluded that no cap existed at the relevant time, the principal basis of the investigation effectively collapsed.

The Court rejects the share overvaluation theory

The investigating agencies also alleged that NewsClick had deliberately overvalued its shares in order to facilitate the foreign investment transaction. The Court found no substance in this allegation.

The judgment records that the company had obtained a valuation certificate from BGJC Associates LLP, which assessed the fair value of the shares at ₹9,188 per share in accordance with FEMA requirements. The Court noted that there was no allegation of manipulation or illegality in the valuation exercise itself.

The final investment was made at a higher value after negotiations between the investor and the company. The Court observed that the share price was mutually agreed upon after considering the prospects and growth potential of the company. Significantly, the Court refused to criminalise what was essentially a commercial decision.

Justice Krishna observed:

“It is an economic decision which does not spell out any criminal offence.” (Para 73)

The Court further accepted the company’s explanation that the valuation had been undertaken through the Discounted Cash Flow method, an internationally recognised valuation methodology accepted under Indian regulatory frameworks.

The judgment therefore draws a clear distinction between commercial valuation disputes and criminal wrongdoing, holding that the former cannot automatically be transformed into the latter in the absence of evidence of fraud or deception.

The allegation of siphoning funds was found untenable

Another major plank of the prosecution’s case was the allegation that foreign investment received by NewsClick had been siphoned away through salaries, consultancy fees, rent and other operational expenditures. The Court rejected this allegation outright.

Justice Krishna observed that these expenditures were entirely consistent with the functioning of a digital media organisation and represented ordinary business expenses incurred in the course of running the company. The Court held that even if one were to assume that excessive expenditure had been incurred, that fact alone would not disclose the commission of a criminal offence.

The judgment states:

“Even if it is accepted that there were over payments and excessive expenditure incurred by the Petitioner, then too it does not disclose any criminal offence. The allegation of siphoning is, therefore, not tenable.” (Para 76)

This finding effectively dismantled the prosecution’s attempt to portray routine operational expenditure as evidence of criminal activity.

The RBI’s findings undermined the investigation

One of the more significant aspects of the judgment concerns the Court’s treatment of material received from the Reserve Bank of India. The Court noted that an earlier status report prepared during the investigation recorded that the RBI had informed investigators that the foreign remittance had been received through the automatic route and that there had been no delay in the issuance of shares or compliance with reporting requirements under FEMA.

According to the judgment, the RBI had stated that:

” Significantly, one Status Report dated 26.07.2021, copy of which was forwarded to the Petitioner as an advance copy, though not placed on record, clearly stated that during the course of investigation a Reply from RBI had been received wherein it was mentioned that as per the Form FCGPR, the foreign inward remittance was under automatic route and there was no delay in issue of shares as well as reporting, as per the extant FEMA regulations in case of the Petitioner.” (Para 77)

The Court noted that this material was subsequently withdrawn from later status reports. Nevertheless, it held that the correspondence was sufficient to indicate that no FEMA violations had been established against the company. The observation significantly weakened the prosecution’s attempt to portray the investment as unlawful.

The allegation that the investor was non-existent failed

The State had also alleged that Worldwide Media Holdings LLC did not legally exist and that the transaction was therefore fraudulent. The Court found that the allegation was unsupported by the material on record.

The company explained that although an earlier entity bearing the same name had been dissolved under Delaware law, a new company with the same name had subsequently been incorporated. The Court noted that nothing had emerged during the investigation to establish that the entity which invested in NewsClick was non-existent. Indeed, the status reports filed by the investigating agencies were largely silent on this aspect. The allegation therefore failed to withstand judicial scrutiny.

No offence of cheating was made out

Having examined the factual allegations, the Court proceeded to analyse whether the offences alleged in the FIR were legally sustainable. With respect to Section 420 IPC, the Court observed that the offence of cheating requires the existence of a person who has been deceived and dishonestly induced to part with property.

In the present case, the investor itself had never alleged that it had been cheated. Worldwide Media Holdings LLC had not lodged any complaint against NewsClick and no material emerged during the investigation suggesting that any person had been deceived.

The Court observed:

” For the offence of cheating, it is necessary that there must be an aggrieved person who has been cheated out of his valuable property. In this case, M/s Worldwide Media Holdings LLC is the entity which had forwarded 1.5 Million USD to the Petitioner. However, there is no Complaint whatsoever, by the Company about having been cheated by the Petitioner. Pertinently, the Complaint had been made by one Shoban Singh, who was merely an informant and was not the aggrieved person. There is nothing which has emerged even during the investigations as reflected in the Status Report, that there was any person who was aggrieved or who was cheated by the Petitioner. The offence of cheating even if all the allegations made are admitted, is not established.” (Para 83)

Accordingly, the essential ingredients of cheating were absent.

No criminal breach of trust either

The Court reached a similar conclusion regarding the allegation under Section 406 IPC. Justice Krishna observed that criminal breach of trust requires entrustment of property and its subsequent misappropriation. Neither requirement was satisfied in the present case.

The transaction between NewsClick and Worldwide Media Holdings LLC was an investment in exchange for shares. The Court held that such a transaction could not, “by no stretch of interpretation,” be characterised as entrustment or misappropriation. Consequently, the offence under Section 406 IPC was also found to be absent.

The Court concluded:

” Even if all the allegations are accepted, no offence under 406 or 420 IPC is disclosed in the FIR and in the subsequent investigations that have been undertaken.” (Para 85)

The Court rejects the ED’s conspiracy argument

Recognising the weakness of the allegations under Sections 406 and 420 IPC, the Enforcement Directorate sought to rely on Section 120B IPC, arguing that the investment transaction itself constituted a criminal conspiracy involving Purkayastha and the foreign investors.

The Court was unconvinced. It noted that criminal conspiracy requires an agreement to commit an illegal act or a legal act through illegal means. The material placed before the Court disclosed neither. The allegations of conspiracy were unsupported by evidence and amounted to little more than assertions.

Justice Krishna therefore held:

“ From the reply of ED, it is evident that the allegation that there is a clear-cut existence of a scheduled offence, is totally misconceived and baseless.” (Para 117)

This finding proved fatal to the ED’s case because the existence of a scheduled offence is a jurisdictional prerequisite for invoking the PMLA.

A “fishing and roving exercise” without any offence

Perhaps the most severe criticism in the judgment should be directed at the manner in which the investigation was conducted. The Court noted that years had passed since the registration of the ECIR. Numerous summons had been issued. Purkayastha and various employees had repeatedly joined the investigation. Searches had been conducted and extensive inquiries had been undertaken. Yet no material establishing the commission of a criminal offence had emerged.

The Court concluded:

“ Two years have passed since the registration of impugned ECIR in 2022. The Petitioner No. 2 and various employees of Petitioner number one have joined investigations on numerous occasions in 2021, after which they have not been summoned even once between September 2021 to June 2022. The manner in which the investigations have been conducted clearly show that the same is a fishing and roving exercise in the financial affairs of the Petitioners without the existence of any offence.” (Para 119)

The observation goes beyond a criticism of investigative shortcomings. It reflects the Court’s conclusion that the investigation itself lacked a legally sustainable foundation.

Quashing the FIR and the ECIR

Having found that the FIR disclosed no offence under Sections 406, 420 or 120B IPC, the Court held that its continuation amounted to a “gross abuse of the process of law.” The FIR was accordingly quashed.

Once the FIR fell, the ECIR could not survive. The Court reiterated the settled principle that where the predicate offence is quashed, the corresponding money laundering proceedings must also fall. The ECIR registered by the Enforcement Directorate was therefore quashed in its entirety.

Why the judgment matters

The significance of the judgment extends well beyond the immediate relief granted to NewsClick and Prabir Purkayastha. The Court did not merely find gaps in the evidence. It found that the allegations themselves failed to disclose criminal offences. It rejected the factual premises underlying the investigation, dismantled the legal basis for the offences invoked, and questioned the very foundation of the ED’s exercise of jurisdiction under the PMLA.

Most significantly, the Court linked the proceedings to broader concerns regarding press freedom, concluding that the case represented not only a legally unsustainable prosecution but also a misuse of investigative powers against independent journalism.

In doing so, the judgment stands as a significant reaffirmation of a basic constitutional principle: that criminal law cannot be invoked merely on suspicion, and that the extraordinary powers of investigation available to the State must remain anchored to an identifiable offence supported by law and evidence.

The complete judgment may be read here.

Detailed reports on cases against Prabir Purkayastha may be read here and here.

Related:

NSA slapped on journalist, DU scholar in Noida workers’ protest case amid allegations of crackdown on dissent

J & K: Attempt to muzzle FoE, Media? Police summons to media, journalists

“This system breaks the body when it cannot break the spirit” — Ipsa Shatakshi on her jailed husband, journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh

How the noose tightened: understanding modus operandi of killers who took the life of journalist-activist, Gauri Lankesh

Assam: Journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumdar detained for 12 hours, arrested after covering protest against an alleged recruitment scam involving key BJP leaders

The post No Crime, No Predicate Offence, No ED Case: Delhi High Court quashes proceedings against NewsClick appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) 2026 was conducted on May 3, 2026, however, it is set to be re-conducted in June. Let’s look at the timeline of events that led to this redo.

Before the May 3 exam, the NTA said the exam was conducted under “full security protocol”, including GPS-tracked paper transport, biometric verification, AI-assisted CCTV monitoring, and 5G jammers at centres. The test was conducted across 551 Indian cities and at 14 overseas centres, with nearly 23 lakh candidates having registered. On the night of May 3, when Suthar (a chemistry teacher from Sikar, Rajasthan) was discussing the NEET questions with his students, he came across a PDF document that went viral a day before the exam. That document had all the chemistry questions that appeared in the actual exam. It further contained ninety of the biology questions that were asked in the exam. Following this discovery, Suthar informed the Rajasthan police and the NTA.

Now, the probe starts. One of the first breakthroughs in the investigation came when Rajasthan Police’s Special Operations Group arrested the alleged mastermind from Dehradun on May 7. A day later, four more persons, all NEET aspirants from Dehradun, were arrested and brought to Sikar for further interrogation. Among the five, the police said that the counsellor is accused of selling the leaked question paper to aspirants as a “Guess Paper.” He had allegedly received it from someone in Kerala, and it was suspected he managed to obtain probable questions of the examination paper even before it was sent for printing. The NTA escalated the matter to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for “independent verification and necessary action.”

The Rajasthan Police inquiry linked the suspected document to an MBBS student from Churu who was at the time studying at a medical college in Kerala. It was quickly spread through NEET aspirants who shared it with each other. The probe also revealed that the material was widely shared through encrypted messaging apps and social media, with some recovered chats reportedly carrying the “forwarded many times” label, suggesting that the questions may have reached a large number of students before the exam. The guess paper was sold to students at rates between Rs 20,000 and Rs 2 lakh, with some media reports indicating charges as high as Rs 5 lakh. By the night before the exam, copies were allegedly circulating for around Rs 30,000 each.

On May 12, nine days after the conduct of the examination, the NTA officially cancelled NEET UG 2026 “in the interest of students” and to protect the credibility of the national examination system. However, the probe continued.

In order to understand how structural and rooted the corruption in the national examination system is, it is imperative to look at the findings that followed the probe. On May 13, the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) moved the Supreme Court challenging the “systemic failure” of the NTA in conducting NEET-UG 2026. The petition sought directions to replace or fundamentally restructure the NTA and to conduct a fresh NEET-UG 2026 examination under judicial supervision, including digital encryption and locking of question papers, a transition to a digital test model, and publication of centre-wise results for detection of statistical anomalies and organised malpractice.

Prahlad Vittal Rao Kulkarni, identified as the alleged kingpin and a domain expert in chemistry from Latur who had for years served on panels involved in setting the NEET question paper, was arrested on May 15, for allegedly exploiting his access to confidential material. He allegedly hosted special coaching classes at his house in the last week of April and dictated questions to a select students. On May 16, the CBI arrested Manisha Gurunath Mandhare, a biology lecturer who was part of the NTA’s paper-setting committee for the NEET exam held on May 3. The arrest was made on the basis of questioning of P V Kulkarni and other accused in the paper leak case. She was allegedly involved in the examination process and appointed by the NTA as an expert with complete access to the Botany and Zoology question papers. Mandhare is alleged to have mobilised prospective NEET examination candidates in April 2026 through Manisha Wagmare of Pune (she was arrested on May 14) and conducted special coaching classes for students at her home, dictating leaked questions and collecting lakhs of rupees as fee. Most of these questions tallied with the questions that appeared in the examination on May 3. The CBI on May 22 arrested Manisha Sanjay Havaldar. She had been appointed by the NTA as an expert to set the question paper for the physics section. Investigators found that she allegedly shared several Physics questions with co-accused Manisha Mandhare in April 2026.

There were several other arrests made by the CBI in relation to this from States such as Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana.

On May 21, NTA Director General Abhishek Singh appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports. Singh told the committee that the agency does not view the NEET exam as having been “leaked.” Even when Opposition members pressed for answers, NTA officials stuck to their position that the CBI is investigating, and they would only call it a leak if the CBI finished its probe and confirmed it. On questions from MPs about how the NEET paper was leaked, Singh said it was “not leaked through their system“. Several MPs asked him then how did the paper get leaked and what was the need to cancel the exam and hold a re-test. He had no answer and insisted that CBI was looking into the matter. Some opposition MPs demanded that the probe report be presented before the panel, but BJP members objected, saying the CBI is an independent body and should be allowed to do its work.

On May 29, the NTA informed the Supreme Court that it was all set to conduct NEET UG in digital testing mode from the next year instead of the pen and paper mode. The NTA’s affidavit stated to the Supreme Court in relation to the several petitions (including the aforesaid FAIMA petition) that the transition will be implemented from the next examination cycle in consultation with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare thereby bringing all major NTA examinations onto the digital testing platform. Regarding the June 21 re-examination, the NTA told the Court that the re-examination scheduled on June 21, will be conducted under a further strengthened SOP framework and with multi-layer authentication.

This paper leak saga shows how deeply percolated corruption is in Indian educational system is. Students who work tirelessly for months and even years are failed by the system consistently. It erodes the faith public has in the government in conducting something as rudimentary as exams. The repercussions of such failures are tragic and extremely disheartening. The next section shall deal with the distress such failures cause to the students and the extreme steps that they are forced to take.

Aftermath, Young Lives lost

NEET is the biggest exam in terms of number of applicants in India, and is mandatory for anyone who aims to take admission in medical courses. In the hope of becoming doctors, students spend years preparing for the exam in extremely competitive and burdensome environments. Therefore, when the news of its cancellation was out, the consequences were tragic.

Pradeep, 21, had taken the exam twice before but failed to secure the needed marks. This time, the moment he walked out of the examination hall, he hugged his father and said, “Papa, this time I have become a doctor.” He had spent lakhs of rupees and countless hours preparing for the exam. As per the answer key of the exam conducted on May 3, Pradeep was securing a seat in a government medical college with ease. However, the news of cancellation put him in so much despair that he died by suicide. Pradeep Manich, 23, was a labourer’s son who had been living in a rented accommodation in Sikar away from his home. Reportedly, his family had sold their land and taken loans to fund his coaching and expenses for NEET. After his third attempt, the news of the paper leak and re-examination left him hopeless and disillusioned. He was devastated and he hanged himself days after the exam. Akanksha Chaturvedi had been preparing for the medical entrance exam in Nagpur and reportedly suffered from severe depression triggered by the cancellation, and ultimately, died by suicide. Her suicide note said, ” I no longer have the courage to take the NEET exam again. I was scoring good marks in my first attempt, but now there is no guarantee that I will perform well again.” Her father, a farmer, worked as a cook in Nagpur, and also put himself in financial debt to support her dreams of becoming a doctor. In Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri, 21 years old Ritik Mishra died by suicide after reportedly distressed by the cancellation of the examination. Further, a 17 years old boy from Goa district took his life after the cancellation owing to academic stress and concerns over balancing studies with his passion for hockey.

19 years old Divyansh Sharma from Sikar tells how impactful such re-examinations are psychologically. Sharma says that when students spend one or two years preparing and the paper gets leaked, it feels devastating. He made it clear that beyond financial loss, the greatest cost is time. Talking about his own experience, he said Sikar (a hub for competitive exams preparation) as an emotionally draining environment, filled with overcrowded hostels, endless classes, and routines built entirely around mock tests and revision. The competition is so intense that students study throughout the entire day. When news breaks that an exam will be held again due to a leak, it kills motivation. He also points out that the psychological challenge is significant, as students begin to doubt whether they can replicate their previous level of performance. Devadrita Dam, an 18 years old aspirant from Gurgaon, had been genuinely hopeful after the exam because the paper seemed easier compared to previous years. In the week following the exam, she was finally reconnecting with friends after months of social isolation that the exam forces under the guise of rigour of preparation. Then her best friend sent her a message saying the paper had been cancelled. She initially assumed it was a joke, but her uncle called to confirm the news. She broke down crying at the thought of having to go through the entire process again. According to Dam, the leak has seriously shaken students’ faith in the system.

These heart-breaking stories show how disproportionately the cancellation of exams affected students who came from lower income families. And how, the system failed the students by not being able to conduct an exam of such importance with honesty and transparency.

Owing to these incidents in light of systemic failure of the education system towards its students, there were protests as legitimate expression of anguish by students. On May 12, National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) staged a massive protest at Shastri Bhawan. Protestors were seen climbing the barricades at Shastri Bhawan to show their disappointment and anger. Characteristically Delhi Police detained several protestors. This was the same day the NTA officially confirmed the exam’s cancellation showing that the students were in the streets within hours of the announcement. A couple of days later on May 16, NSUI staged a massive protest outside the NTA headquarters in Delhi under the banner of the “NTA Halla Bol” campaign. The protestors rightly pointed out the suicides that took place owing to NTA’s failure that led to the re-examination.

Further, IYC activists took out a protest march from Teen Murti Circle towards the Education Minister’s residence holding posters and banners. However, they were stopped by police barricades and some protestors had been detained as well. Members of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) staged a demonstration demanding accountability for recurring examination irregularities outside the Ministry of Education on June 1. These protestors were also later detained by Police. On May 31 in Bhopal and on June 1 in Bhubaneswar, torchlight marches were organised outside the residence of Dharmendra Pradhan demanding his resignation over the paper leak issue. Moreover, On June 6, IYC President Uday Bhanu Chib led thousands in a protest in Haryana. Protesters faced water cannons and even barricades and police lathis. Despite of such protests the mainstream media has remained silent on both the fronts, raising voice against the government that allowed such a leak to happen, and it has remained silent on these protests by not covering their plight, anguish and courage to protest against such failures. And whenever such protests are shown, the lens is partisan— a political battle between Congress and BJP. Instead of putting the plight of the students at the centre of its coverage, the narrative is completely shifted to party politics. The response by the State that included, barricading, detention, shooting water guns, reflect how the state has increasingly collapsed the distinction between disruption and dissent. A detailed report on the mainstream media’s cold shoulder and on the protests that happened nationwide can be read here.

Repeated Leaks

It is imperative to note that the NEET exam was earlier leaked just two years ago! The 2024 NEET examination had an unusually high number of top rankers. Further, many students received scores that appeared mathematically impossible. This raised the concerns of paper being leaked. The CBI in pursuance of these allegations of paper leak arrested 40 individuals. The government’s initial posture was flat denial. When Dharmendra Pradhan took charge as Education Minister in June 2024, he told reporters that “there is no corruption or paper leak in NEET-UG 2024.” This position was maintained even as police in multiple states were making arrests and producing evidence to the contrary.

Subsequently, the matter reached the Supreme Court. The Court said there would be no re-examination, ruling that the data on record was not enough to show a systematic leak. However, the Court stated that there was a paper leak, though it found it localised to the areas of Hazaribagh and Patna. It simultaneously acknowledged serious weaknesses within the NTA and insisted on structural reform to prevent such instances from repeating. Following this, a committee namely Dr. K. Radhakrishnan Committee was setup. The Court specifically directed the committee to examine the viability of comprehensive CCTV surveillance, surprise inspections, secure transportation systems, digital tracking, and stricter identity verification mechanisms. The court also directed the Ministry of Education to monitor implementation through a Steering Committee. The Radhakrishnan committee submitted its report in October 2024 to the central government, that contained several recommendations to prevent future leaks. These included a shift to digital testing to eliminate the vulnerabilities of physical paper handling, biometric verification, AI-based surveillance, encrypted digital question delivery, and multi-stage examination formats. In January 2025, the Centre told the Supreme Court that it would implement all these corrective measures as suggested by the committee.

Now, the question that crops up is, what did the government do? Unsurprisingly, the answer is nothing. Despite recommendations by the K. Radhakrishnan committee after the 2024 controversy, the examination continued under the same manner as before. The NTA has immense structural problems that facilitates such leaks and other issues commonly faced by students (some problems are left unaddressed by the committee itself). The National Testing Agency was established in 2017 without parliamentary debate, public consultation, or a statutory foundation. It operates as a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 rather than as a body created by legislation. Its memorandum of association (a basic charter that any registered organisation is expected to publish) has never appeared on its website, unlike comparable bodies such as the CBSE. The agency’s financial workings are equally opaque. While institutions like the UPSC and AIIMS publish detailed annual reports with budget allocations and expenditure data, the NTA has simply stated on its website that because the number of exams it conducts varies each year, it is “difficult to maintain Head-wise/Exam-wise Budget.” For an agency that collects fees from over two crore candidates annually and outsources significant work to private contractors, this opacity raised eyebrows to say the least.

The biggest problem that NTA has is its outsourcing tendencies. The NTA contracts out some of its most consequential functions such as setting up exam centres, managing physical security, capturing biometric data, to other parties. This problem needs to understood in tandem with the fact that it coordinates with a network of private actors that has no published standards of governing and nobody knows how those actors are selected, supervised, or held accountable. The result has been visible in examination halls where power cuts lasted over an hour or even when students were handed out rainwater-soaked answer sheets. Nothing about the process of setting question papers is publicly known. The qualifications required of paper setters, the processes they follow, and the safeguards against conflicts of interest is simply not disclosed. The CBSE publishes a detailed document specifying exactly these things, including the duties of “secrecy officers” responsible for maintaining confidentiality through the examination process. The NTA has no equivalent. This goes on to show how much opacity is present in the entire process of conducting the examinations– from setting of papers to the conduct of exam on the final day. In toto, it is a centralised body that works with near zero accountability. In such a setting, bluntly, lapses are inevitable.

NOT JUST NTA OR NEET

However, the problem in the examination framework of India is by no means limited to the NTA but runs much deeper.

In May 2026, the Central Board of Secondary Education declared Class 12 results.  There was a drop in passing percentage this year by 3 points. Consequently, students wanted to check their answer sheets and see what went wrong. However, it was found that, students were receiving wrong answer sheets. Evaluators were marking blurred, illegible scans. Pages had gone missing. This year marked On-screen marking’s (OSM) first use by CBSE. The promise of OSM was quite handsome. In OSM, answer sheets are scanned, digitised, and uploaded to a secure portal. Examiners log in remotely and mark on their screens, this marking is then auto-tabulated by the system. CBSE had, in fact, conceived of OSM back in 2014 but shelved the idea because of logistical difficulties. Cut to 2026, CBSE announced its plan on using OSM. During mandatory mock evaluation sessions on February 26, 2026, teachers reported portal access failures, slow system performance, and errors in teacher data on the registration portal. Knowing all this, and instead of going for a phased launch of the technology, CBSE still decided to rollout the technology all at once, for nearly 1 crore answer scripts. In a March 16 circular, CBSE warned Class 10 and 12 evaluators of legal action for sharing “misleading” information about the marking process on social media and declared that evaluation is confidential, therefore, it should not be discussed.

Once the results were out, students who accessed their answer sheets via the OSM verification portal found pages scanned so poorly that not a single line was legible yet the examiner had marked them. On various Reddit and X posts, students described evaluators placing red ticks and numerical scores on images that were, functionally, blank. These problems gained traction when Vedant Shrivastava posted his Physics answer sheet on X. When he checked his answer script he found out that someone else’s answer sheet was marked instead of his. There was a clear difference in handwriting. CBSE eventually admitted the error and issued the correct scanned copy, but only after Vedant’s post had gone viral.

I am a CBSE Class 12 student.

After receiving unexpectedly low marks in Physics, we applied for photocopies of my answer sheets through the CBSE reevaluation process.

Today we received the copies.

And I am shattered because the Physics answer sheet uploaded by CBSE is not mine

— VEDANT (@VEDANTSHRIV17) May 23, 2026

Along the same vein, Sanjana, found that every page of her Chemistry answer booklet belonged to a completely different person. CBSE later acknowledged it had “discarded around 30 answer sheets due to issues like unclear images and duplicate entries” without re-scanning them, this means some students were potentially evaluated on nothing whatsoever.

I applied for CBSE revaluation. The scanned copy of my chemistry sheet I received does not match my handwriting or written responses.
For reference, I am attaching my English answer sheet, which clearly reflects my actual handwriting. pic.twitter.com/laINaEMAP3

— Sanjana (@Sanjanaopxe) May 25, 2026

These issues could largely be pinned to the vendor who was responsible for the application the of OSM technology. The company entrusted with building and running the OnMark digital evaluation platform for CBSE is Coempt Edu Teck Private Limited, a Hyderabad based education technology firm. It was formerly known as Globarena Technologies Private Limited, and it had in the past made grave errors in technological applications. Those errors had led to several suicides as well.

If this company had such discouraging past, how did it manage to get the tender? The inconsistencies in floating of three tenders before finally settling with Coempt Edu Teck was first reported in the Hindustan Times.  Later, Sarthak Sidhant, a 17 years old Class 12 student from Jharkhand showed gave a breakdown of the requirements were consistently to grant then tender were changed several times in a way that made Coempt eligible for it. He spent days readings official CBSE bidding documents on the Central Public Procurement Portal, and tracked changes across three successive versions of the tender.  He published his findings in a blog post, these findings reveal the deep percolated corruption in the system that allowed Coempt to bag the tender.

The original Request for proposal (RFP) contained three specific clauses that would disqualify a vendor for poor past performance. These clauses were entirely removed from the revised RFP. A company with Coempt’s track record would have been eliminated at the gate under the original standards. Further, the minimum revenue threshold was set at ₹50 crore in an earlier version of the tender. It was pointed out that Coempt, would not to meet this threshold therefore, the same was revised in ways that made the company eligible. Capability Maturity Model Integration levels (these are standard benchmarks for software development capabilities) were also reportedly adjusted in the new tenders. The tender was first issued in February 2025. After the initial process failed to move forward, it was re-issued in May 2025, then again. Each iteration, Sidhant alleged, brought the eligibility criteria closer to Coempt’s actual profile. The cybersecurity standards required of the vendor were also scaled back across each of these successive drafts.

Furthermore, Nisarg Adhikari, a 19 years old ethical hacker broke into CBSE’s OSM portal and found several vulnerabilities. He found out numerous flaws that could allow anyone with basic technical knowledge to bypass OTP authentication, impersonate examiners, reset passwords, and even alter marks scored by students! This demonstrates how poorly the OSM was developed and deployed. The entire process of implementing OMS was marred with corruption that rewarded incompetence.

Across the 18 lakh who appeared for Class 12 board exams this year, there is now an uncertainty about the integrity of their results. Even students who scored well and were not directly affected by the visible failures have no guarantee that their marks accurately reflect their performance. This is the case because the system that produced those marks has been publicly demonstrated to be insecure and badly managed. The Board had twelve years to plan OSM after first conceiving it in 2014. It chose to deploy it overnight. It awarded the contract 74 days before exams began. It accepted security certificates covering other people’s systems. It threatened teachers who raised concerns with legal action

The response to these revelations

Instead of any of this being on the front page, it was a teenager that cracked the story open. Several right-wing social media accounts started heckling Vedant (student who received the wrong physics answer script) as anti-national. He was also derogatorily called as a Pakistani. Among those who amplified this heckling was Ashok Shrivastav, a journalist and primetime anchor at Doordarshan News. Shrivastav posted a screenshot of Vedant’s profile location (which showed South Asia) and commented “Did Pakistanis also appear for CBSE exams?!!”

A journalist at a taxpayer-funded national broadcaster took a grievance from a student who had received the wrong answer sheet, checked the geolocation setting of his fresh social media account, and concluded that the most plausible explanation was Pakistani subterfuge.

This shows the levels that Indian Media has stooped down to. Vedant and his family were inundated with abuse. They were called “Pakistani agents,” “anti-national,” “Soros agents,” and members of the “Deep State.” 17 years old who had spent the year studying for his boards, who had done nothing more than post proof of an institutional failure affecting his own marks, was now managing a mental health crisis on top of everything else.

This response is not exclusive to Vedant, even Nisarg and Sarthak who did a commendable job in showing the truth behind the tender allocation and the various infirmities of the present OSM system were treated with the same vitriolic response. The logic of this rhetoric works like this. Any complaint about a government system is, by definition, motivated by hostility to India. Anyone motivated by hostility to India is acting on behalf of India’s enemies. Pakistan is the most convenient enemy. Therefore, any complaint = Pakistani.

CONSTITUTONAL DIMENSIONS

The right to life under Article 21, as interpreted through Unnikrishnan and subsequent decisions, encompasses the right to education. The judiciary has consistently read Article 21 expansively to include not just bare survival but the conditions necessary for a dignified human existence. Access to a fair, uncorrupted examination is not peripheral to this right. For millions of students, particularly those from lower-income families who cannot afford private alternatives or second attempts, NEET and CBSE board exams are the singular pathway to a livelihood and a dignified future. When those pathways are sabotaged by institutional negligence and structural corruption, the right to a dignified life is contravened. The suicides that followed the 2026 NEET cancellation are the most extreme indictment of this constitutional violation. Moreover, paper leak that was facilitated by state appointed officials violated the right to equality.  It gave an undue advantage to some candidates over others who attempted the examination honestly. Two candidates sit for the same exam. One has seen the questions. One has not. They are not equal before that paper, and the State made them unequal. The Supreme Court’s commitment to protecting the integrity of competitive examinations was further reinforced in a 2015 decision (Tanvi Sarwal v. Central Board of Secondary Education) involving the CBSE, where the Court directed that a fresh all-India medical entrance examination be held after concluding that widespread use of electronic devices had compromised the process beyond repair.

The Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 represents the legislature’s acknowledgment that examination fraud is a criminal offence. It contravenes the foundational principles of constitution such as equal treatment of everyone. The Act criminalises question paper leakage, unauthorised access to confidential material, organised distribution networks, impersonation, and digital facilitation of cheating. It extends liability beyond individual bad actors to service providers, vendors, printing contractors, and institutional officers, making negligence and collusion equally punishable. The existence of this statute makes the State’s failure 2026 constitutionally indefensible. The legislature had already recognised, through this law, that paper leaks violate the foundational conditions of fair competition. That recognition maps directly onto the Article 14 guarantee of substantive equality. When the executive arm of the State allowed an institutional architecture that permitted paper setters with unrestricted access to confidential material to operate without oversight. It significantly increased the chances of such leaks, and in turn, increased the chances of constitutional violations as written above.

The way the State responded to the protests that broke out in response of these constitutional violations are quite telling. The Supreme Court has recognised in multiple decisions that the right to protest is implied in Article 19 and that the State must make genuine arrangements for dissent to be heard rather than suppressed. When Delhi Police detained students within hours of the cancellation announcement, when water cannons were deployed in Haryana, when IYC marchers were stopped before they could reach the Education Minister’s residence, the State directly prevented public accountability. The restrictions that Article 19(2) permits on these freedoms must be reasonable and proportionate. Treating students the way they were treated for protesting the loss of an examination they spent years preparing for fails any honest proportionality test.

References for this analysis may be found here.

(The programme research team also consists of interns; this resource has been worked on by Hamzah Patel)

Related:

Equity on Hold: Supreme Court’s interim stay of the UGC Regulations, 2026

CBSE tries to promote RSS ideologues with essay competitions

Failings of Indian Legal Education System

Educational inequities worsen for Muslim students in India

How many lives will it take before India acknowledges dominant caste hegemony in educational institutes?

The post The system that keeps failing appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Khurram Parvez was arrested close to five years ago, in a case registered against him by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for alleged terror funding, conspiracy and recruiting persons for the terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Parvez was arrested in the case on November 22, 2021 from Srinagar. He was remanded to judicial custody on February 25, 2022, following series of police custody remands.

On December 19, 2024, the date he filed the appeal, Parvez had been in custody for a total period of roughly 3 years and 1 month. Today –when the judgement is finally delivered–the period of incarceration totals 4 years and 7 months. It took a year and six months for disposal of a bail appeal in the Delhi HC!

The NIA alleged that a network linked to the banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) recruited Over Ground Workers (OGWs), gathered intelligence on security installations and facilitated terror funding. Parvez was arrested during the investigation, although he was not named in the original FIR. According to the charge sheet, the allegations against him were that he recruited OGWs for LeT, collected information regarding the movement and structure of the Army, had links with Pakistan-based terrorist organisations, and instigated protests following the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016.

Khurram’s appeal however strongly argued that the prosecution’s case against Parvez was unsupported by evidence and that he is a “factual stranger” to the larger conspiracy alleged by the NIA. It was also Parvez’s case that there was no digital evidence showing his contact with members of any proscribed terrorist organisation and that no call detail records were collected regarding the alleged meeting between him and co-accused Muneer Ahmad Kataria.

Parvez also argued that he is a human rights activist and was the Programme Coordinator and Spokesperson of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and also the Chairperson of the Philippines-based Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), which campaigns on the issue of enforced disappearances. In his appeal, Parvez said that he was a factual stranger to the alleged conspiracy and that the investigators had failed to establish any contact between him and LeT operatives or members of any banned organisation. He stated that an examination of digital devices seized from him revealed no communication with alleged handlers or evidence of recruitment of overground workers.

He also rejected the allegations that his past visits to Pakistan demonstrate links with proscribed organisations, stating that the trips were undertaken publicly as part of humanitarian and advocacy initiatives, including campaigns against landmines and enforced disappearances.

In his bail application, Khurram Pervez argued that there was no evidence that Parvez passed sensitive military information to any terrorist operative and that there was no allegation linking him to any alleged terror-funding money trail.  Counsel for Pervez included senior advocate Tanveer Ahmed Mir, along with Ms. Swati Khanna, Ms. Raminder Kaur, Mr. Md. Imran Ahmad, Mr. Shahzad Khan and Mr. Kartik Venu. The bail plea was filed through advocate Kartik Venu.For the NIA, advocates Mr. Rahul Tyagi, SPP, Ms. Priya Rai, Mr. Shubham Goyal, Mr. Jatin Khatri, Mr. Amit Rohila appeared.

Related:

Supreme Court refers UAPA bail jurisprudence to larger bench; grants interim bail to Tasleem Ahmed and Khalid Saifi in Delhi riots conspiracy case

UAPA is a Very Unjust Law in Terms of Bail…Almost Like a Life Sentence: Anand Grover

J’khand HC grants bail to UAPA accused as no link to Al-Qaeda established

The post UAPA: Delhi HC grants Bail to Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez after close to 5 years in alleged terror funding case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

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Every age discovers its own language for discussing the human condition. The twentieth century increasingly found itself speaking through sport. Seems absurd? Twenty-two players pursue a ball around a rectangular field while millions watch. How does that evoke philosophical reflection? Yet, the deeper one looks at football, the harder it becomes to dismiss it merely as entertainment. Football has become one of the principal ways modern societies imagine themselves.

The great clubs of Europe are repositories of memory. Entire generations remember where they were when Maradona dribbled past England, when Zidane head-butted Materazzi, when Iniesta scored in Johannesburg, or when Messi finally lifted the World Cup in Qatar. Football has become one of the modern world’s great theatres of meaning.

And, thus, some of its greatest practitioners asked questions beyond tactics and trophies. What does it reveal about human beings? How should talent relate to the collective? What is the relationship between freedom and discipline? Can excellence be engineered? Can creativity be organized? These are not football questions; they are civilization questions. Football merely provides the stage on which they are performed.

Five figures stand apart for transforming football into a vehicle for thought: Johan Cruyff, César Luis Menotti, Sócrates, Jorge Valdano, and Pep Guardiola. Each seeks an answer to the same question: What is football for?

Football is about understanding space. ~ Hendrik Johannes Cruyff

Johan Cruyff’s greatest contribution to football was not tactical; it was perceptual. He changed what football looked at. Before Cruyff, football largely revolved around players. Coaches discussed positions, opponents, formations, and individuals. The football field seemed crowded with bodies competing for possession. Cruyff became fascinated by the spaces between players. Sounds simple, but it was revolutionary.

Cruyff watched football by following possibilities. The future interested him more than the present. He arrived at an insight: the game is fundamentally a struggle over space. And, the player who understands space understands football.

The pass itself is not the important event. What matters is the space created before the pass and the possibilities that follow it. The dribble changes geometry. Football becomes a shifting architecture of relationships, distances, and opportunities. Cruyff’s observation that football is played with the brain is often misunderstood. He was not praising intelligence; he was describing a way of seeing. Great footballers notice patterns before others recognize them. They enter the future slightly earlier than everyone else.

Cruyff’s vision resembles the moment when a physicist suddenly perceives an invisible structure beneath apparently chaotic phenomena. What Newton discovered in falling apples and planetary motion, Cruyff sought in football. Beneath the apparent disorder lay hidden patterns. Yet patterns alone cannot explain why football moves us. Geometry can organize a city. It cannot explain why people love it.

Cruyff’s famous dictum, ‘Toeval is logisch’ (coincidence is logical), captures this football philosophy, that football’s apparent chaos often conceals an underlying geometry. What spectators often describe as luck, chance, or coincidence is frequently the visible consequence of invisible preparation. Teams that occupy space intelligently, move collectively, and anticipate possibilities create conditions in which favourable outcomes appear accidental to outsiders. Chance remains real, but an intelligent organization determines the likely beneficiary. Indeed, one could almost place Cruyff beside chemist Louis Pasteur’s famous observation: “Chance favours only the prepared mind.”

Cruyff translated that insight into football.

Football is about freedom and beauty. ~ César Luis Menotti

If Cruyff was football’s architect, Argentina’s Menotti was its philosopher. Few coaches have thought more deeply about the moral dimensions of football. To many observers, Menotti’s preference for attacking football appeared aesthetic. His brand of football was about beauty and elegance, they said. This interpretation missed the depth. For Menotti, beauty was not decorative. Beauty was ethical.

Menotti’s core values were freedom, creativity, beauty, expression, individuality, and cultural identity. He believed football should reflect the best possibilities of human freedom. Victory mattered, but it was not enough. His sentiment can be summarized as, “Winning is important. But the manner of winning reveals who you are.”

The football field became a small republic in which larger human values revealed themselves. A society that celebrates freedom should celebrate freedom on the pitch. A society that values imagination should encourage imagination in its footballers. A society that admires creativity should resist reducing the game to mere efficiency. Menotti’s football was therefore not simply a style of play. It was a vision of human flourishing.

Human beings need beauty and results. Civilization itself oscillates endlessly between these demands. Menotti’s philosophy lies in refusing to surrender beauty entirely to practicality. He insisted that efficiency alone cannot satisfy the human spirit.

Football is about meaning and leadership. ~ Jorge Valdano

Jorge Valdano inherited his compatriot Menotti’s humanism but transformed it into something more intimate. Where Menotti spoke about freedom and style, Valdano became fascinated by leadership, fear, confidence, and meaning. He spent much of his post-playing career trying to understand why some groups achieve extraordinary things while others fail despite possessing equal talent. He repeatedly returned to a remarkably simple conclusion: Every team is a state of mind.

Modern organizations are obsessed with structures. They study incentives, processes, systems, and metrics. Valdano does not reject these, but he points out that every structure ultimately operates through human beings. The most sophisticated plan in the world passes through minds occupied by doubt, hope, courage, insecurity, and belief. Thus, football is a study of collective psychology. The great leader does not merely organize. He creates meaning. He transforms anxiety into confidence. He aligns ambitions. He creates trust. He converts a collection of individuals into a community.

Valdano was fascinated by the emotional realities hidden behind the movement of the ball. Why do some teams become stronger after adversity while others collapse? Why does belief spread through a dressing room? Why does confidence sometimes seem contagious? These questions place football in direct conversation with military history, political leadership, and organizational theory. Valdano’s football is ultimately about the human condition.

Football is about citizenship and human dignity. ~ Sócrates Brasiliero

Medical doctor. Captain. Political activist. Public intellectual. No footballer has travelled further beyond football than Sócrates. During Brazil’s military dictatorship, he helped create one of the most remarkable experiments in sporting history: Democracia Corinthiana. This was not simply a football innovation; it was an attempt to rethink authority. Players voted on decisions. Hierarchies were questioned. Participation replaced command. The football club became a laboratory for citizenship.

Sócrates asked a question almost nobody else had dared to: Can football teach people how to govern themselves?

This is a profoundly political question, but not a partisan one. It concerns the nature of freedom. Modern institutions often assume that efficiency requires hierarchy and that excellence demands control. Sócrates suspected otherwise. He wondered whether responsibility might flourish under participation and whether freedom itself could become a source of strength. In this sense, he resembles the great civic thinkers of antiquity more than a conventional footballer. The field became a classroom; the dressing room, a civic institution; and football, a rehearsal for democracy.

Football is about reconciling freedom and structure. ~ Pep Guardiola

Cruyff’s understanding of space, Menotti’s defense of creativity, Valdano’s concern with human beings, Sacchi’s organizational discipline, and modern analytics’ obsession with measurement all illuminate part of the same reality. Guardiola refuses to choose between them.

Guardiola attempts something more ambitious: he seeks reconciliation.

The great debates of football increasingly appear false from his perspective. Freedom versus structure. Creativity versus discipline. Art versus science. Humanity versus analytics. These oppositions dissolve. The purpose of structure is not to eliminate freedom; it is to create freedom. The purpose of positional play is not to constrain imagination; it is to generate possibilities for imagination. The purpose of analysis is not to replace intuition; it is to improve intuition.

Guardiola’s football represents a kind of synthesis. The highest forms of excellence emerge not when one principle defeats another but when seemingly contradictory principles learn to coexist.

At this point, football begins to reveal its power as a metaphor for human life. These five thinkers address questions faced by every civilization. Football condenses them into ninety minutes.

This may explain why the game continues to fascinate billions despite its apparent simplicity. Beneath the goals and trophies lies something deeper. Football has become one of the few remaining arenas where modern societies continue to debate the relationship between freedom and order, individual brilliance and collective purpose, science and art, efficiency and meaning. The observations and investigations over the years merge into a philosophy of human flourishing. And perhaps that is why football remains larger than any statistic, any trophy, or any result. For beneath the game lies a question that every generation must answer anew: Not how football should be played. But how human beings should live.

Check in tomorrow for our next article in the series leading to the FIFA World Cup 2026.

This series is a concise version of a long-format Substack series on the World Cup by JP Santhanam. The Substack post can be read here.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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Upon receiving the award, Jean Drèze said: “This recognition is not something I achieved on my own. All the work I do is in collaboration with people and collectives working for change. I live and work in India, which was rightly described as a ‘museum of inequality’ by Dr B. R. Ambedkar.

India has all possible varieties of inequality—not only astronomical economic inequality, but also the caste system, huge gender disparities, massive disparities in access to education, and so forth. The silver lining is that India also has a rich history of resistance to inequality. I’ve been very fortunate to be associated with some of these movements.

My contribution consists mainly of research for public action. I’m very pleased to be associated through this award with the World Inequality Lab, a like-minded team striving in the same direction.”

In recent decades, the study of global inequalities has experienced a remarkable boom: economic, social and environmental inequalities have been the subject of a growing body of theoretical and empirical work, visible and influential throughout the world.

The World Inequality Lab (WIL) and Sciences Po’s Centre for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS) have joined forces to establish a Global Inequality Research Award (or GiRA), which aims to recognize every two years researchers from all disciplines who have made a significant contribution to the understanding of global inequalities.

Six years ago, on April 19, 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic, we had a conversation with Drèze that bears a listen and watch today:

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Economist Jean Drèze among three activists detained in Jharkhand, released

The post A soldier of grassroots research & action: Jean Drèze awarded the Global Inequality Research Award appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Uma Jadhav, social worker and photographer Joya Lobo also received a similar appreciation certificate and citation. The social media handle of the publication linked to the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) intimated the wider public about these awards.

For his association with the Dalit Panthers since their foundation and his continued dedication to social work, Dalit rights and the human rights movement in general, Sumedhbhau Jadhav was felicitated.

पँथर, विविध दलित चळवळीतील आंबेडकरवादी कार्यकर्ते सुमेध जाधव यांना वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026#VBASammanAward2026#SumedhJadhav#SujatAmbedkar#AmbedkariteMovement pic.twitter.com/vL4ZK9d1EQ

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

अभिनेते गौरव मोरे यांच्या अभिनय क्षेत्रातील कार्याबद्दल त्यांचा वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026#VBASammanAwards2026#GauravMore #SujatAmbedkar#VanchitBahujanAghadi#VBAAwards pic.twitter.com/hvLMCiC5tS

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

सामाजिक कार्यकर्त्या उमा जाधव यांना वंचित बहुजन आघाडीचे युवा नेते सुजात आंबेडकर यांच्या हस्ते ‘VBA सन्मान पुरस्कार – २०२६’ देऊन गौरवण्यात आले.#VBASammanPuraskar2026 #UmaJadhav #SocialWorker #WomenEmpowerment #CommunityLeadership #VanchitBahujanAghadi #SujatAmbedkar pic.twitter.com/ho4xlJwK5i

— Prabuddh Bharat (@eprabuddhbharat) June 4, 2026

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The complaints, both dated April 27, 2026, concern speeches allegedly delivered by Union Minister of State for Education and BJP MP Sukanta Majumdar in Panihati, North 24 Parganas on March 29, 2026, and BJP candidate Jagannath Chattopadhyay in Suri, Birbhum on April 9, 2026.

According to CJP, both speeches amounted to appeals on religious grounds, promotion of hostility between communities, and attempts to influence the electoral process through communal polarisation. The organisation has sought intervention from election authorities and police officials, urging registration of criminal cases, issuance of show-cause notices, and other corrective measures.

CJP’s complaint against Sukanta Majumdar

On April 27, 2026, in its complaint addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal and the Commissioner of Police, Barrackpore, CJP alleged that Sukanta Majumdar delivered what it described as an explicitly communal and divisive speech during an election campaign in Panihati on March 29.

According to the complaint, Majumdar defended the idea of being “communal” as necessary for the protection of religion and culture and asserted that secularism had failed after Partition. CJP contends that these remarks amounted to a direct rejection of constitutional secularism and sought to create hostility toward a religious minority.

The complaint reproduces portions of the speech in which Majumdar allegedly stated that understanding the “true condition” of West Bengal required visiting districts with significant Muslim populations, specifically naming Malda and Murshidabad. CJP argues that these references portrayed Muslim-majority areas as symbols of decline and disorder and were intended to provoke suspicion and hostility against members of the minority community.

The organisation further alleges that Majumdar linked the political participation of Muslims with adverse consequences for Hindus by claiming that the Trinamool Congress deliberately allotted electoral tickets to Muslim leaders and by alleging restrictions on the use of microphones during Durga Puja celebrations in certain areas.

According to CJP, these remarks created a narrative in which the political representation of Muslims was portrayed as a threat to Hindu cultural and religious practices. The complaint argues that such rhetoric was designed to influence voters by invoking religious identity and fears of cultural displacement.

Allegations of religious polarisation

CJP maintains that the Panihati speech relied heavily on references to religion, communal violence, and Partition. According to the complaint, the repeated invocation of these themes was intended to establish a binary opposition between Hindu cultural interests and Muslim political participation.

The organisation contends that describing secularism as a failed project and presenting communal identification as necessary for cultural survival undermines the constitutional commitment to equality and secular governance. It argues that these statements sought to legitimise exclusionary politics and encourage electoral mobilisation based on religious identity.

Particular emphasis is placed on references to Malda and Murshidabad. CJP alleges that these districts were singled out not for administrative or developmental reasons but because of their demographic composition. The complaint argues that such references encouraged audiences to associate Muslim-majority regions with social or political deterioration and thereby contributed to communal stereotyping.

The complaint further characterises allegations regarding restrictions on Durga Puja festivities as attempts to create resentment and distrust toward minority communities. According to CJP, these statements transformed a religious and cultural issue into a political weapon during an election campaign.

Legal grounds raised against Majumdar

The complaint alleges that Majumdar’s speech violated provisions of the Model Code of Conduct prohibiting activities that aggravate differences or create hatred between religious communities.

CJP also invokes Sections 123(2), 123(3), 123(3A), and 125 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. According to the complaint, the speech amounted to undue influence upon voters, appeals on religious grounds, promotion of enmity between communities, and attempts to foster hatred during an election.

The organisation further alleges violations of Sections 196, 197(1), 299, 352, and 353 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. It argues that the speech promoted enmity between groups, undermined constitutional values, insulted a religious community, provoked public disorder, and disseminated claims intended to create fear and hostility.

The entire complaint may be read here:

Complaint against Jagannath Chattopadhyay

In a separate complaint on April 27, 2026 addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer, the District Magistrate of Birbhum, the Superintendent of Police, Birbhum, and the Inspector of Police, Suri Police Station, CJP raised allegations against BJP candidate Jagannath Chattopadhyay in connection with a campaign speech delivered in Suri on April 9, 2026.

According to the complaint, Chattopadhyay repeatedly framed the election as a battle to save Hindu culture and religious symbols. CJP alleges that he appealed directly to religious sentiments by urging voters to support the BJP in order to protect practices and symbols including Kanthi, Tilak, Panchali observances, Satyanarayan rituals, Shakha, Pola, Sindoor, and various places of worship.

The complaint reproduces portions of the speech in which Chattopadhyay allegedly declared that the election was necessary to safeguard these religious traditions and to protect the honour of “Sanatani Bengali women.”

CJP argues that such statements transformed the election from a contest over governance into what it describes as a religious mobilisation campaign directed at Hindu voters.

References to “Jihadis” and “Love Jihad”

A central aspect of the complaint concerns statements allegedly made by Chattopadhyay regarding “jihadis” and “Love Jihad.”

According to CJP, Chattopadhyay claimed that if the BJP did not come to power, “jihadis” would attack the Tulsi Mancha and Maa Kali would be placed in a prison van. The complaint also refers to statements concerning “Love Jihad,” which it characterises as an anti-Muslim conspiracy theory employed to create fear and hostility toward the minority community.

The organisation contends that these statements presented Muslims as existential threats to Hindu religious practices, women, and sacred spaces. According to the complaint, such rhetoric was intended to generate insecurity and resentment among voters and to encourage political support on explicitly religious grounds.

CJP argues that references to attacks on shrines, threats to deities, and dangers allegedly posed by “jihadis” served no legitimate electoral purpose and instead functioned as deliberate provocations designed to heighten communal tensions.

Electoral and constitutional concerns

The complaint states that Chattopadhyay’s speech repeatedly connected electoral success with the protection of religious symbols and practices. According to CJP, this transformed religious identity into a determining factor in electoral decision-making and thereby violated the principle that elections in a secular republic must remain free from religious appeals.

The organisation further alleges that the speech portrayed minorities as hostile actors while presenting the BJP as the sole defender of Hindu culture and safety. Such framing, according to the complaint, creates a climate of fear and exclusion that is incompatible with constitutional guarantees of equality and equal citizenship.

The complaint also contends that repeated references to “Love Jihad” and attacks on sacred sites created an atmosphere conducive to communal hostility and social unrest.

Legal provisions invoked

As in the complaint against Majumdar, CJP alleges violations of the Model Code of Conduct as well as Sections 123(2), 123(3), 123(3A), and 125 of the Representation of the People Act.

The organisation argues that the speech constituted an appeal to vote on religious grounds, promoted enmity between communities, and amounted to undue influence over voters through fear-based narratives.

CJP additionally invokes Sections 196, 197(1), 299, 352, and 353 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, alleging that the speech promoted hostility between groups, attacked constitutional values, insulted a religious community, and was likely to provoke public disorder.

The complaint relies on the same line of Supreme Court jurisprudence cited in the complaint against Majumdar, arguing that religious appeals during elections and speech targeting religious communities undermine democratic principles and constitutional values.

Common themes across both complaints

A striking feature of both complaints is CJP’s argument that the speeches were not isolated political remarks but formed part of a broader pattern of electoral mobilisation through religious polarisation.

In both cases, the organisation alleges that Muslim communities were portrayed as threats to Hindu culture, religious practices, and public life. Both complaints assert that references to demographic realities, religious symbols, festivals, and communal narratives were used to create divisions between communities and influence voter behaviour.

CJP further argues that both speeches were delivered during an active election period when the Model Code of Conduct was in force and therefore carried heightened implications for the integrity of the electoral process.

The entire complaint may be read here:

Reliefs sought by CJP

In both complaints, CJP has requested election authorities and police officials to initiate immediate action against the individuals concerned.

CJP has sought issuance of show-cause notices for alleged violations of the Model Code of Conduct, registration of FIRs under provisions of the Representation of the People Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and action against event organisers.

It has also requested that the individuals concerned be censured and barred from further election campaigning, that dissemination of the speeches be restricted, and that authorities disclose whether the events were videographed in accordance with Supreme Court directions relating to hate speech monitoring.

Related

Three Inflammatory Speeches, within two months prompt CJP to file complaint with Minority Commission and seek intervention

CJP files 5 hate speech complaints before CEO Maharashtra as violated MCC

CJP files 3 MCC violation complaints with CEO Maharashtra against Suresh Chavhanke for hate speech

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Neither the government nor the Commission has answered this question.

Without conducting any proper study on illegal migration, how and why are they undertaking a potentially harmful exercise such as the SIR? Even the Supreme Court, while examining the constitutional validity of the SIR, unfortunately did not ask this fundamental question.

Thus, three-fourths of the SIR process was ‘completed’ without any respect for due process or empirical foundation whatsoever. After as many as 75 million Indians had already been pushed out of the electoral rolls, the Modi government, on May 26—just a day before the Supreme Court was due to deliver its verdict in the SIR matter —constituted a “High-Level Committee on Demographic Change” under the chairmanship of retired Justice Prakash Prabhakar Naik.

A close look at the committee’s composition, its members, and its terms of reference makes it abundantly clear that this is, yet another, carefully plotted political-bureaucratic plot designed to perpetuate the harassment of Indian Muslims. First, as Justice Prakash himself has reportedly admitted, he possesses no expertise whatsoever in this subject. He was also not informed in advance about the assignment.

Second, the other members of the committee include a retired bureaucrat, Durga Shankar Mishra; a retired police officer, Balaji Srivastava; and Shamika Ravi, an economic adviser to the Prime Minister. This is the same scholar who recently dismissed concerns about the rupee falling to 100 against the dollar by saying that it is “just a number.” Shamika also has the unique distinction of being the daughter of none less than former Tamil Nadu governor, R.N.Ravi, notorious for his attacks on federalism in that state. So critical has Ravi been to the services of the New Delhi regime that, in March 2026, he was transferred as the governor of West Bengal where he oversaw not just the notorious SIR but also the recently concluded ‘elections’ to the State Assembly!

Most strikingly, in a committee specifically constituted to study demographic change, there is not a single expert on the subject, demography. Every member appears to have been selected for political allegiance and loyalty rather than for any recognised expertise in population studies.

The terms of reference assigned to the committee raise even more serious concerns. Notably, the committee has not even been asked to investigate whether there is, in fact, any large-scale and systematic illegal migration into India from neighbouring countries.

Terms of Reference Designed to Officialise Propaganda

Instead of first establishing whether such large-scale, organised, and malicious illegal migration is actually taking place, the committee has already proceeded on the assumption that it is. The questions it has been asked to study include:

i) To comprehensively deliberate upon the challenges arising from demographic changes, including illegal immigration.

ii) To study the possible causes of such demographic changes, such as cross-border activities (including illegal immigration), economic opportunities, and other socio-environmental factors.

iii) To identify the underlying factors behind these changes, which include illegal immigration, abnormal settlement patterns, and orchestrated migration

iv) To analyse structural population changes at the level of religious or social communities, particularly where they deviate from broader trends.

v) To recommend a streamlined and permanent operational mechanism for the legal, fair, and time-bound identification, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants already residing in the country.

vi) To recommend an appropriate institutional mechanism to strengthen border management, population stabilization, and identification systems for the continuous monitoring of such trends.

The committee has been instructed to study these issues and submit its report and recommendations within one year.

Thus, it is clear that the Modi government’s agenda effectively treats as established facts several partisan and communal claims that the RSS and the BJP have long propagated regarding demographic change in India. These include:

• That the Muslim population in India is growing disproportionately, not only because Muslims allegedly do not practise population control, but also because of illegal migration from Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries.
• That this demographic growth is part of a deliberate project to reduce the proportion of Hindus and eventually transform India into a Muslim-majority nation.
• That this constitutes an international conspiracy in which Indian Muslims are complicit, making the entire Muslim community suspect. The only way to defeat this conspiracy, according to this narrative, is to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra.

A careful reading of the committee’s terms of reference makes it clear that it has been constituted primarily to validate these long-standing falsehoods and lend official legitimacy to a campaign of communal polarisation.

This propaganda has already succeeded in fostering a deeply anti-Muslim and fascistic social mind-set across large sections of the country. That is why, even when large numbers of Hindus lacking proper documentation are themselves being excluded through exercises such as the SIR, a narrative is being constructed that Modi is protecting Hindus from Muslims. As a result, poor Hindus are being persuaded to support policies that ultimately harm their own interests.

Economic Refugees or Illegal Conspirators?

Viewed in perspective, although both the Congress and the BJP have governed this country over the past seventy-seven years, it is unlikely that illegal migration into India has ever occurred on the scale of millions. At most, it may have involved thousands or perhaps lakhs of people entering the country in search of livelihoods.

Moreover, since around 2005, Bangladesh has recorded rapid economic progress, particularly in sectors such as ready-made garment exports. In fact, its per capita income has, at times, marginally surpassed that of India. As a result, illegal migration from Bangladesh into India has declined significantly.

This is precisely why neither the Election Commission nor the Modi government is willing to answer a simple question: in the states where the SIR exercise has already been completed, including Bihar and West Bengal, how many illegal migrants were actually identified through the process? Was it hundreds, thousands, or lakhs? No answer has been forthcoming. The Supreme Court, too, has not pressed the Commission on this question.

Meanwhile, reports over the past two weeks indicate that the BJP governments in West Bengal and Gujarat have identified around three to four thousand impoverished Bangladeshi nationals who were either overstaying their visas or residing in India without proper documentation. This is not fundamentally different from the thousands of Indians who attempt to enter the United States illegally every year in search of economic opportunities and are subsequently detained.

When Indian Hindus migrate illegally to the United States in significant numbers, they are not doing so as part of a demographic invasion aimed at altering America’s racial composition or taking over the country. By the same logic, the few thousand undocumented workers who may have migrated from Bangladesh to India are economic refugees in search of survival, not conspirators engaged in a grand political project.

Yet the purpose of the “Committee on Demographic Change” appears to be precisely to brand Muslims as perpetual illegals, keep them under a constant cloud of suspicion, and reduce them to a condition of permanent insecurity and uncertainty.

In reality, neither illegal migration by foreign Muslims nor the growth of India’s Muslim population poses the demographic challenge facing the country.

India’s population challenge lies elsewhere entirely. By deploying fascistic political strategies and manufactured fears, the Modi government is obscuring the real issues confronting the nation.

The Myth of Muslim Population Growth

If the BJP were to think about the interests of the country, even once, rather than viewing every issue through the prism of partisan advantage, a few realities would become immediately apparent:

• India is not facing a population explosion.
• Population growth is not the primary cause of poverty in India. On the contrary, India’s large youth population presents a historic opportunity for rapid economic growth.
• The rate of growth of the Muslim population has been declining sharply over the past two decades, and in fact has been falling faster than the growth rate of the Hindu population.

These facts are clearly borne out by the third, fourth, and fifth rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), conducted under the aegis of the Government of India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as well as by the population census reports of 1991, 2001, and 2011.

India’s Population Growth Rate Is Declining

One of the biggest myths surrounding India’s demographic situation is that because India has one of the largest populations in the world, its population growth rate is spiralling out of control and therefore requires urgent and stringent intervention.

The reality is precisely the opposite. India’s population growth rate is steadily and healthily declining, not increasing.

The most widely used measure for assessing population growth is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR). TFR refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to give birth to during her reproductive years, generally between the ages of 15 and 49.

At the time of Independence, India’s TFR stood at approximately 5.9. In other words, an average Indian woman gave birth to nearly six children during her lifetime. Had that trend continued unchecked, India’s population today could have reached 2.5 to 3 billion people.

However, from the very beginning, India placed considerable emphasis on family welfare programmes, awareness campaigns, access to contraception, and reproductive health services. Wherever awareness increased, healthcare became accessible, and women gained greater educational and economic empowerment, fertility rates began to decline rapidly.

According to the 2015–16 National Family Health Survey, India’s average TFR had fallen to 2.3. Compared to 1951, this represents a decline of well over fifty per cent in the rate of population growth.

Women’s Empowerment, Not Coercive Laws, Drives Fertility Decline

Apart from the excesses associated with forced sterilisation during the Emergency, India’s family planning programme has largely relied on persuasion, access to healthcare services, and women’s empowerment rather than coercive legal measures.

This is not unique to India. Across the world, every successful population stabilisation programme has followed the same path. At the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994, India reaffirmed its commitment to this rights-based approach.

The variation in fertility rates across Indian states further reinforces this conclusion.

According to the 2015–16 NFHS, while India’s average TFR stood at 2.3, relatively developed states such as Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, and Gujarat recorded fertility rates of only 1.7 to 1.8—well below the national average.

In stark contrast, Bihar recorded a TFR of 3.4 and Uttar Pradesh 2.7, both substantially above the national average. The difference is not difficult to understand. States with lower fertility rates generally exhibit higher levels of female literacy, educational attainment, women’s participation in public life, and overall socio-economic development.

Indeed, the fertility rate among Hindus in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is higher than the fertility rate among Muslims in many southern states. In other words, Muslim women in the southern states are, on average, having fewer children than Hindu women in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

That is precisely why the phrase “Development is the Best Contraceptive” has become a widely accepted principle across the world. Development reduces fertility rates far more effectively than punitive laws ever can.

Equally important is the finding of the 2020–21 National Family Health Survey that 54 per cent of Indian women have only two children, while 76 per cent of women married during the past decade have expressed no desire to have a second child.

The implication is clear. When women are empowered to make decisions about their own bodies and reproductive lives, and when families become more democratic and egalitarian, population growth declines naturally without the need for coercion or state-imposed restrictions.

Muslim Population Growth Is Declining Faster Than Hindu Population Growth

Another important fact revealed by the National Family Health Surveys is that, over the past three decades, the fertility rate among Muslims has been declining faster than that among Hindus.

According to the third round of the NFHS conducted in 2005–06, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) among Hindus stood at 2.59, while the corresponding figure for Muslims was 3.4.

A decade later, according to the fourth round of the NFHS, the Hindu TFR had fallen from 2.59 to 2.13—a decline of 0.46 points.

During the same period, the Muslim TFR fell from 3.4 to 2.61—a decline of 0.79 points.

In other words, although the Muslim fertility rate remains higher than the Hindu fertility rate, it has been declining much more rapidly over the past decade. Consequently, the rate of Muslim population growth has also been falling significantly faster than the corresponding rate among Hindus.

In 2005, the gap between Muslim and Hindu fertility rates stood at 0.81. By 2015, that gap had narrowed to just 0.4. If this trend continues, the difference between Hindu and Muslim fertility rates is likely to become negligible within the next decade.

Equally significant is the fact that fertility rates among Muslims have been falling most rapidly in states with substantial Muslim populations, including Kerala, Assam, West Bengal, and Jammu & Kashmir.

The government’s own demographic data therefore establishes three important conclusions:

• India’s population growth rate is declining in a healthy and sustainable manner.
• The rate of Muslim population growth is declining far more rapidly than is commonly portrayed in public discourse.
• Wherever socio-economic development has advanced, fertility rates have declined across all communities, irrespective of whether they are Hindu or Muslim.

The logical conclusion is straightforward. If the government is genuinely concerned about population stabilisation, its focus should be on education, employment, healthcare, family welfare programmes, access to reproductive health services, and above all, women’s empowerment.

The Real Challenge Is Not Population Growth—It Is Population Decline

In fact, both the NFHS findings and demographic research from around the world point to a very different concern. The challenge confronting many societies today is not unchecked population growth, but declining population growth.

According to a study published in The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, India’s population, currently around 1.4 billion, may continue to grow and reach approximately 1.6 billion by 2048. However, because fertility rates are steadily declining, India’s population is projected to begin shrinking after that point.

By the end of the century, India’s population is expected to decline substantially.

Even more significant than the overall decline in numbers is the changing age structure of the population. The proportion of elderly citizens is expected to rise sharply, while the share of the working-age population will steadily decrease.

This will have profound economic consequences. A smaller workforce will be required to support a much larger elderly population. Governments will face growing pressure to provide pensions, healthcare, and social security, while economies may increasingly depend on migration and labour inflows from younger populations elsewhere.

These are the demographic challenges that demand serious attention.

The issue before India is not an imaginary population explosion. The real question is how to create productive employment opportunities for the country’s vast youth population and harness this demographic advantage while it still exists.

At the same time, policymakers must begin preparing for the economic, political, and social consequences of an ageing society that will emerge over the coming decades.

Instead of confronting these real challenges, communal fearmongering and demographic myths are being used to divert public attention from the issues that genuinely matter.

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The post High-Level Committee on Demographic Change (HLC-DC): Another Offensive on Indian Muslims! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

However, Reddy was not completely off the mark in how he was indeed referring to the Nazis, in one way. The comic-book organisation Hydra is shown to have links with Nazi Germany and is associated with characters including Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, a former Nazi officer. This fictional construction matches CM Reddy’s description of an elite squad that could “assassinate anyone”. Hitler’s actual state-terror apparatus and paramilitary organisations consisted primarily of the SS (Schutzstaffel), the Gestapo (Secret State Police), and the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units).

In actual World War 2 history, the use of the word ‘Hydra’ was for Operation Hydra, a 1943 bombing raid carried out by the British Royal Air Force against a German rocket research facility.

Reddy comments spark fury

The remarks by Reddy were made during a public event in Bengaluru on Sunday. He was asked about the success and methods of the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA), a specialised task force established in July 2024 to clear illegal encroachments from the city’s lakes, parks, and storm water channels.

While defending the agency’s aggressive demolition drives, Reddy provided an explanation for its name. “Hydra, the word, is Hitler’s favourite word. His core team was called Hydra, which could assassinate anyone. So, I took inspiration from Hitler and named it HYDRAA,” the CM stated, mixing up history with movies.

He further justified the scale of the demolitions by drawing parallels to war zones: “I have demolished like anything. If you see the visuals from Iran, you can compare them with Israel or any such demolitions caused by war, and compare them with these demolitions carried out by HYDRAA.” Israel recently flattened the Palestinian territory of Gaza after its military actions killed over 60,000 people there — an action CM Reddy’s party Congress has pointedly criticised, while the BJP-led NDA government has also called for peace in the region.

As for Reddy’s HYDRAA, it was established in 2024 and is headed by an IPS officer. It is the designated Telangana government agency responsible for protecting government assets, lakes, and public land in Hyderabad from encroachments, as well as managing urban disaster response.

The CM’s comments drew severe criticism from all ‘opposition parties’ including the ruling BJP regime, who seized on the invocation of the German dictator and war-zone destruction to condemn the Congress-led state government’s governance style. Union minister G Kishan Reddy, who is the BJP’s Secunderabad MP, said the Congress’s “dangerous Hitler-Emergency mind-set” was “out in the open.” Reddy’s remarks are particularly ironic given the fact that the BJP, and its parent ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have open admiration for the ideology of both Hitler and Mussolini.

Read The Ideology of the RSS is both Hate-Driven & Supremacist here.

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) also launched a scathing attack, describing Revanth Reddy as the “new Hitler”.  Worse, the party that gave birth to the Telanga state after years of agitation alleged that the homes of lakhs of poor and middle-class people have been demolished under his administration. The state government says HYDRAA has successfully reclaimed land worth over ₹1 lakh crore from “wealthy” encroachers alone.

Working president of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) K.T. Rama Rao has criticised Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy for his comments linking HYDRAA’s functioning to the actions of German dictator Adolf Hitler, adding that the statement reveals the ideological foundation behind the Congress Government’s demolition-driven governance model.

Reacting to the remarks made at The Hindu Huddle in Bengaluru, Mr. Rama Rao alleged that the Chief Minister’s comments had exposed his authoritarian and fascist mind-set. Hitler is clearly Mr. Revanth Reddy’s inspiration. HYDRAA reflects a style of governance that glorifies force, intimidation and demolitions. The people of Telangana have experienced these authoritarian tendencies first-hand and now the Chief Minister has openly acknowledged the inspiration behind them,” KTR remarked.

Alleging that the HYDRAA (Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency) established by the Congress Government was functioning like an “assassination agency”, the BRS leader said Telangana people were aware of CM’s “authoritarian nature”.

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