The journalists, Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan, said they had gone to cover the inauguration of Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital when police personnel stopped them. Shaheen alleged that she attempted to ask Gupta a question but was prevented from doing so and was taken to Saket police station along with her colleague.

Two women freelance journalists have alleged that Delhi police slapped and beat them up because they wanted to ask questions at an event featuring Union home minister Amit Shah and Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta and that the assault was exacerbated because they are both Muslim pic.twitter.com/zWJ8RTC1eh

— The Telegraph (@ttindia) September 4, 2026

What followed, according to the journalists, was not merely detention but physical assault. In a video released by 4PM News Network, Shaheen alleged that she and Nafisa were beaten and subjected to mental harassment at the police station. She displayed injury marks on Nafisa’s body and alleged that the assault became more severe after police personnel asked their names and learnt that they were Muslims.

“Delhi Police Assaulted Us, But the Assault Intensified After They Asked Our Religion and Learned Our Muslim Names,” Says 4PM Journalist Nafisa Khan. pic.twitter.com/AETfmoWVXA

— FOEJ Media (@FoejMedia) September 3, 2026

Newslaundry also reported the journalists’ allegation that Shaheen was caught by police while attempting to question the Chief Minister and taken to the police station. The most serious allegation made by Shaheen is that the assault intensified after police personnel heard the surname “Khan”. That claim cannot simply be treated as an extension of the dispute over the parked scooter.

Shaheen Khan alleges that Nafisa’s health deteriorated following the alleged police brutality. She claims she heard police personnel say, “If she’s dying, let her die,” while Nafisa was in distress, and alleges that police personnel did not come forward to provide her medical… pic.twitter.com/WLo2g6CQqu

— FOEJ Media (@FoejMedia) September 3, 2026

Journalists’ organisations demand action

At the time of the publication, no case had reportedly been registered in connection with the allegations. Police said senior officers were in touch with the two journalists. The absence of an FIR is significant given the nature of the allegations being made: two Muslim women say they were physically assaulted after being taken to a police station, and one of them has alleged that religious identity influenced the severity of the assault.

#delhipolice पर महिला पत्रकारों को बुरी तरह पीटने का आरोप है. आरोप महिला पुलिसकर्मी पर है.

पुलिस प्रशासन चुप क्यों है? प्रशासन को बताना चाहिए कि कल दोपहर 11 बजे साकेत थाने में क्या हुआ? अगर कुछ नहीं हुआ तो कह दें पुलिस ने कमरा बंद कर महिला पत्रकारों को नहीं पीटा. लेकिन सब चुप… pic.twitter.com/BA3L4RZXrj

— Rajat Pandey (@RajatpandeyJF) September 4, 2026

The allegations have drawn a strong response from the press community. The Press Club of India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Delhi Union of Journalists, Press Association and Kerala Union of Working Journalists issued a joint statement condemning what they described as the “brutal assault” of the two journalists. They demanded punitive action against the police officials allegedly responsible and called upon Delhi Police Commissioner Anurag Kumar to ensure a free and fair investigation.

The Press Club of India, Indian Women’s Press Corps, Delhi Union of Journalists, Press Association and Kerala Union of Working Journalists have condemned the alleged assault of freelance journalists Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan by Delhi Police personnel posted at Saket Police… pic.twitter.com/CnPFjM9V3A

— United News of India (@uniindianews) September 3, 2026

Political leaders have also criticised the alleged assault. AAP Delhi chief Saurabh Bharadwaj condemned the incident, while Congress leader Pawan Khera described the alleged assault as “utterly reprehensible” and questioned whether Delhi was becoming a “police state”. Both highlighted the allegation that the treatment of the journalists intensified after their Muslim identity became known.

What are these horrifying visuals coming out of a Delhi police station?

Women journalists being beaten and thrashed for asking questions about the Delhi CM.

And when the police allegedly discovered that one of these journalists was Muslim, the assault intensified.

Is this a… https://t.co/jHH7E6metC

— Pawan Khera ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) September 3, 2026

The way two women reporters of @4pmnews_network were beaten by police is very shameful.

I feel all other news reporters & journalists should takeup the matter.

BJP Govt always tests things in Delhi’s Laboratory and then it’s scaled up in every state.

— Saurabh Bharadwaj (@Saurabh_MLAgk) September 4, 2026

AAP leader Somnath Bharti separately urged Lieutenant Governor Taranjit Singh Sandhu to intervene and ensure action against officials found responsible.

This is not done, Shaheen, in addition of being a journalist, is a resident of my assembly constituency and I am aghast at this development. I request Honble @LtGovDelhi to intervene and fix accountability of the involved officers. A FIR must be lodged and responsible officers be… https://t.co/UBIze5FdrK

— Somnath Bharti सोमनाथ भारती (@attorneybharti) September 3, 2026

The FIR had to be fought for at the police station

The response to the alleged assault did not end with the journalists leaving the Saket Police Station. Instead, the early hours of September 4 saw activists and political workers remain outside the same police station demanding that Delhi Police formally register Shaheen and Nafisa’s complaint against the officers they accused of assaulting them.

All India Students’ Association (AISA) president Neha Bora was among those who joined a sit-in at the Saket Police Station at around 1 am. According to Siasat, activists alleged that the police were initially refusing even to receive the women’s complaint. Bora publicly demanded that an FIR be registered against the police personnel involved.

With Shaheen and Nafisa who faced brutal assault at the hands of Delhi Police today.. we will ensure the FIR is filed against the communal and violent police personnel involved.

This is nothing but a communal targeting of two Muslim Women Journalists simply for reporting the… pic.twitter.com/xCpBqGCwzY

— Neha (@neha_aisa) September 3, 2026

The pressure intensified when Congress workers from the party’s Minority Department reached the police station in large numbers and raised slogans against the Delhi Police. The complaint was eventually registered around 3 am, according to 4PM News Network, after Shaheen insisted that an FIR be filed against the accused officers and that they be immediately suspended.

Saket Police Station: FIR Delay Sparks Protest by Journalists & Lawyers#SaketPoliceStation #DelhiPolice #FIRDelay #JournalistsProtest #LawyersProtest #ViralVideo pic.twitter.com/ADpKnKYnpt

— Savera Times Haryana (@Savera_Haryana) September 4, 2026

Delhi: Female Journalist Confronts Police Over FIR Registration at Saket Station#delhi #saketpolicestation #delhipolice #femalejournalist #firregistration #viralvideo pic.twitter.com/XbEgHFVJUD

— The Savera Times (@thesavera_timep) September 4, 2026

VVIP security cannot become a shield against accountability

Delhi Police has denied the allegations in their entirety. DCP (South) Anant Mittal described the journalists’ claims as “factually incorrect and misleading”. According to the police, the two women had parked their scooter near the hospital in a way that obstructed the designated VVIP movement route during the visit of the Home Minister and Chief Minister.

The police said the journalists were repeatedly instructed to remove the vehicle and clear the route but allegedly refused to comply. They were subsequently taken to the local police station “for further enquiry”. The police specifically denied that the women were assaulted for asking questions to the Chief Minister, calling that allegation “false, misleading and baseless”. That explanation, however, does not by itself dispose of the allegations of physical assault.

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3,404 SIR Forms Found at Kharghar Xerox Shop: CJP, VFD and BCS demands answers from Maharashtra SEC

Allahabad HC quashes NSA detention of Aakriti Chaudhary, questions ‘concocted’ State narrative in Noida workers’ protest case

Six-year-old detained during Patna teacher aspirants’ protest, parents allege police assault

Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest

The post Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Sonya Gill was a member of the CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee and the Mumbai district secretariat since long, a member of the AIDWA central executive committee for nearly two decades, the Maharashtra state general secretary of AIDWA for three terms from 2010 to 2019, and state vice president later. Along with her husband, the renowned journalist P Sainath, she was the co-founder and trustee of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).

Sonya hailed from a Punjabi Sikh family. Her father was an Army officer and mother a home-maker. Sonya was born on September 27, 1955, and studied at the Mater Dei School in Delhi where she excelled in academics, and was also adjudged the best all-rounder. She graduated from the S P College in Pune. From 1976 to 1980, she did her MA and MPhil in Sociology at the JNU in Delhi. She won A grades in both. It is in JNU that she was exposed to Left ideology. She then taught Sociology at the Sophia College in Mumbai for a year in 1981-82, and then worked at the Foundation for Research in Community Health (FRCH). Health was always one of the important subjects of her interest and study.

Sonya joined the AIDWA and became active in the women’s movement in 1989. She began her work among women in central Mumbai’s working-class areas in Worli BDD Chawls, Jijamata Nagar, and Delisle Road, under the guidance of Ahilya Rangnekar and Prabha Sawant. She was elected President of the AIDWA Mumbai District Committee in 1994. In this capacity, she paid meticulous attention to building up local units of AIDWA across the city. She also made special efforts in building joint activities with other secular, democratic and progressive women’s organisations in Mumbai. She remained a pillar of the Mumbai AIDWA till the end.

She was later elected to the AIDWA Maharashtra State Committee, then its State Secretariat, and then as State General Secretary in 2010. She ably carried out this responsibility for three terms till 2019. She moved widely in several districts and helped to strengthen the organisation. She was elected to the AIDWA Central Executive Committee (CEC) from 2007 up to 2023. Her contribution to the discussions on reproductive health, population policies and other health-related issues was very valuable. It helped AIDWA in formulating its positions on health issues at the national level. Sonya represented AIDWA in the Jan Swasthya Abhiyaan (JSA) and played an important role in bringing out the gender perspectives in its campaigns.

Sonya joined the CPI (M) in 1990; was elected to the CPI (M) Mumbai district committee in 1997, to the district secretariat in 2005, and to the Maharashtra state committee in 2012.

Sonya married P Sainath on March 29, 1986. They met when they were studying in the JNU.  Their extraordinarily strong four-decade long personal and political partnership came to an abrupt end with their evening walk together on August 25, when Sonya suddenly collapsed. None of us have ever seen Sainath so shattered as we did at Sonya’s funeral. Her contribution to PARI was immense, and it deserves a separate account of its own.

Sonya battled her serious illness for the last few years with magnificent courage. Words can never describe what she and Sainath went through in that period. But through it all, her commitment, her grace, and her radiant smile never left her even once. Not a word was ever heard from her about her pain or her difficulties. P Sainath says, “That was true even at home. In 40 years, I never heard her complain even once about her health, her pain, or narrate her unhappiness with it. She was extremely positive each time – after major surgeries, she’d be back at work, first online, then in office.” She continued to participate in the activities of AIDWA and CPI(M) till the end, right up to the nationwide Jail Bharo struggle in Mumbai on August 10, 2026. All this was courage and fortitude of the very highest order.

Sonya and I worked together in AIDWA for 32 years since 1994 when I joined the women’s movement after being relieved from the SFI. We worked closely together at all levels, and for one term as President and General Secretary of the Maharashtra AIDWA. It was a joy to work with her. It was inspiring to see her grit when facing the police during protests. It was so exciting when we travelled ticketless from Mumbai to Delhi with hundreds of women for the All India rallies. Songs, slogans and laughter reverberated in the train. Sonya easily melted into the bevy of women in the train, and became part of a collective strength.

Remarkable Comrade

Sonya was a grassroots organiser in the truest sense of the term. Her politics was rooted in the lives and struggles of ordinary people, particularly working-class women. She diligently took up local issues of women, organising struggles, mobilising them for action. This helped women to realise their own strength and they became capable of raising their voice against injustice in various bastis of Mumbai. For decades, she devoted herself to strengthening the collective struggles of women for equality, dignity and justice.

Sonya also paid meticulous attention to the ideological and political training of women activists. Developing politically conscious, confident and independent women activists was for her the key.  She constantly encouraged younger comrades to understand the broader political and economic forces behind the problems faced by women. She explained that struggles over water, ration, housing, education, employment, health, and violence had to be connected to the larger struggle against class exploitation, caste oppression and patriarchy. She strongly opposed communal and casteist forces and emphasised the unity of women.

Sonya was an extraordinary combination of ideological firmness and personal warmth. Her quiet determination and ability to encourage others was exemplary. She did not seek the limelight. Her satisfaction came from seeing other women emerge as confident leaders. She believed in the capacity of ordinary women to transform their own lives and society.

Her death leaves a profound void. But a true tribute to Sonya cannot be just words of sorrow; it must carry forward the work to which she dedicated her life. It must mean strengthening the women’s movement, building struggles of the exploited and the oppressed, defending democratic and secular values, and fighting communalism, casteism, and patriarchy.

Comrade Sonya, the communist, never separated women’s emancipation from radical social transformation. She understood that revolutionary work requires patience, discipline, and sacrifice. She leaves behind not only memories, but also a rich collective of women activists.

Her absence will always be deeply felt by AIDWA, by CPI(M), by PARI and by innumerable comrades and friends. But her legacy will live wherever women organise, wherever workers and peasants raise their fists, and wherever people struggle for a just and equal society!

Comrade Sonya Gill, Lal Salaam! Comrade Sonya Gill Amar Rahe!

Related:

Adieu Comrade Thankappan – Javed Anand, Roma, Teesta Setalvad

The post Comrade Sonya Gill: A life dedicated to the struggle for equality and justice appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Election Commission and state election authorities have, however, clarified that exclusion from the draft electoral roll does not automatically amount to permanent deletion. The draft publication has opened the statutory process for claims, objections, verification and hearings, giving eligible voters an opportunity to seek restoration or inclusion of their names before the final electoral roll is published.

The claims and objections period commenced on August 31 and will remain open until September 30. Election authorities will examine the applications, objections and related cases until October 29, following which the final electoral rolls are scheduled to be published on November 4, 2026.

The draft electoral roll for Maharashtra has been published. #SIR @ECISVEEP pic.twitter.com/wSvGgY9dyD

— ChiefElectoralOffice (@CEO_Maharashtra) August 31, 2026

State-wide draft roll: over 7.71 crore included

Before the commencement of the SIR exercise, Maharashtra had 9,78,54,049 registered electors. According to the draft electoral rolls, 7,71,65,562 electors, representing approximately 78.86 per cent of the pre-SIR electorate, have been included. A total of 2,06,88,487 electors, or around 21.14 per cent of the earlier electorate, could not be included in the draft roll at this stage. The authorities have emphasised that the figure of 2.07 crore should not be interpreted as the final number of voters who will ultimately be removed from the electoral rolls. The present draft remains subject to the claims and objections process, hearings and verification of documents.

Major urban districts account for largest share of exclusions

Pune, Thane and Mumbai Suburban have emerged as the three districts with the largest number of electors not included in the draft rolls. Pune has recorded 28,66,481 names outside the draft list, followed closely by Thane with 28,59,377 electors and Mumbai Suburban with 26,58,202 electors. Together, these three districts account for 83,84,060 electors, constituting approximately 40.5 per cent of the total state-wide number not included in the draft.

Other districts with substantial numbers of excluded electors include Nagpur with 14,43,267, Nashik with 10,27,792, Mumbai City with 9,50,720, Palghar with 6,68,709, Aurangabad with 6,07,660 and Raigad with 5,84,118.

Pune’s electorate falls from 90.80 lakh to 62.13 lakh in draft stage

In Pune district, the electoral roll before the SIR exercise contained 90,80,173 registered voters. The newly published draft roll contains 62,13,692 electors, leaving 28,66,481 names outside the draft at the present stage. Of the voters included in the Pune draft electoral roll, 31,51,297 are male electors, 30,62,012 are female electors and 383 are transgender electors.

The draft rolls for Pune were published in the presence of district and election officials, including Collector Jitendra Dudi, Deputy District Election Officer Minal Kalaskar and Tehsildar Sheetal Mule, along with representatives of recognised political parties.

The revision process is being conducted with October 1, 2026, as the qualifying date.

Reasons for exclusion: Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate Categories (ASDD)

The state-wide list of electors not included in the draft has been classified into several categories based on findings during the verification and enumeration process. Of the 2,06,88,487 electors not included across Maharashtra, approximately 75.52 lakh have been classified as Absent or Not Found, 76.80 lakh as Permanently Shifted, 34.81 lakh as Dead, 17.63 lakh as Already Enrolled Elsewhere or Duplicate, and approximately 2.23 lakh under other categories.

Election authorities have clarified that these classifications are not final determinations regarding the elector’s voting status. A person classified as duplicate at one location, for instance, may remain validly enrolled elsewhere. Similarly, an elector marked absent or not found may have been unavailable during verification and may still be entitled to seek inclusion after establishing eligibility.

Pune’s ASD list contains over 28.66 lakh electors

In Pune district, all 28,66,481 electors not included in the draft have been categorised under the ASD list, covering electors marked as Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate, along with certain other classifications.

The district-wise breakup includes 1,43,975 duplicate entries, 3,12,048 deceased electors, 17,83,058 voters classified as absent and 5,91,038 voters classified as shifted. Another 36,362 entries have been placed under other categories. The large number of absent voters forms the biggest component of Pune’s excluded entries, followed by those identified as having shifted from their registered addresses.

More than 13.32 lakh Pune cases identified for hearings

The SIR exercise in Pune has also identified 13,32,418 cases requiring hearings before the concerned election authorities. Of these, 5,77,821 cases involve discrepancies identified in electoral details, while 7,54,597 cases concern electors for whom no mapping or linkage with the 2002 electoral roll could be established.

Such cases will be examined by the concerned Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) at the respective roll-section level. Electors whose records contain discrepancies, as well as those marked with “No Linkage” because their details could not be connected with the earlier electoral rolls, will be given an opportunity to participate in the prescribed hearing process.

The final decision regarding retention or inclusion of such names will be taken after the concerned verification and hearing procedures are completed.

Claims and objections open until September 30

The publication of the draft electoral roll has formally opened the claims and objections period across Maharashtra.

Eligible electors whose names are missing from the draft electoral roll can seek inclusion by submitting Form 6 along with the prescribed declaration and supporting requirements. Form 6 can also be used by eligible new voters who have attained, or will attain, the age of 18 years on or before October 1, 2026. Any person seeking to object to the inclusion of a name in the electoral roll may submit Form 7.

Form 8 can be used for correction or updating of electoral details, including matters relating to name, address, age, gender and other particulars, and can also be used for matters concerning the Elector Photo Identity Card (EPIC). The authorities will process claims, objections and related notices from August 31 until October 29.

Hearings to be conducted by EROs and AEROs

The state-wide claims and objections process will be handled through the election registration machinery at the Assembly constituency and local level.

Maharashtra has 288 Electoral Registration Officers, corresponding to its Assembly constituencies, along with more than 7,000 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers who will be involved in handling claims, objections, notices and hearings. Electors whose names remain unmapped with the 2002-2004 electoral rolls, as well as those whose records have been mapped but contain logical or factual discrepancies, may be issued notices and given an opportunity to submit prescribed or other valid documents. The documents and explanations submitted by such electors will be examined before a final decision is taken on their inclusion or retention in the electoral roll.

Weekly publication of claims and objections lists

During the claims and objections period, constituency-wise lists of applications and objections received are expected to be prepared every week.

These lists will be made available through the websites of the respective District Election Officers and the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra, allowing political parties, electors and the public to monitor the progress of the revision process.

Confusion reported over online search and changed part numbers

The publication of the draft rolls was initially accompanied by difficulties for voters attempting to verify their names online. While electoral-roll PDFs were uploaded on the Election Commission’s platforms, voters reported difficulty in directly searching the draft rolls through their EPIC or voter identification numbers. In several cases, electors had to download the relevant electoral roll PDF and manually search for their names.

The draft PDFs also did not initially carry photographs, adding to the difficulty of identification in some cases. Another source of confusion was the change in polling-station part numbers between the existing electoral rolls and the SIR draft rolls. The altered numbering led some voters to believe that their names had been removed when, in certain cases, their electoral details had merely shifted to another part or polling-station section.

Election authorities subsequently indicated that the online search facility was being developed and would be enabled to facilitate easier access for voters.

Pune adds seven polling stations, taking total to 8,424

The SIR exercise has also resulted in changes to the polling-station infrastructure in Pune district.

The total number of polling stations in the district has increased by seven and now stands at 8,424. Bhor Assembly constituency has the highest number of polling stations in Pune district at 567. It is followed by Chinchwad with 560 polling stations and Hadapsar with 525 polling stations.

The constituency-wise distribution of polling stations in Pune district shows considerable variation across the 21 Assembly constituencies. Bhor has the highest number of polling stations at 567, followed by Chinchwad with 560 and Hadapsar with 525. Khadakwasla has 502 polling stations, while Bhosari has 491 and Shirur has 459. Vadgaon Sheri has 438 polling stations, Purandar 413, Maval 402, Pimpri 397, Khed-Alandi 393 and Baramati 388. Kothrud has 387 polling stations, while Junnar has 356 and Ambegaon and Parvati have 344 each. Indapur has 339, Daund 315, Pune Cantonment 270, Kasba Peth 268 and Shivajinagar has the lowest number at 266 polling stations.

Polling stations marginally rationalised cross Maharashtra

At the state level, the SIR exercise has resulted in a marginal rationalisation of polling stations. The total number of polling stations in Maharashtra has changed from 1,00,253 to 1,00,216. During the process, 394 new polling stations were added, while 431 existing stations were deleted. In addition, the locations of 1,403 polling stations were changed. The relocation exercise included polling stations in Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Thane and Palghar that had earlier functioned from temporary structures and have now been shifted to permanent premises within the same polling-station area.

Draft rolls available online and at government offices

The draft electoral rolls have been made available through multiple physical and digital channels. In Pune, the rolls can be accessed at the offices of the respective Electoral Registration Officers, the Pune District Collectorate and the offices of district presidents of recognised political parties.

The draft electoral rolls are also available through the Pune district administration website, the Election Commission of India’s ECINET platform and the Voter Service Portal. At the state level, the rolls are available through the Election Commission’s Voter Service Portal, the website of the Chief Electoral Officer, Maharashtra, and the websites of the respective District Election Officers.

How electors can check their names

Voters can search for their names and electoral details through the Election Commission’s electoral search facility.

After opening the ECI’s “Search Your Name in Voter List” facility, an elector can select the relevant language and choose Maharashtra as the state. The search can be conducted using the EPIC number, elector details or registered mobile number.

After entering the required information and completing the captcha process, voters can search to determine whether their names and electoral details are reflected in the available records.

Electors can also download the electoral roll PDF relating to their particular polling station or part.

For this purpose, voters may access the Election Commission’s electoral-roll download facility and select Maharashtra, followed by the relevant district, Assembly constituency and language. After selecting the appropriate polling station or part number, the electoral roll PDF can be downloaded and searched manually using details such as the elector’s name or EPIC number.

Final electoral roll scheduled for November 4

The publication of the draft rolls marks only an intermediate stage in Maharashtra’s SIR process.

With claims and objections open until September 30, election authorities will continue scrutiny, verification, hearings and disposal of applications until October 29. The final electoral roll for Maharashtra is scheduled to be published on November 4, 2026.

Related:

ECI revises Maharashtra SIR schedule, final voter list to be published on November 4

Maharashtra SIR: 2.08 crore (20.8 million) voter forms “uncollected” hence may not be listed in August 24 draft electoral roll

SIR 2025-26: Dismantling the very Idea of India?

21 Opposition parties to CJI: SIR process is irregular and illegal, must be suspended

The post Maharashtra SIR draft rolls leave 2.07 crore electors out; Pune records highest exclusions at 28.66 lakh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

–Editors

Professor Faizan Mustafa

Vice-Chancellor, Chanakya National Law University, Patna

(Former Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR & NLUO; Former Registrar, Aligarh Muslim University)

Date September 2, 2026

Subject: An Open Letter on Ideological Opportunism, Public Intellectualism, and More

Dear Professor Faizan Mustafa,

In recent years, your public profile as a legal commentator has expanded considerably through frequent columns in national dailies.

In enhancing your public profile, Ravish Kumar has played a considerable role. On NDTV Prime Time he provided you with a platform. He never brought you into a panel discussion though. He always provided you with a solo programme with no uncomfortable, critical questions and counter-questions being put to you. That is how he initiated the practice of Godi Media (Milquetoast Media) with you on NDTV Prime Time Shows. Today, Ravish Kumar, on his own YouTube channel also does not expose you by criticising your pro-Sangh columns in the Indian Express and elsewhere. Of course, no Liberal, Left remains Liberal when it comes to exposing and critiquing Muslim conservatism-communalism!

However, a systematic review of your published op-eds alongside your institutional footprint reveals a troubling pattern of political accommodation, academic displacement, and prolonged reliance on university deputation rules. In short, this appears to be a form of the crassest possible opportunism that you have consistently been displaying for the last nine years or so.

This open letter addresses three distinct areas where your public record stands in sharp contrast to the expectations of a senior constitutional law professor.

Early Writings and Conservative Stance on Affirmative Action

Your ideological shifts are not a recent development. As far back as 1992, in an essay titled “Reservation-Politics or Social Upliftment” published in the AMU-Arts Faculty Magazine (1992-93, pp. 128–131), you articulated a deeply conservative and critical stance against social justice initiatives.

Writing as a Lecturer in the Department of Law, AMU, you argued that affirmative action had failed, was monopolised by elites, and was driven purely by electoral vote-bank politics (such as the Mandal Commission implementation in 1990). You went on to advocate for drawing a hard line against reservations in science and technology, capping benefits to a single generation or stage of career, and ultimately calling to “do away with reservation policy step by step.”

This early record underlines a long-standing ideological pattern that prioritised anti-reservation rhetoric well before your later shifts toward political accommodation with right-wing majoritarianism.

The Timeline of Ideological Shifts and Selective Silence

Your commentary over the past decade demonstrates a consistent eagerness to accommodate Hindu majoritarian power structures, juxtaposed against a complete absence of critique toward conservative elements within your own institutional and religious baseline.

January 18, 2018 (The Tribune): On the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to India, your piece titled “Learn from Israel’s Legal Pluralism” praised Israel’s legal framework, deceptively likening it with Ottoman-era Millet personal law system. Written while serving as a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University, the article presented Israel’s religious legal autonomy as a model for India, choosing to ignore the ongoing structural disenfranchisement of Palestinians.

May 28, 2019 (The Indian Express): Following the 2019 general elections, your column “Reaching out to Muslims” argued that the Muslim community should expect better treatment from the RSS, initiating a public stance of seeking reconciliation with Hindutva leadership. Obviously, this was less because of your conviction in the principle of “Truth and Reconciliation”, and more intended to appease the RSS-BJP for personal favours?

March 21, 2020 (The Indian Express): In “Why Hindu Rashtra should not terrify Muslims”, you engaged in an accommodating re-reading of majoritarian nationalism, a piece subsequently amplified by right-wing media outlets like Swarajya (April 22, 2020) as an endorsement from a prominent Muslim academic.

July 6, 2021 (The Indian Express): In “What Mohan Bhagwat Said”, you offered praise for RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat’s public statements on Hindu-Muslim shared ancestry. This was part of a broader pattern of synchronized op-eds from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) leadership—followed closely by the then-AMU-VC (now BJP Vice President cum MLC, Uttar Pradesh), Tariq Mansoor in The Hindu (July 13, 2021) and his son, Assistant Professor (Law), Mohd Nasir in Hindustan Times (July 15, 2021).

Projecting yourself as a champion of social justice and Pasmanda uplift, you tweeted a respectful tribute to Manu’s statue in the Rajasthan High Court (Jaipur Bench), in late 2021. What you chose to ignore is the fact that the name Manu is just an epithet and imagine calling a misogynist-casteist to be the greatest law giver! No wonder, then, that you endorse Instant Triple Talaq (ITT) and extend support to the Muslim regressives! Your extraordinary brilliance of reading thousands of pages of judgments and elucidating –in writing or video your analyses ready to be published in a few moments to publish in next morning’s English daily/portals has already made you acquire an-almost divine untouchable position. Salman Khurshid’s book, The Sunrise over Ayodhya exposes this with a subtle sarcasm; also excerpted on The Print.in, October 26, 2021.

Your great respect shown to Shri Ram Madhav Ji of the RSS on your YouTube video is already the subject of jokes and ridicule.

June 14, 2024 (The Indian Express): In your column titled “Unity with diversity“, published following the 2024 general election results, you asserted: “This author continues to believe that declaring Hinduism as the dominant spiritual heritage of India may be a good thing for our secularism.” Commentators have highlighted how egregious this observation is for a constitutional scholar. Under the pretext of defending federalism and constitutionalism, such arguments effectively build a case for ethnocracy. Applying political geographer Oren Yiftachel’s framework, endorsing a dominant religious/spiritual heritage erodes essential democratic structures—specifically equal citizenship, a unified territorial demos, and basic protections against majoritarian tyranny.

And now comes the latest. A nail in the coffin?

August 31 / September 1, 2026 (The Indian Express): Your column “Mohan Bhagwat’s Hindutva is not narrow: Are his words in New York heard in India?” again selectively praised the RSS Chief’s address in New York, asserting that Bhagwat’s stance demolishes the foreign-origin argument against Muslims. Written from the position of a university head, this piece minimises contemporary ground realities under the guise of intellectual engagement. The very same day, Professor Tahir Mahmood (also an AMU Law alumnus) published his piece in the same Indian Express, appreciating the Manusmriti.

Is this just a mere coincidence? Or, part of something else, moves of sections of the Muslim elite towards co-option into a specific narrative-setting?

The Ideological Paradox

While you continuously seek to project moderation onto majoritarian leadership (which is actually your pretence and sophistry), you have systematically avoided issuing any public critique of Muslim Right-Wing orthodoxy, reactionary student outfit politics, or conservative religious organizations (such as, for example, the alleged Saudi-funded frameworks linked with the Institute of Objective Studies).

This calculated dualism allows you to cultivate favour with the ruling saffron dispensation as a “pragmatic bridge-builder” while retaining support among conservative Muslim elites (maslehat; actually, it is collective makkari of the Muslim elites), who view your manoeuvres as strategic preservation rather than principled scholarship.

Intellectual Production vs. Administrative Dominance

A review of your academic trajectory reveals that for over two decades, classroom teaching and peer-reviewed legal research have been displaced by administrative appointments.

Lack of Peer-Reviewed Output: Since your 1991 publication (Strict Liability in the Criminal Law) from a non-descript publication house, you have produced virtually no top-tier, internationally peer-reviewed academic monographs or high-impact journal articles. Media op-eds have replaced rigorous legal research.

The 1991 title is “plagiarized” from Richard Wasserstorm’s 1960 essay, in the Stanford Law Review. As per news-report (mark the word, only, in the news-report), in The Hindu, Aug 20, 2014, “India’s only book on ‘Strict Liability in Criminal Law’ was written by him in 1991 and he was awarded Commonwealth British Fellowship to further pursue this subject”. Have you really produced anything with the fellowship? No. The truth of your Fulbright (not the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship! you got the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Programme, as the VC in NLSIU Hyderabad, Oct 2018. You got the best SAARC Teacher award, in 2014, whereas since 2004, you have not been teaching. You are aimply governing various universities.

Administrative Tenure: From your tenure as AMU Registrar (2004–2007; when AMU was pushed into a judicial crisis of minority status. The issue is still sub judice and far from resolved) to successive terms as Vice-Chancellor at NLUO (Odisha), NALSAR (Hyderabad), and CNLU (Patna), you have operated primarily as an administrative officer rather than as an active teacher or researcher. Receiving teaching awards or academic fellowships while serving exclusively in executive officer roles, raises serious questions regarding academic evaluation standards.

AMU Deputation Rules and Systemic Accommodation

Your continuous absence from your substantive academic post at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) highlights a significant administrative anomaly regarding University Grants Commission (UGC) and AMU service rules:

Statutory Limits on Deputation

Under standard UGC guidelines, Central University Ordinances and Govt of India Service rules, there is a cap on deputation. Deputation or Extraordinary Leave (EOL) to serve in external organizations or state universities is strictly capped—typically not exceeding 5 years continuously, with an absolute career ceiling of 7 years (or less) under exceptional circumstances.

AMU allows you to retain lien on your permanent substantive post. Holding a post on deputation for nearly two decades flagrantly violates the fundamental intent of the AMU recruitment ethics and rules. It freezes departmental vacancies, and prevents fresh/junior faculty recruitments and progression. Nobody however asks the AMU-VCs and its Executive Council (EC) as to why do they keep extending your deputation endlessly? Shall they extend similar favour to anyone except you?

Governance Failure within the AMU Executive Council

The repeated granting of continuous deputations and extensions by the AMU Executive Council (EC) over two decades demonstrates how institutional governance is bent to accommodate elite networking. By retaining your lien at AMU while continuously holding Vice-Chancellorships elsewhere, you have used the university as a safety net while denying the institution your active teaching presence.

Furthermore, the en masse support you received from the AMU Court and EC during Vice-Chancellor empanelment processes (October 2023) underscores how internal political networks prioritise opportunism and administrative clout over academic output and institutional integrity.

Conclusion

A constitutional law professor owes an unambiguous duty to truth, institutional ethics, and systemic accountability. When commentary routinely aligns with the politics of the ruling power, when administrative tenure stretches past statutory limits, and when community critique is applied selectively, the credibility of the public intellectual is entirely compromised.

The above account reveals a lot about you and also about the Muslim elites as much as about the Liberal-Left in not exposing you; in fact they have been promoting you. So much so that recently, the Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi proposed your name to the Prime Minister Modi to appoint you as the Chief Information Commissioner of India (The Hindu, April 24, 2026).  This only means, the Liberal-Left as well as the Muslim elites have kept Rahul Gandhi ill-informed about your pro-Sangh credentials articulated in the prominent English dailies of New Delhi.

The academic community deserves clear answers: On what statutory grounds has AMU extended your deputation for two decades, and why has your constitutional critique remained silent on Muslim reactionary politics while consistently validating the ruling power?

Respectfully,

Members of the University and Academic Community

(The authors who are currently teaching and studying at the AMU have requested anonymity)

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

Links:

The Tribune https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/archive/comment/learn-from-israel-s-legal-pluralism-530205/

The Indian Express, May 28, 2019   https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/muslims-india-narendra-modi-bjp-elections-2019-5751350/

The Indian Express, 21 March 2020  https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/narendra-modi-govt-6324468/

July 6, 2021 https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/are-mohan-bhagwats-recent-remarks-a-sign-of-moderation-in-hindutva-7390598/lite/

Salman Khurshid, Sunrise over Ayodhya, https://theprint.in/pageturner/excerpt/if-you-cant-beat-them-join-them-cant-be-our-response-to-hindu-rashtra-salman-khurshid/756821/

June 10, 2024 https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/new-government-diversity-constitutionalism-federalism-india-9382218/

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHFAJ5ZH78

Sept 1, 2026 https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mohan-bhagwats-hindutva-is-not-narrow-are-his-words-in-new-york-heard-in-india-10857107/

Tahir Mahmood, Sept 1, 2026, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/on-women-manusmriti-has-a-context-dont-go-by-colonial-interpretation-10857186/

April 24, 2026 https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rahul-gandhi-disagreed-on-government-cic-candidate-rti-response-reveals/article70901317.ece

Richard A. Wasserstrom, Strict Liability in the Criminal Law (Stanford Law Review, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Jul., 1960), pp. 731-745 (15 pages), https://doi.org/10.2307/1226524

The Hindu, 20 Aug 2014, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/andhra-pradesh/NALSAR-V-C-gets-SAARC%E2%80%99s-best-law-teacher-award/article11208173.ece

The post “Balancing Principles”: Are Hindutva far-right supporters and Muslim illiberalism often cosy bedfellows? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The latest round of increases came into effect on September 1. As India Today reported, Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL) raised CNG prices by ₹2 per kg to ₹88 in Mumbai and surrounding areas, while domestic PNG became ₹1 per standard cubic metre more expensive. The CNG increase is the fourth hike in the current financial year, following two ₹2 increases in May and a ₹1 increase in April. Around 13 lakh CNG vehicle owners and nearly 30 lakh domestic PNG consumers are expected to be affected.

MGL attributed the increase to higher international gas prices amid the continuing crisis in West Asia and the consequent rise in the cost of spot RLNG. However, for households, the reason matters less than the cumulative effect: higher fuel costs feed into transport, deliveries and other everyday expenses.

Public and private transport have both become more expensive. The minimum auto-rickshaw fare in Mumbai has risen from ₹26 to ₹27, while the minimum black-and-yellow taxi fare has increased from ₹31 to ₹33. The per-kilometre auto fare has gone up from ₹17.14 to ₹18.22, and the taxi rate from ₹20.66 to ₹21.90. India Today noted that Mumbai has more than 4.5 lakh autos and over 50,000 taxis, meaning the increase touches a substantial part of the city’s daily commuting population.

Milk has taken another significant hit. The Bombay Milk Producers’ Association raised the wholesale price of tabela milk from ₹93 to ₹102 per litre. NDTV reported that retail prices could reach around ₹110 per litre, depending on the supplier and locality. The association has cited rising production and operating costs, with key cattle-feed ingredients such as green fodder, chuni and oil cakes reportedly becoming up to 25% more expensive over the past year.

This comes soon after another milk price increase across Maharashtra. Hindustan Times reported that cow and buffalo milk prices were raised by ₹2 per litre from August 11. The Milk Producers and Processors Welfare Association attributed the increase to higher diesel, procurement and packaging costs, with packaging expenses alone reported to have risen by around 30%.

The pressure is not restricted to households that buy milk or use autos. Commercial establishments are also facing higher input costs. NDTV Profit reported a ₹9.50 increase in the price of 19-kg commercial LPG cylinders from September 1. The report linked the increase to supply pressures following disruptions to imported cooking gas amid the West Asia conflict.

The escalation in everyday costs has been building for months. In July, the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) raised bus fares by an average 13.5%, with the minimum fare for a six-kilometre journey increasing from ₹13 to ₹15. The Times of India noted that this was the second major fare increase for the state transport undertaking within a year, compared with the 4–5% annual revisions that had been more typical in the past. MSRTC carries around 55–60 lakh passengers every day, making even modest fare increases significant for workers, students and rural commuters.

Food prices have also been moving upwards. Clarion India, reporting from Mumbai on September 2, said residents were already dealing with higher prices of sugar, packaged milk, pulses, rice, eggs and other essentials. One resident cited in the report said sugar prices had risen by ₹20–25 per kilogram within a few weeks, while other routine household purchases had also become more expensive. Families, the report noted, were struggling to balance rent, education and food expenses amid stagnant incomes and employment pressures.

The squeeze is therefore not simply about a ₹1 increase in an auto fare or ₹2 more for CNG. The problem is cumulative. A household pays more to travel to work, more to buy milk, more to cook, and increasingly more for basic groceries. Businesses facing higher fuel, transport and input costs then pass at least some of those expenses on to consumers.

Even the state’s farmers are confronting the same inflationary pressure. A report carried by ThePrint noted that the cost of producing a quintal of cotton in Maharashtra has risen from around ₹3,500 in 2018 to approximately ₹5,000 today. Fertiliser, pesticide, tractor and labour costs have all increased, while the area under cotton cultivation has declined by 2.5 lakh hectares between 2024–25 and the following year.

Taken together, these developments point to a broader problem than isolated price revisions. The cost of maintaining an ordinary household is rising across multiple fronts, while the ability of families to absorb those increases depends on whether their incomes are keeping pace. For many, they are not. That is what makes the latest round of hikes significant. Each increase may appear manageable in isolation. However, when milk, fuel, transport, food and other essentials rise together, the question is no longer what one additional rupee or five additional rupees means. It is how much more a family must spend simply to maintain the same standard of living it had before.

In a city where rent and education already consume a large share of household incomes, the steady rise in the price of necessities is turning the ordinary act of getting through the day into an increasingly expensive proposition.

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The post Mumbai’s everyday life is getting costlier, one essential at a time appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The contemporary economic crisis, dangerously hollowed out middle classes and mounting unemployment (of their children) has brought Indian youth to the brink of becoming Weary Generations (udaas naslein), an expression used by the Urdu novelist, Abdullah Husain (1931-2015), for the generation wasted in Partition, violence, migration and traumatic displacement.

How does one then place or read the energies and fearlessness of the present upsurge be it in Bihar, UP, Delhi or Mumbai? It is not just these seemingly apolitical mobilisations but also smaller left formations (AISA, SFI) that have sustained protests, a) spoken and highlighted education and access for all b) examined structural failures, yes, but also lack of voice and representation c) refused to be black-holed into the Hindu-Muslim paradigm d) broken through a paralysis of fear; e) while in Delhi and Mumbai these may have been dominated by a class difficult for the far right to pigeonhole, in Bihar they are subaltern students. Plus, a protest by Adivasi/tribal students in Maharashtra reached a successful end (though they had been fasting for over 47 days) after Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi highlighted their demands. LOP Gandhi speaking of withdrawing criminal cases, getting an FIR lodged, and speaking on youth issues of access and social justice together show how the narrative is for once not being dominated by the regime. The icing on the cake is the union government’s concrete withdrawal of FIRs against many/most if not all the protesters.

Global history demonstrates that youth energy in times of crisis takes one of two distinct paths: violent criminal implosion or revolutionary democratic renewal. In May 1968, France witnessed an explosive student movement that began on university campuses like Nanterre and Sorbonne. French students did not merely demand educational reforms; they linked arms with the working class, paralysed a Gaullist state, and fundamentally reshaped modern European political consciousness through raw democratic assertion. Conversely, where youth energy is denied legitimate political expression and institutional avenues of dissent, it devolves into structural criminality. In 20th-century Sicily (in Italy), the complete absence of democratic avenues for youth advancement permitted underworld gangsterism to swallow an entire generation—a social decay famously captured in Mario Puzo’s literary studies of omertà, patronage, and syndicate power.

Indian campuses today stand precariously at these very crossroads. The current stagnation stands in sharp contrast to the analytical framework established by Philip Altbach in his books, Turmoil and Transition: Higher Education and Student Politics in India (1968) and Student Politics in India (1972). Altbach demonstrated that students in developing democracies operate as a vital “incipient elite” and a primary political conscience. Unencumbered by institutional vested interests, they function as a catalyst for broader societal democratization. This theoretical reality materialised during the 1960s and 1970s across northern and western India. The Navnirman Movement in Gujarat in 1973–1974 began over price hikes in university canteens and escalated into a mass agitation that dissolved the state legislative assembly. Shortly after, the Bihar Movement of 1974, spearheaded by student leaders under Jayaprakash Narayan (1902-1979), directly challenged state authoritarianism and catalysed the nationwide opposition that eventually defeated Congress rule in 1977, after the Emergency (1975-77).

The anti-Congress political forces that seized state power on the back of these youth mobilisations recognized a key reality: an organised, democratically elected student body is an unpredictable, counter-hegemonic force. Consequently, once in power, the anti-Congress and regional regimes (communal reactionaries, single caste, personalized, dynastic and champions of identity-based divisive political forces) systematically disarmed the very machinery that elevated them. Province after province, most notably Uttar Pradesh, campus elections have been suspended across state universities for years, banning, curbing, or neutering Students’ Unions.

Crucially, this structural paralysis of student democracy was not merely a post-2014 phenomenon under the BJP regime; key policy frameworks that enabled this containment were set in motion earlier, notably under UPA-II through the implementation of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. As Albeena Shakil highlights in Economic and Political Weekly (2008), the Lyngdoh Committee was constituted following Supreme Court orders to frame guidelines on student union elections—focusing on ‘curbing criminalisation’, ensuring financial transparency, and setting eligibility criteria. However, the committee’s recommendations introduced rigid constraints, such as a maximum age limit of 28 years for research scholars and restricting candidates from contesting office-bearer positions more than once.

The fundamental flaw in this approach was its mechanical, uniform enforcement across vastly different universities without accounting for their specific institutional characters. The Lyngdoh Committee report itself explicitly acknowledged the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) model as an exemplary “model to be followed”—a peaceful, direct election process conducted entirely by students through an independent, elected Student Election Committee without administrative interference, money, or muscle power. Yet, despite JNU’s flawless democratic track record, the Supreme Court stayed the JNUSU elections in 2008 on technical procedural grounds like the candidate age limits and re-contesting of posts. By imposing arbitrary eligibility constraints and administrative control over a self-regulated, highly participatory student democracy, the policy environment under UPA-II severely weakened the capacity of student bodies to function as independent, capably led representative unions.

To understand how youth energy is absorbed in the absence of democratic representation, Craig Jeffrey’s 2009 essay on Meerut University, Fixing Futures: Educated Unemployment, Youth, and Politics in North India, provides the necessary framework. Jeffrey demonstrates how structural unemployment converts campuses into waiting rooms. Deprived of representative unions to bargain collectively against systemic failures, young people are forced into individual survival mechanisms. They become fixers (jugaad intermediaries, or brokers, dalals), trading political compliance for minor administrative concessions or informal rents. The failure of contemporary campuses to rise up in the style of global youth protests or digital mobilisations is not due to apathy; it is the direct structural result of an environment where collective bargaining has been replaced by atomised patronage networks akin to the Sicilian boss-client relationship.

This suppression of student democracy occurs alongside a mounting crisis of economic precarity backed by grim statistical realities. Data from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) India Employment Report reveals that educated youth bear the brunt of the nation’s job crisis. Youths account for nearly 83% of the total unemployed workforce in India, with the unemployment rate for university graduates standing at an astonishing 29.1%—nearly nine times higher than for those without formal schooling. Furthermore, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) metrics continuously highlight that urban youth unemployment hovers at elevated levels between 13.6% and 14.3%, while roughly 90% of employed youth are pushed into informal, unprotected work. Despite holding degrees, millions of graduates remain trapped in underemployment, gig work, or endless competitive exam preparation. Yet, because campuses lack elected Students’ Unions to channel this systemic frustration into organised political demands, this massive reservoir of youth precarity remains politically inert, barring the latest ongoing movements. India, like the Germany of the 1930s, is on the brink of driving the unemployed youth and the campuses towards political extremism, crime, and murderous narco-culture.

Compounding this crisis is the wholesale capture of university governing bodies by pliant, regime-acolyte administrators and accomplishment-deficient academics. In his scathing critique of Indian higher education, Asking for Trouble: Crises with a Meaning (1984), veteran educationist Amrik Singh (d. 2010) laid bare how the Indian university system was being subverted from within by weak administrative leadership and corrupt appointments. Decades later, in the mid-2020s, Amrik Singh’s earlier warnings have metastasized into absolute reality. A knowledge campus must be led by scholars of recognised distinction, who exercise moral and inspirational influence upon the students. Instead, the internal governing bodies of Indian universities, such as Executive Councils, Academic Councils, Selection Committees, and Vice-Chancellorships, have been stuffed with under-accomplished, pliant, sycophantic individuals whose primary credential is ideological compliance and administrative servitude to the ruling political apparatus.

Across state and central universities, appointments to the highest academic offices routinely bypass scholars with high citation indices, major research monographs, or international peer recognition. Instead, pliant, regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors with minimal publication records and negligible scholarly impact are installed as political commissars. To maintain their illegitimate control, these Vice-Chancellors surround themselves with similarly under-accomplished internal academics, who function as key collaborators and administrative fixers. Selection panels are shamelessly rigged to bypass highly cited, productive researchers in favour of candidates whose sole qualification is political alignment. Consequently, statutory bodies intended to protect academic freedom are transformed into rubber-stamp committees that penalize dissenting faculty, manipulate recruitment, and ignore systemic corruption.

This institutional decay manifests in distinct ways across major, historic, residential and state-funded campuses, illustrating the stark difference between passive compliance and active resistance.

At the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), an internal administrative oligarchy has long controlled key university apparatuses. With the prolonged absence of elected student union checks, a small network of senior teacher-administrators has maintained an unchallenged hold over the campus. This environment has allowed serious institutional irregularities to persist—ranging from a huge fee scam, illegal annual increments, illegal placements in the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), and financial opacities in civil construction contracts to administrative nepotism, the illegal retention of perks, unauthorized security deployment, and questionable pension schemes. Rather than challenging these abuses, executive bodies and elected teacher associations have largely chosen silence. At the same time, they offer instant, sharp, and unparliamentary reactions against internal whistle-blowers who expose the internal rot of the administration as well as elected bodies. The narrative-setting elites among Muslims rally desperately to fight for the minority status of AMU, but go silent on rampant irregularities within the very university of theirs. Further, they don’t mobilise themselves with equal alacrity and enthusiasm on other issues of social and gender justice, caste exclusions and economic grievances.

To make things far worse, this specific kind of minority-ism finds support from Left-Liberals. Operating under an unwritten code of Omertà, reminiscent of the institutionalized silence of Sicilian mafia structures depicted in Mario Puzo’s novels, they shield administrative failures under the pretext of protecting institutional identity from external hostility. In AMU this code of Omertà is turned into a more dangerous tool. Internal whistle-blowers are hounded, maligned, vilified, and humiliated by plunderers disguising as men of religiosity. They play dangerous politics of demonstrative religiosity and piety, giving a drum-beating clarion call of “Qaum in danger”. It is an open secret among campus insiders that these very demonstrably and instrumentally “pious” Muslim minority professors queue up in large numbers before Sangh functionaries running the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, intending to become Vice Chancellors (Felix Pal, 2020, offers an insight as to why Muslims join it), even while surreptitiously instigating common Muslim youth that the incumbent regime is rabidly anti-Muslim.

Globally too, Peter Fleming’s 2021 book, Dark Academia: How Universities Die, rightly diagnoses that with the neo-liberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years, universities have been turned into psychological hells for professionally committed academics.

Yet, despite all these odds, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) demonstrates how active representation can disrupt administrative opacity. On August 13, 2026, the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), alongside the elected JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU), held a joint press conference at New Delhi’s Press Club of India. Rather than hiding inner ills, they publicly detailed administrative irregularities, arbitrary changes to promotion guidelines, and compromised recruitment procedures enforced by the university executive. Despite facing intense administrative pressure, the presence of an elected student union—built on JNU’s long-standing tradition of self-managed student democracy that survived even the legal curbs of the Lyngdoh recommendations—allowed JNU to maintain a counter-hegemonic force against administrative overreach.

The tragedy of contemporary Indian public universities is an existential crisis of purpose. When campuses are stripped of democratic unions, handed over to regime-acolyte Vice-Chancellors, and silenced by co-opted faculty collaborators, they cease to function as spaces of higher learning and degenerate into administrative fiefdoms. Indian youth stand at a decisive crossroads: to remain passive captives within waiting rooms of managed mediocrity, or to reclaim the historic mantle of May 1968. Reclaiming the university requires breaking the institutional code of silence, ousting unaccomplished administrative syndicates, restoring elected Students’ Unions, and transforming quiet frustration into organised political agitation. Of course, ignoring or delaying the task of employment creation is absolutely unaffordable for India at this point of time.

[The author, a Professor teaches Modern and Contemporary History at Aligarh Muslim University. His X-handle is: @sajjadhist]

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The post Closing of the Indian Mind: Campus subjugation, intellectual mediocrity, & death of democratic assertion appeared first on SabrangIndia.

His name is on the voter list. His family says he has voted in India. He has a voter ID, Aadhaar card, ration card and a land deed in his name.

Yet, according to his family, Akhtar was taken away from his home in Karan Dighi, Uttar Dinajpur, late on the night of June 29, allegedly on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi national.

Nearly two-and-a-half months later, he is still not home.

When Akhtar did not return that night, his family initially thought he might have gone to the mosque to offer prayers. It was only later that they learnt that police personnel from a local camp had allegedly visited his house and taken him away.

For his wife, Tofa Bibi, the question has remained painfully simple.

“If he is an Indian citizen, why was he taken away like this? It has been two months, yet he has still not returned home,” Bibi told eNewsroom (Watch the video).

His Name Is on the Voter List. So Why Is Jalil Akhtar in Custody?

Akhtar’s family says he has lived in India for generations.

They point to the documents they have — his voter ID, Aadhaar card, ration card and a land deed in his name. They also say the names of his ancestors appear in old electoral rolls.

The family further claims that Akhtar exercised his right to vote this year.

For them, that makes his detention difficult to understand.

They say they have never known Akhtar to have travelled to Bangladesh. They are also unsure why his nationality came under suspicion in the first place.

The events of June 29 remain particularly difficult for them to forget.

According to relatives and residents, police arrived at Akhtar’s home late at night and took him away.

At first, nobody knew where he was.

Some villagers thought he had gone to the mosque. When he did not return, residents began looking for him. It was then, according to the family, that they learnt that police personnel from the local camp had visited his home.

The family later came to know that Akhtar had allegedly been kept at different holding centres.

They also claim that during court proceedings, he was described as a resident of Thakurgaon district in Bangladesh.

That is something the family disputes.

They say Akhtar has spent his life in India and has never travelled to Bangladesh.

‘If He Is an Indian Citizen, Why Was He Taken Away?’

For Bibi, the long separation has brought a different kind of worry.

Her husband is 66. The family says he is diabetic.

“He has been away from home for so long. We don’t know what will happen to him,” Bibi said.

Akhtar has two sons. Both work as migrant labourers in other states. He also has two daughters, both of whom are married.

With the sons away for work and the daughters living with their own families, Bibi has been left to deal with the uncertainty at home.

She does not know when her husband will return.

She also does not know what will happen to him if the authorities ultimately decide that he is not an Indian citizen.

The family fears that Akhtar could be sent to Bangladesh. They insist that he has never been there.

Residents have also reportedly raised their voices demanding his release.

But the question of Akhtar’s nationality is now before the court.

Rakesh Singh, Superintendent of Police, Islampur district, told The Telegraph that Akhtar is in judicial custody and that the court will take a decision. The matter, he said, is entirely sub judice.

Akhtar’s lawyer, Mukhtar Ahmed, says the family has already submitted the necessary documents before the court to establish his citizenship.

According to Ahmed, successive hearing dates have been fixed, while Akhtar has remained in jail for the past two-and-a-half months.

The lawyer said Akhtar has been languishing in custody despite the documents submitted in his case.

Dulal Rajbanshi, convenor of the Vote Rights Protection Coordination Committee, whose statement was published in The Telegraph, alleged that there were preparations to send the 66-year-old back to Bangladesh.

Rajbanshi described such a move as a violation of human and constitutional rights.

He also said police have so far failed to establish before the court that Akhtar is an illegal Bangladeshi national.

Those claims are disputed matters before the court and have not been finally established.

What Evidence Does the Administration Have?

The case leaves a number of questions unanswered.

What evidence does the administration have to establish that Akhtar is a Bangladeshi national?

How were the Indian documents held by him examined and verified?

If his name appears on the electoral roll and his family says he voted this year, what led the authorities to question his nationality?

And under what legal process has a 66-year-old man remained in custody for more than two months?

These are questions for the administration and the court to answer.

For Akhtar’s family, however, the matter is not about a legal argument alone.

It is about a man who was at home one night and did not come back.

His sons continue to work in other states. His daughters have their own families. His wife is still waiting.

The SIR process may have left Jalil Akhtar’s name on the electoral roll.

But for his family, that has not brought the relief they expected.

Instead, they are waiting for the return of a husband, father and grandfather whose nationality is now being contested.

And every day that passes leaves Bibi with the same question:

When will Jalil Akhtar come home?

Courtesy: https://enewsroom.in

The post His Name Survived SIR. Then Police Took Him Away: The Unexplained Detention of 66-Year-Old Jalil Akhtar appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The order goes beyond the FIRs specifically placed before the Court by the Delhi Police and the States of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra. The Court extended the protection to similar FIRs registered anywhere else in the country, including in States and Union Territories that were not parties to the applications. The Court simultaneously barred the registration of any fresh FIR in relation to the protest incidents of July 20-25, subject to one specific exception concerning 2,873 individuals whom the Delhi Police claimed had serious criminal antecedents.

The decision came after the Union government and the four States moved applications seeking the quashing of the FIRs. As reported by LiveLaw, the applications were filed against the backdrop of an assurance allegedly given by the Central government to the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) leadership on July 25 that cases against protesters would be withdrawn and no fresh FIRs would be registered in connection with the agitation.

The Supreme Court has now converted that assurance into judicial directions, while expressly making its exercise of Article 142 dependent upon both sides honouring the understanding placed before it.

FIRs quashed and proceedings terminated

The order records that thousands of young students participated in protests held between July 20 and July 25 in Delhi, in the applicant-States and in other parts of the country. Following those protests, criminal cases were registered at several police stations. The five applications before the Court were moved by Delhi Police, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra. They sought the exercise of the Supreme Court’s powers under Article 142 to quash the FIRs arising from the protests.

The Delhi Police application concerned 13 FIRs. Bihar placed 69 FIRs before the Court, while West Bengal sought relief in respect of eight FIRs and Assam in respect of five. Maharashtra placed 34 FIRs before the Court. The Court reproduced the details of these FIRs in its order.

Importantly, the Court did not restrict relief to these identified cases. After the Solicitor General submitted that additional FIRs could have been registered in other States and Union Territories concerning the same incidents, the Court directed that those cases too would not be pursued or investigated. The operative portion of the order states that any other FIR relating to the same incidents of protests between July 20 and July 25, including FIRs in States and Union Territories that were not applicants before the Court, “shall not be pursued or investigated” and shall be treated as closed for all intents and purposes.

The Court further directed that no State or Union Territory shall register any fresh FIR relating to those protest incidents. This makes the order significantly wider than the applications originally placed before the Court. The States that approached the Court sought relief concerning specified FIRs; the Court extended the protection to similarly situated cases across the country.

Court invokes Article 142 to protect students’ future

The central justification recorded by the Bench is the future of the young protesters. The Court noted the submission that the Central government and the applicant-States had consciously decided not to pursue the FIRs “as a gesture of goodwill” and to ensure that the cases did not cause prejudice to young students who had participated in the protests. The order also records an important qualification: “mere participation in the protests is not taken as an offence under the penal laws.”

It was against this background that the Court considered the matter fit for the exercise of its powers under Article 142. The Bench stated that, considering the commitments made before it and “most importantly” the future prospects of young protesters who had bona fide participated in peaceful protests to raise their demands, it was appropriate to invoke Article 142 to “do complete justice”.

The Court consequently quashed the FIRs specifically listed before it, along with all proceedings arising from them. The language of the order is significant because the Court did not merely record the government’s decision not to pursue the cases. It itself terminated the identified FIRs and extended the operative protection to other cases arising from the same protest incidents.

The 2,873-person exception

The order, however, does not provide an unconditional blanket protection to every person who may have been present at the protests. The Delhi Police had specifically sought permission to register a fresh FIR against 2,873 individuals whom it claimed had serious criminal antecedents, based on the National Crime Records Bureau database.

According to the application, these individuals were prima facie reported to have been present at the protest site. The police sought to investigate allegations relating specifically to bodily harm and destruction of public property. The Court permitted the Central government/Delhi Police to register a fresh FIR concerning these 2,873 individuals.

The permission is nevertheless confined to the allegations identified in the application. The order records that the proposed FIR is to concern offences relating to bodily harm or destruction of public property. It also expressly preserves the right of affected persons to pursue lawful remedies.

This distinction is important. The Court has not authorised a reopening of the entire protest-related criminal process against these individuals. It has permitted a fresh FIR within the limited framework sought by Delhi Police and without prejudice to the rights of those affected. The Court also linked this exception to its earlier observations of August 3, 2026, when it had clarified that protection could not be extended to persons with criminal antecedents involving “grave and heinous offences”.

Nationwide protection, despite only five jurisdictions approaching the Court

One of the most consequential features of the order is its pan-India operation. The applications before the Court came from Delhi Police, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Maharashtra. Yet the Solicitor General told the Court that there could be FIRs concerning the same protest incidents in other States and Union Territories.

Rather than requiring each affected protester or State to separately approach the Court, the Bench directed that such FIRs would not be pursued or investigated. The Court also barred States and Union Territories from registering fresh FIRs concerning the incidents between July 20 and July 25.

The direction therefore closes the possibility of the same protest incidents continuing to generate criminal proceedings elsewhere. The order also records a commitment by the Delhi Police and the applicant-States that, if another FIR concerning the same incidents comes to their notice, they would not oppose the affected party seeking similar relief from the Supreme Court.

NEET-UG suicide compensation: Union given 90 days

The criminal proceedings were not the only issue addressed by the Court. The Solicitor General informed the Bench that the Central government would formulate a pan-India policy or arrangement for compensation to the families of students who died by suicide in connection with the NEET-UG 2026 examination.

The Court recorded that the students concerned were situated in different parts of the country and consequently directed the Centre, in consultation with the State governments and Union Territories, to formulate the policy within 90 days. Once formulated, compensation is to be paid to the affected families without delay. The order further states that the policy or arrangement may subsequently be adopted by State governments and Union Territories as a regular mechanism for compensatory measures.

This direction gives judicial force to the assurance placed before the Court by the Solicitor General. As reported by LiveLaw, the Centre had sought three months to work out the modalities for compensation. The Court has consequently fixed a 90-day period for the formulation of the nationwide policy.

September 5 CJP march withdrawn in Court

The proceedings also resulted in the withdrawal of the protest march that the CJP had announced for September 5. The proposed march had been announced after the organisation alleged that the government’s assurances concerning the withdrawal of criminal cases had not been implemented.

According to the report of LiveLaw, the proposed demonstration in Delhi was to be held in connection with the demands arising from the NEET examination controversy, including the withdrawal of cases against protesters and compensation for families of students who died by suicide.

During the hearing, CJP co-convener Saurav Das made a statement before the Bench that the organisation was withdrawing the September 5 call in view of the assurances given by the government and the order being passed by the Court. The Supreme Court recorded that statement.

The order then made it clear that the commitments made by all sides would have to be honoured. The Court directed both sides to abide by the statements and commitments made before it and expressly linked the exercise of Article 142 to compliance with the understanding reached between the parties. CJI Surya Kant, according to the proceedings reported by LiveLaw, observed that if both sides acted in good faith, the issues could be resolved one by one.

Article 142 and the Court’s carefully confined intervention

The Court’s use of Article 142 is central to the order. The applications specifically sought the exercise of the Supreme Court’s extraordinary constitutional power to secure the quashing of FIRs that the executive itself had decided it no longer wished to pursue. The order makes clear, however, that the Court is not laying down a general rule for the quashing of protest-related FIRs.

In paragraph 15, the Bench expressly states that its directions are being issued because of the “peculiar facts and circumstances of the case” and “shall not be taken as a binding precedent.”

The Court has therefore crafted relief that is extensive in its immediate reach but expressly limited in its precedential value. The order brings closure to the particular set of protests and the criminal proceedings arising from them, while avoiding a declaration that similar FIRs in future protest cases must necessarily be quashed. The order also makes the settlement between the parties an important component of the Article 142 exercise. The Court records that its extraordinary powers are subject to the condition that both sides abide by the terms of the mutual understanding placed before it.

A judicial closure of the criminal fallout of the July protests

The order ultimately produces a comprehensive closure of the criminal proceedings arising from the specified July protests. The FIRs specifically placed before the Court have been quashed. Other FIRs concerning the same incidents, even where they were not formally brought before the Bench, are not to be pursued or investigated. States and Union Territories have been prohibited from registering fresh FIRs concerning those incidents. The only express exception is the liberty granted to Delhi Police concerning the 2,873 individuals identified in its application. The Court has simultaneously directed the Centre to formulate a nationwide compensation mechanism within 90 days for families of students who died by suicide in connection with NEET-UG 2026.

The order is thus structured around two forms of closure: criminal proceedings arising from the protests are brought to an end, while the government’s commitment concerning compensation to affected families is placed on a defined judicial timeline.

At the same time, the Bench has carefully confined the constitutional significance of its intervention. It has not declared the quashing of protest FIRs to be a general rule. Instead, it has treated the matter as an exceptional exercise of Article 142 arising from the particular circumstances before it, the commitments made by the parties, and the Court’s concern that the criminal cases should not prejudice the future prospects of young protesters who had participated in the agitation.

The order closes with the Court placing on record its appreciation of the Union government, the applicant-States, counsel and the CJP leadership for their “constructive and cooperative approach”, noting that this had kept the interests and future of the young students at the forefront. The Supreme Court has made clear, however, that this resolution rests on the peculiar circumstances of this case and the commitments made before it. It is precisely for that reason that the Bench has directed that the order not be treated as a binding precedent.

The complete order may be read below:

Detailed reports on the withdrawal of FIRs may be read here, here and here.

Detailed reports on brute force used by police on the protestors may be read here, here, here and here.

Related:

Maharashtra’s schools are struggling to survive as students protest, infrastructure crumbles and Marathi-medium institutions disappear

After NEET protests ended, the battle moved online: Women protesters face threats, doxing and criminalisation

Bihar: Not just Delhi, Patna, Siwan too saw brute police violence against demonstrating students: PUCL

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Water Cannons Instead of Answers: Bihar’s recruitment crisis and the state’s crackdown on protest

Amnesty Investigation finds unlawful and deadly force against CJP-led protesters in Delhi and Siwan

The Supreme Court’s Uneasy Middle Path on Protest Policing

Governments begin rolling back cases against protesters, but questions over violence, arrests and accountability remain

July 2026: A dissent that was brutally put down, a crackdown after the protest ended

The post NEET Protests: Supreme Court ends criminal proceedings against students across India appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A Bench comprising Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev allowed Chaudhary’s habeas corpus petition and held that the detention was founded on what the Court described as a “concocted story” by the State. The Court directed that she be released immediately if her custody was not required in any other case. The Court also directed the Noida authorities to pay her ₹5 lakh in compensation. The detailed order is awaited.

However, Bar & Bench has reported that Chaudhary is likely to remain in custody for the time being because she has not yet secured bail in the other criminal cases registered in connection with the Noida workers’ agitation. The judgment comes after the Bench subjected the State’s version of Chaudhary’s arrest and alleged involvement in the violence to close scrutiny, particularly the chronology of her arrest and the notices issued under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

Court questions sequence of arrest and BNSS notices

During the hearing, the State told the Court that Chaudhary had been arrested at 10:56 a.m. on April 12, 2026 and that a notice under Section 130 of the BNSS had been issued to her. The State’s case was that Chaudhary had instigated protesters to engage in stone-pelting and arson. The Bench, however, questioned whether the procedure prescribed under the BNSS had actually been followed.

Justice Sreedharan specifically asked whether Chaudhary had first been served a notice under Section 126. The State acknowledged that no such notice had been issued and that the notice under Section 130 had instead been served. The Court then examined the chronology of the documents and the General Diary (GD) entry. Justice Sreedharan questioned how a notice could have been prepared after Chaudhary had already been arrested.

As reported by LiveLaw, the Court observed in court: “Ab ismei GD entry dekhiye, usko arrest karliya fir notice banaya.”

The Bench further pointed to the apparent inconsistency between the arrest record and the notice, observing that the record indicated that Chaudhary had already been arrested before the notice was prepared. The Court’s questioning went to the heart of the legality of the detention: whether the State had followed the statutory sequence required before taking the drastic step of arrest and subsequently placing Chaudhary under preventive detention.

‘Whatever violence has happened is after her arrest’

The Court also closely examined the State’s claim that Chaudhary had played a role in instigating the violence during the workers’ protest. The State relied on the events surrounding the workers’ mobilisation and alleged that Chaudhary had encouraged protesters to resort to violence, including stone-pelting and arson. But the Bench drew attention to the chronology of events.

According to the State’s own account, people had gathered for the protest on April 11. Justice Sreedharan pointed out that the significant violence relied upon by the prosecution occurred only later.

“Yani 11 ko koi violence nahi tha. Whatever violence has happened is after her arrest,” the Court observed, according to LiveLaw.

The observation was significant because the State’s case depended on establishing Chaudhary’s connection to the violence. If she had already been arrested before the violence that formed the basis of the allegations, the Court was evidently questioning how the State could attribute subsequent acts of violence to her.

Where is the video evidence?

The Bench had already expressed concern about the evidentiary basis of the State’s allegations during the previous hearing. On September 1, the Court had specifically asked the Uttar Pradesh government to produce video footage showing Chaudhary allegedly instigating protesters to throw stones or set vehicles on fire. The State sought additional time to obtain and produce the footage. The Court refused.

Justice Sreedharan noted that Chaudhary had already spent approximately five months in custody and said, “I won’t give time. She has been in jail for 5 months.”

The Bench had also warned that if the record ultimately showed an arbitrary exercise of power, costs could be imposed on the officials concerned. The issue resurfaced during the final hearing when the State relied upon witness statements that allegedly named Chaudhary. The Bench, however, sought something more specific: where was the material showing that she had actually instigated the violence?

The Court also questioned the State’s reliance on the chargesheet, asking where the witnesses had specifically implicated her and where the videographic evidence demonstrated the alleged acts of instigation.

From workers’ protest to NSA detention

Chaudhary’s detention stems from the Noida workers’ protests of April 2026, which began over demands for higher wages and improved working conditions and later escalated into violence, arson and clashes with the police. The protests began peacefully but turned violent on April 13. Police subsequently arrested a large number of workers and activists and registered multiple criminal cases.

Chaudhary, a Delhi University history graduate and activist, was among those arrested. The Uttar Pradesh government subsequently invoked the NSA against her and journalist and activist Satyam Verma on May 13. The police alleged that the two had played a significant role in the violence and disruption associated with the workers’ agitation.

At the time, Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner Laxmi Singh claimed that the police had “strong electronic and videographic evidence” against Chaudhary, Verma and others arrested in connection with the protests. The police’s version was that the violence was not spontaneous but part of a wider organised effort.

Detailed report may be read here and here.

Related:

Noida Protest 2026: A labour uprising the state refused to understand

No ‘Pakistan conspiracy’ in Noida labour unrest: Fact-finding report

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

The post Allahabad HC quashes NSA detention of Aakriti Chaudhary, questions ‘concocted’ State narrative in Noida workers’ protest case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In its memorandum dated September 2, the organisations have collectively argued that the incident cannot be dismissed as an isolated administrative lapse. The memorandum has called for a comprehensive investigation into how thousands of original election documents came to be outside official custody, why they were being reproduced at a commercial establishment and whether the breach points to wider vulnerabilities in the handling of voter information during the SIR exercise.

The Kharghar incident assumes added significance because of the scale of the ongoing revision process. According to figures cited by the Chief Electoral Officer, around 2.07 crore Enumeration Forms have been classified as uncollectable in Maharashtra at the draft stage. While the Election Commission has clarified that being classified as uncollectable does not automatically mean that an elector has been permanently excluded from the electoral roll, CJP has argued that the sheer magnitude of the figure makes the integrity of every stage of the verification process a matter of exceptional public importance.

3,404 original forms found at private photocopying centre

The controversy emerged on August 27, when election-related forms were reportedly found at a photocopying centre in Sector 19, Kharghar. According to reports cited in the memorandum, the recovered documents were original SIR Enumeration Forms relating to multiple polling stations under the 188-Panvel Assembly Constituency. A revenue team subsequently examined the documents, and election authorities reportedly confirmed that they were genuine election forms. Reports have stated that the forms related to 11 polling stations.

The incident reportedly came to light following a complaint concerning the photocopying of the forms. A person identified in media reports as Suraj Patil, described as a BJP functionary, was allegedly found handling the forms. The police subsequently seized the documents and an FIR was registered. Five Booth Level Officers associated with the forms were also suspended, with a departmental inquiry initiated into how the documents reached the private premises.

In the memorandum, the groups state that culpability must be established through an impartial investigation. At the same time, the memorandum argues that the reported political connection makes it particularly important for the State Election Commission to establish whether access to the forms was authorised and, if not, how such access was facilitated. The central question, according to CJP, is therefore not simply who was found with the forms, but how the forms travelled from the official election machinery to a private establishment in the first place.

Where did the documents leave the official chain of custody?

The memorandum places particular emphasis on the chain of custody (chain of command in law) of the Enumeration Forms. SIR forms are part of an official electoral exercise and contain voter-related information. Their handling therefore requires safeguards that ensure that the documents remain accessible only to persons authorised to use them for election-related purposes.

The discovery of thousands of original forms at a commercial photocopying centre raises questions about every stage of their movement. CJP and others has therefore called for the reconstruction of the entire chain of custody, beginning with the collection of the forms from electors and continuing through their storage, transportation, access and eventual recovery.

The organisation has also stressed that the inquiry should not automatically end with the suspension of the five BLOs. If the evidence points towards supervisory, administrative or other responsibility, those aspects too must be investigated. The issue is particularly significant because of the sheer number of documents involved. The presence of 3,404 forms cannot be explained simply as an isolated document inadvertently carried outside an office. The authorities must establish who had access to them, who authorised their movement and why they were taken to a private photocopying facility.

A voter-data security concern, not merely a paperwork lapse

The memorandum has also raised concerns about what may have happened to the information contained in the forms. The organisation has urged the authorities to determine whether the documents were merely photocopied or whether they were also scanned, photographed, digitally stored, transmitted or reproduced in any other manner.

This is an important distinction. Physical recovery of the original forms does not necessarily establish that no copies remain elsewhere. CJP, VFD and BCS have therefore called for relevant CCTV footage, electronic records and equipment used in the photocopying process to be preserved and examined as part of the investigation.

The memorandum argues that once voter-level information leaves the controlled environment of the election machinery, the potential risk extends beyond the physical documents. Copies could potentially be retained or disseminated without the knowledge of election authorities.

For CJP, VFD and BCS, citizens who provide information to the State as part of the electoral process are entitled to an assurance that such information will be used only for legitimate electoral purposes and handled through secure procedures.

The 2.07 crore figure makes the breach more consequential

The memorandum has linked the Kharghar incident to the wider concerns surrounding the SIR exercise in Maharashtra. The Chief Electoral Officer has stated that approximately 2.07 crore Enumeration Forms have been classified as uncollectable, comprising categories including voters who were absent or not found, those who had permanently shifted, deceased persons, duplicates or persons already enrolled elsewhere.

The Election Commission has emphasised that these classifications are provisional and that the draft electoral roll is not the final roll. Eligible voters whose names are missing can participate in the claims and objections process and seek inclusion or correction. The memorandum has acknowledged this position but has argued that the availability of a remedy does not, by itself, eliminate concerns arising from the scale of exclusion. An elector who does not know that their name has disappeared from the draft roll may not necessarily approach the authorities. Similarly, an elector incorrectly classified as shifted, deceased, duplicated or absent may face a significant administrative burden in establishing that they remain eligible.

In this context, the Kharghar incident raises a broader question: can the public have confidence in the accuracy of the electoral roll if the documents on which that roll is being prepared are not demonstrably secure? For CJP, this is why the Kharghar episode cannot be treated merely as a local dispute.

CJP and others seeks statewide audit

The organisation has called for the Kharghar incident to trigger a statewide audit of the custody and handling of SIR Enumeration Forms. Such an audit, CJP argues, should establish whether similar instances of unauthorised possession, removal, reproduction or mishandling have occurred elsewhere in Maharashtra.

The memorandum also calls for the Election Commission to strengthen and publicly disclose uniform safeguards governing the custody, movement, reproduction, storage and disposal of SIR documents. This, CJP says, is necessary not only to identify wrongdoing after it occurs but to prevent vulnerabilities in the system from being repeated.

Transparency is essential to restoring public confidence

The memorandum has also called for the findings of the Kharghar inquiry to be made public, subject to legitimate restrictions relating to personal information or an ongoing criminal investigation. The organisation argues that the public should not be left to choose between competing political claims about what happened. The State Election Commission, as the institution responsible for the electoral process, must establish the facts and communicate them transparently. For CJP, the issue ultimately extends beyond the Kharghar photocopying centre.

An electoral roll determines who is recognised by the State as entitled to participate in an election. Its preparation therefore forms part of the foundation of the democratic process itself. The discovery of thousands of original SIR forms outside the expected chain of custody, followed by the suspension of five BLOs and the registration of an FIR, has already exposed a serious administrative vulnerability. When viewed alongside the 2.07 crore forms classified as uncollectable, that vulnerability assumes greater significance.

The memorandum therefore calls upon the Election Commission to treat the episode as an institutional matter rather than merely an isolated breach. Its demand is ultimately for something fundamental to any electoral exercise: that every eligible citizen’s place on the electoral roll be determined through a process that is secure, transparent, impartial and capable of independent scrutiny.

The credibility of an election does not begin on polling day. It begins with the integrity of the electoral roll—and with public confidence that the machinery preparing that roll is not vulnerable to unauthorised access, administrative failures or partisan interference.

The complete memorandum may be on the CJP website here.

Related:

Maharashtra’s schools are struggling to survive as students protest, infrastructure crumbles and Marathi-medium institutions disappear

Maharashtra SIR: 2.08 crore (20.8 million) voter forms “uncollected” hence may not be listed in August 24 draft electoral roll

Maharashtra SIR extension keeps teachers away from classrooms as unit tests face delays

SIR Maharashtra: CEO details schedules for publication & verification of draft and final electoral rolls

SIR and the Making of a Stateless Citizen? | R. Rajagopal Speaks Out | Teesta Setalvad

The post 3,404 SIR Forms Found at Kharghar Xerox Shop: CJP, VFD and BCS demands answers from Maharashtra SEC appeared first on SabrangIndia.