SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/ News Related to Human Rights Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:57:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/ 32 32 Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody? https://sabrangindia.in/midnight-arrest-daylight-questions-why-was-santosh-pandit-taken-into-custody/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:56:10 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49188 From exposing civic failures to confronting political VIPs, the Pune activist built a massive following—now he faces criminal charges after a midnight arrest

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]]> The midnight arrest of Pune-based activist and YouTuber Santosh Pandit on September 3 has raised a far more consequential question than the allegations levelled against him: whose complaints command the immediate attention of the State, and whose complaints are allowed to languish?

Pandit was picked up from his Kothrud residence at around 1 a.m., shortly after a second complaint was filed over videos in which he allegedly made obscene, sexually coloured and defamatory remarks while targeting Maharashtra cabinet minister Chandrakant Patil, BJP corporator Mitali Salvekar and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. A local Pune court, on September 3, sent Pandit into police custody till September 8, as per The Wire. The extraordinary speed and manner of the police response cannot be divorced from the political context in which Pandit was arrested: he had been using his large social-media following to publicly question politicians over roads, civic infrastructure, alleged misuse of power and the preferential treatment routinely enjoyed by the politically connected. That is where the real controversy begins.

The issue is not whether Pandit is “above the law”. He is not. The issue is whether the law suddenly becomes exceptionally efficient when the accused is a vocal critic of those in power— and markedly less, urgent when allegations are directed at the powerful themselves.  Pandit’s arrest therefore cannot be examined merely through the language of the FIR. It has to be examined through the larger pattern of policing dissent in Maharashtra: who is investigated, who is arrested, whose speech is treated as an urgent threat, and whose conduct is tolerated despite repeated complaints.

From civic critic to criminal accused

Pandit has built a substantial following by turning everyday failures of governance into highly visible social-media campaigns. His videos routinely focus on potholes, poor-quality infrastructure, traffic violations and what he describes as preferential treatment for politicians and other VIPs. His YouTube channel, launched in 2022, has grown to more than a million subscribers. Some of his videos have attracted millions of views.

One of his widely circulated videos showed him pursuing a vehicle carrying an allegedly illegal number plate, confronting the driver and approaching the police to demand action. The video eventually showed the vehicle owner apologising and agreeing to correct the violation. Pandit’s activism, however, increasingly brought him into direct confrontation with political figures.

On August 31, he uploaded a video in which he confronted BJP MLC Gopichand Padalkar, a close associate of Chief Minister Fadnavis, over an allegedly non-compliant high-security registration plate and the absence of seat belts. The video reportedly crossed 6.8 million views. Pandit subsequently claimed that he had received threats from persons associated with Padalkar.

This was not the first time he had alleged threats following his criticism of BJP leaders. Earlier, he had claimed that BJP workers had threatened him after he criticised Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Chandrakant Patil. Then came the complaints—and, within days, the arrest.

Two complaints, one arrest

Pune activist Santosh Pandit arrested, Image: YouTube/@santosh_pandit6278.

A complaint was first lodged on August 31 by BJP corporator Sunil Pande, reportedly an associate of Chandrakant Patil, over Pandit’s alleged remarks against the minister. A second complaint was subsequently filed at Kothrud Police Station by a 36-year-old Pune Municipal Corporation sanitation worker.

According to The Indian Express, the woman alleged that she had encountered videos in which Pandit made objectionable remarks concerning Patil and a woman corporator. She also referred to another video in which Pandit allegedly used obscene language while questioning Chief Minister Fadnavis over the quality of road-laying work.

The Wire, which reviewed a copy of the FIR, reported that Pandit was booked under Sections 75(1)(iv), 75(3), 356(2) and 352 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, along with Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. The provisions invoked relate, among other things, to sexually coloured remarks, sexual harassment, defamation, intentional insult and the electronic transmission or publication of allegedly obscene material.

Pandit’s lawyer, advocate Wahed Khan, disputes the characterisation of his client’s language as sexually suggestive. He has argued that the words were being interpreted out of context and were expressions used in everyday parlance.

Why a 1 a.m. arrest?

According to Pandit’s lawyer, police arrived at his home around 12.30 a.m. and took him away. The FIR was registered at Kothrud Police Station at approximately 1.18 a.m. A local court subsequently remanded Pandit to police custody until September 8. The timing has become one of the most contentious aspects of the case.

Khan has argued that the police failed to follow the safeguards governing arrests for offences carrying relatively limited maximum sentences. He specifically invoked Section 35 of the BNSS and the Supreme Court’s safeguards in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, arguing that a notice to cooperate with the investigation should ordinarily precede arrest where the statutory conditions require it. He further alleged that police issued a notice only after Pandit had already been taken into custody.

Police, however, have maintained that Pandit had previously been served a notice to cooperate with the investigation.

The most uncomfortable aspect of the Pandit case is therefore not simply the language allegedly used by him. It is the apparent disparity in the State’s response to allegations involving different categories of people. An analysis published by The Wire found that 13 of the 39 ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet had serious criminal charges registered against them. BJP minister Nitesh Rane alone had 38 FIRs, according to the newspaper, including 20 concerning alleged hate speeches directed at Muslims involving abuse and threats of violence.

 

The contrast is nevertheless legitimate grounds for public scrutiny. If the police can act with extraordinary speed when a social-media activist is accused of making obscene remarks about a minister and a woman politician, citizens are entitled to ask why comparable urgency is not always visible when allegations of inflammatory, abusive or threatening speech are levelled against powerful political actors.

Opposition cries foul

The arrest has already drawn criticism from opposition parties. NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) spokesperson Anish Gawande described the 1 a.m. arrest as an instance of political intimidation and questioned the alleged failure to comply with Section 35 of the BNSS and the Arnesh Kumar safeguards.

 

Maharashtra Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal also criticised the action, asking whether the Modi-Fadnavis government was using police power to intimidate those who question the government.

 

 

The politics behind the videos

Pandit’s own public trajectory adds another dimension to the controversy. In a podcast cited by The Wire, Pandit spoke about losing his travel business and home following the economic fallout from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He said that the experience left him angry and looking for an opportunity to challenge the government.

He subsequently supported Narendra Modi and campaigned for the BJP in 2014. Over time, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with the party and began directing his criticism at what he saw as failures of governance and the misuse of political power.  Much of Pandit’s online work is built around an extremely basic civic proposition: politicians and public officials should follow the rules that ordinary citizens are expected to follow. His confrontation with Padalkar over a number plate is precisely the kind of incident that can be uncomfortable for political establishments because it collapses the distance between the ordinary citizen and the political VIP.

 

 

 

Related:

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

Maharashtra SIR draft rolls leave 2.07 crore electors out; Pune records highest exclusions at 28.66 lakh

Mumbai’s everyday life is getting costlier, one essential at a time

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

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]]> Why are reading habits among Indian students declining? https://sabrangindia.in/why-are-reading-habits-among-indian-students-declining/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 11:00:47 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49185 On the occasion of Teacher's Day, Abhay Kumar, a teacher, writes about his experience in academics and the declining habit of reading among students

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]]> I have been teaching undergraduate students for a considerable period of time and have also been helping young researchers in their academic pursuits. On the basis of my personal experience in the field of academics, I feel that the reading habit among Indian students is declining. However, the bigger question is why is this happening?

Let me first clarify that I am not making a value judgement here. Nor am I pushing forward an argument that students of yesterday were avid readers, while students of the present time are an anti-knowledge lot.

To make such a sweeping generalisation, one would need to conduct a scientific study and take into consideration multiple factors. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, I simply want to share my own experience—something that has been troubling my mind.

One of the first major signs of the decline of reading culture is the disappearance of shops and stalls selling books, magazines, and newspapers. Even the Xerox shops around colleges and universities are now busy printing and photocopying documents to be submitted to the administration, rather than essays, articles, or relevant portions of books and magazines.

Even newspaper hawkers are hardly visible, not only around colleges in semi-rural areas but also at those located in district headquarters and cities. Around college and university campuses, what one mostly sees is the mushrooming growth of fast-food kiosks. Since the administrations are often unable to run the canteens properly, students have little choice but to go outside and eat junk food.

Inside the campus, library culture is also on the decline. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of library staff. Most of the library staff are contractual workers who are poorly paid. As a result, they often do not work there with a sense of commitment. Even among those who are working, many are not trained in library science. Nor are they sensitized to the needs of readers. The reading hall is also poorly maintained. The seating arrangements and lighting are inadequate. The books are not properly arranged, making it difficult for readers to access them.

However, the growing corruption within the publishing world has also infected our campuses. As a result, a large portion of the books purchased in recent years are simply garbage. Even in the journal sections, substandard journals are purchased while quality journals are often ignored. Everywhere, there are cuts in the budget, and even when money is spent, it is rarely spent on the welfare of students or the promotion of genuine academic activity.

The administration is happy to display this garbage on the shelves of the library in return for hefty kickbacks, while caring little about valuable books that are damaged by pests or due to neglect.

I do not know much about the complex rules and norms that determine how colleges and universities are ranked among the top institutes by government agencies. But my yardstick for judging whether a college or university is academically vibrant is very simple. Whenever I visit a new academic institution, I first try to visit its library because a well-attended library is a sign of a healthy academic environment.

While no bhajan (devotion) is possible without bhojan (food), I next visit the canteen inside the academic premises. A canteen not only provides food but also creates a space for interaction, debate, and discussion. I am sad to say that most universities and colleges cannot boast of having such a happening place. If there are a few such eateries, they are highly commercialised, serving mostly fast food. While the food may be ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’, the public culture there is dull and lifeless.

The shrinking democratic space is no less responsible for the declining reading culture. The administration is becoming more authoritarian day by day. The regime of security and surveillance is intensifying with each passing day. Even teachers often maintain a sense of superiority. Most teachers favour students who act meekly before them, touch their feet, and flatter them at every opportunity.

The caste network is also deeply pernicious on campuses. It is not a coincidence that the students or research scholars favoured by a teacher are often those who belong to his caste. While our teachers project themselves as the biggest “patriots” in public life, in their personal lives they often indulge in what can only be described as anti-national behaviour by practising caste-based discrimination.

Worse still, our educational campuses are not adequately sensitised to the needs and concerns of female students, religious minorities, and differently-abled people. The syllabus has been framed to glorify the past rather than to meet the needs of students in the present. Students from marginalised sections often find it difficult to relate to the course structure and feel alienated from the academic environment. The rise of majoritarianism and intolerance, along with the display of religiosity on campuses, has further alienated minorities.

Discussions and jokes in staff rooms and classrooms are often anti-women. The rampant misogyny prevalent on campuses makes women feel unsafe. Parents, too, often seize this opportunity to further control the freedom of their daughters.

The lack of student activism and the disappearance of debating and seminar culture are among the major reasons why students do not feel motivated to read. Often, student organisations are banned on campuses by the administration on the grounds that they are involved in violence. It is true that some student bodies have been involved in violent activities, and no one is arguing that they should not be held accountable for their misdeeds. But one also needs to recognise that banning student politics is not the solution to violence. Even elections are sometimes marred by violence, but no one argues that elections should be abolished.

Even the seminars held within campuses often fail to achieve their intended purpose. This has much to do with the relationship between funding agencies and the ideologies they seek to impose on the organisers. Seminars have now turned into occasions to facilitate politicians in power and echo the political lines of the establishment, without critically examining whether such policies are indeed framed in the public interest or merely serve vested interests. Since students and researchers are required to produce certificates of participation, they are often more concerned with obtaining the certificate and filling the chairs in the audience than with participating in any meaningful and fruitful discussion.

It is not only the academic spaces that are responsible; parents, too, often impose their own will on their children. We hardly find parents who facilitate their children in pursuing the goals of their choice. Most are in a hurry to see their children settle into high-salaried and secure jobs. Both at home and in our society, a person is often judged “successful” on the basis of how much wealth they have amassed, how trendy their clothes are, and how luxurious a car they drive.

The anti-intellectual environment at homes get extended into our academic spaces. The teachers hardly read. They have forgotten that a good teacher is the one who is first a student. The advancement in career is the bigger concern for the teachers rather than acting as the source of knowledge. They hardly speak on the pressing political issues because they want to remain in the good book of the establishment.

Even if our Constitution gives every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of speech, and the highest court of the country has held that dissent and criticism are integral parts of democracy, a large section of teachers have imposed self-censorship on themselves. They write only when they need papers for promotion, and most of these papers are poorly written and make little sense. Yet they get published as “research papers” because the authors pay publishers huge amounts of money.

Even in the staff room, teachers hardly discuss academic issues. The favourite gossip among male teachers is often about the clothes of their female colleagues, accompanied by rumours about their personal lives and sexual relationships. Worse still, many teachers are excessively flattering towards their seniors while being rude and dismissive towards their students.

All these factors contribute negatively to the lives of our young students. The smarter among them have come to realise that knowledge is not the first criterion for getting jobs in academia. That is why they spend a large amount of their energy flattering their teachers and developing networks with those in the administration and politics. Sensing that joining the political outfits of the ruling party is a more secure way of getting jobs, they are often too busy attending sectarian political programmes rather than spending time in the classroom and library.

Since a large number of students hardly read, they are unable to write. Whenever they turn up to submit their assignments, their writings are often copied and pasted from the internet. These are some of the more disturbing trends that I have noticed while working as a teacher. I do not know how these issues can be addressed. But if India has to excel in the field of knowledge and ensure that its democracy remains meaningful, policymakers cannot afford to ignore these questions.

(Dr Abhay Kumar teaches Political Science. His recently published book is Muslim Personal Law: Definitions, Sources and Contestations (Manohar, 2026). Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)

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]]> Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case https://sabrangindia.in/days-of-demands-hours-of-protest-swatantra-bhardwaj-finally-detained-in-assault-case/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:11:13 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49178 Delhi Police detain the influencer hours after CJP, Nishu Azad, Congress representatives and opposition MPs press for his arrest at Parliament Street; the case began at a CJP and wider student protest at Jantar Mantar

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]]> Delhi Police on Friday detained Swatantra Bhardwaj, the self-described Hindutva influencer accused of assaulting the father of student protester Nishu Azad during a Cockroach Janta Party led- protest at Jantar Mantar, after a renewed mobilisation outside the Parliament Street police station brought the case back into public and political focus.

Bhardwaj was traced to Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh and detained by a Delhi Police Crime Branch team on September 4 afternoon, hours after representatives of the CJP, Nishu Azad, Congress workers and MPs Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav gathered at the police station demanding action. The detention followed a FIR and police assurance to the protesting delegation that Bhardwaj would be arrested within 72 hours. He was detained by UP police.

 

 

According to The Indian Express, the police team traced Bhardwaj to Bulandshahr after he travelled there earlier in the day. The Times of India reported that he had stayed at a local resident’s house in Naithla village and left on a motorcycle after his presence became known. Police subsequently tracked him down and took him into custody. The detention came after Bhardwaj himself appeared in a widely circulated podcast discussing the alleged assault and claiming that political connections had helped him avoid jail.

The case began at a CJP protest at Jantar Mantar

The controversy began during a CJP protest at Jantar Mantar, where Nishu Azad, then a 14-year-old student protester, was participating. Her father, Sanjay Kumar, was at the protest site when a confrontation allegedly broke out. According to the FIR-based account reported in the material provided, Kumar was recording the proceedings on his phone when he was questioned by a young man about making a video. An argument followed, after which two or three people allegedly joined in and assaulted him. Kumar alleged that he was punched on the head and struck with a kada or bracelet-like object.

He was taken to RML Hospital for treatment. The medical record referred to two deep wounds on his head. Lawyer Feroz Gama, who said he witnessed the incident, told The Indian Express that he took Kumar to hospital and that Kumar received stitches for his injuries. The precise nature of the injuries subsequently became one of the central points of dispute in the case.

While Kumar’s supporters and CJP described the assault as serious, Delhi Police said the injuries were simple in nature. Police rejected claims that Kumar had suffered a skull fracture and said that the injury was caused during a scuffle involving the kada worn by one of the accused, as reported by The Indian Express.

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

Bhardwaj was initially detained—but not arrested

The first police response to the alleged assault became one of the most troubling aspects of the case. Delhi Police said Swatantra Bhardwaj and another accused, Suraj Kumar, were detained at the protest site, questioned and served notices. But after that, they were not arrested and were allowed to remain out of custody while the case proceeded.

For Nishu Azad’s family and CJP, that was not an adequate response to an alleged assault that had left her father with serious head injuries. The question they raised was straightforward: if the accused had been identified and detained at the scene, why was there no immediate custodial action? And why did the initial FIR omit the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act despite the family’s demand that the caste dimension of the alleged attack be formally recognised?

 

A podcast puts the case back in the spotlight

The case returned to the headlines after excerpts from a lengthy podcast featuring Bhardwaj began circulating widely. In the interview, Bhardwaj appeared to speak about the confrontation with Sanjay Kumar and claimed that he had “cracked” his skull. He also spoke about how he had not been jailed after the incident. Notably, he invoked the names of political figures while describing his connections. Bhardwaj referred to Delhi minister Kapil Mishra and Union minister Chirag Paswan as “elder brothers” and also invoked Prime Minister Narendra Modi while speaking about his political support.

 

When demands for his arrest started being made, Bhardwaj later disputed his own words. He claimed that he had acted in self-defence after being surrounded by a group of people and said his references to political leaders were sarcastic. Delhi Police, too, rejected allegations that political pressure had prevented his arrest. But the video fundamentally changed the public conversation around the case.

The allegations were no longer based only on what the victim, witnesses or protesters said had happened. The accused himself had publicly discussed the confrontation and his alleged political connections, creating a fresh basis for demands that the police revisit the matter.

CJP takes the issue back to the police station

CJP responded by organising a fresh protest outside the Parliament Street police station. The organisation’s representatives Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, along with supporters, went to the police station demanding Bhardwaj’s arrest and stronger charges. CJP had been involved from the beginning because the alleged assault took place during its protest. The organisation’s campaign subsequently became the mechanism through which the demand for police action was kept alive after the initial detention and release of the accused.

CJP demanded the addition of provisions relating to attempt to murder, criminal intimidation and the SC/ST Act. It also raised the issue of threats and online abuse directed at Nishu following the controversy. The protest brought Nishu and her father back to the police station as well.

 

Congress joins Nishu and CJP

The mobilisation soon widened beyond CJP. Indian Youth Congress Delhi president Akshay Lakra joined Nishu at the police station and demanded action against Bhardwaj. Congress also provided legal assistance. According to the reports, the AICC legal department deputed a team of lawyers led by Rishabh Ranjan to assist Nishu and her family with the matter. The legal intervention focused not only on the assault case but also on the threats allegedly directed at Nishu after the incident.

 

 

This became an increasingly important part of the case because Nishu said she had faced rape threats, abuse and online harassment, including the circulation of objectionable or morphed images. She said the harassment had affected her education and that she had stopped attending school for several weeks.

Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav join the protest

The protest then drew two opposition MPs. Chandrashekhar Azad, Nagina MP and president of the Azad Samaj Party, reached Parliament Street police station and joined the delegation. He questioned why Bhardwaj had not been arrested despite the video in which he appeared to discuss the alleged assault. Azad also raised the threats allegedly directed at Nishu, including threats of rape, acid attack and death.

 

Pappu Yadav, the Independent MP from Purnia, subsequently joined the protesters and sat with them outside the police station. He spoke about violence against women and Dalits and held up the Constitution while demanding action. Their involvement marked a significant expansion of the mobilisation: what had begun as CJP’s campaign over an alleged assault during its protest was now being taken up directly by elected representatives.

 

The New Indian Express reported that the CJP delegation, joined by Chandrashekhar Azad and Pappu Yadav, demanded both the attempt-to-murder and SC/ST Act provisions and an FIR over the threats allegedly made against Nishu.

Police add the SC/ST Act and other provisions

After negotiations at the police station, Delhi Police agreed to add provisions under the SC/ST Act to the case. The police also added provisions relating to criminal intimidation and other offences under the BNS. The question of attempt to murder was more complicated. Police indicated that the applicability of the provision would have to be assessed in light of the medical evidence and investigation into the nature of Kumar’s injuries. This was an important shift from the police’s initial position.

The police had earlier described Kumar’s injury as simple and rejected claims of a skull fracture. After the renewed protest, however, the FIR was expanded to include the SC/ST Act and additional criminal provisions.

A separate FIR was also registered after Nishu complained about the threats and online harassment she had allegedly received. The new case invoked provisions of the POCSO Act, along with BNS provisions and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act.

Nishu asks for protection

As the protest continued, Nishu also raised concerns about her own safety. She said she did not know when or where she could be attacked and asked for protection for herself and her family. Hindustan Times reported her concern that she was living under a continuing threat after the controversy surrounding the assault and the subsequent online abuse.

Her position became an important part of the renewed campaign because the case had by then moved beyond the alleged assault on her father. It had expanded into allegations of intimidation and sexual threats against a teenage protester herself.

It was at this stage that Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, publicly intervened. Nishu had appealed to Gandhi for support, saying that she had lost faith in the police response. Gandhi responded publicly, assuring her that she should not panic and that he stood with her. He questioned why Bhardwaj remained free despite the statements attributed to him in the viral video.

 

Gandhi also directly questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah about the alleged political protection claimed by Bhardwaj. His intervention brought the case substantially greater national political attention.

Support also came from across political parties, with the Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress questioning the alleged political protection being claimed by Bhardwaj.

 

 

Chirag Paswan files his own complaint

The political claims made by Bhardwaj also prompted a response from one of the people he had named. Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan filed a complaint with the Parliament Street police against Bhardwaj, objecting to the alleged misuse of his name.

As reported by The Hindu, Paswan’s complaint sought an FIR and strict action against Bhardwaj and asked that it be formally recorded that neither Paswan nor the LJP (Ram Vilas) had any connection with him or with the incident. Paswan said that Bhardwaj had falsely invoked his name to create an impression of political protection and called for an impartial investigation.

 

Police trace him to Bulandshahr

While the political and public pressure was mounting in Delhi, police began looking for Bhardwaj. He had travelled to Bulandshahr, where reports said he stayed with a local resident in Naithla village.

According to India Today, Bhardwaj fled the village after police began looking for him. The Times of India reported that he left on a motorcycle after media attention around his presence increased. Police teams eventually traced him and detained him.

The Indian Express reported that Crime Branch officers took him into custody at around 2 pm on Friday. The arrest/detention therefore came on the same day as the CJP-led mobilisation at Parliament Street.

 

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

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]]> Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise https://sabrangindia.in/punes-dj-controversy-ganeshotsav-and-assault-the-politics-of-who-gets-to-make-noise/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 06:14:53 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49169 The assault on Pune activist Vidyanand Bapat reveals how a demand for lawful, quieter festivals became entangled with political power, religious identity and intolerance of dissent

The post Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> On September 3, Vidyanand Bapat was speaking to the media on Tilak Road in Pune when a man approached him and slapped him on camera. Bapat, a 37-year-old Pune resident who works at a BPO, had in less than two weeks become one of the most recognisable voices in the city’s growing campaign against high-decibel DJ systems and amplified sound during religious festivals.

The assault was not an isolated disagreement over music. It was the latest and most disturbing episode in a controversy that has exposed a larger question: who gets to decide how much noise a religious celebration can impose on everyone else?

The Indian Express reported that Bapat was attacked while giving a live interview, with the assault captured on camera. Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar said the accused had been arrested and that a cognisable, non-bailable case would be registered. Bapat was subsequently provided police protection.

 

 

From one voice at a civic meeting to a statewide debate

The controversy began on August 24, when the Pune Municipal Corporation held its preparatory meeting for Ganeshotsav, scheduled to begin on September 14. Among several hundred people present, Bapat was reportedly the only person to object to the use of DJs and dhol systems. His argument was straightforward: the festival should not become a source of excessive noise, traffic disruption and public inconvenience. He invoked the history of Ganeshotsav, pointing out that when Lokmanya Tilak popularised the public festival, DJ systems obviously did not exist. He argued that amplified music was neither intrinsic to the festival nor necessary for its celebration.

 

The response was hostile. Bapat was shouted down and eventually escorted out by the police as tensions rose. But footage of the confrontation circulated widely on social media, transforming an otherwise ordinary civic meeting into a national talking point. The controversy was then amplified by Marathi television.

ABP Majha brought Bapat face-to-face with BJP Pune city president Dheeraj Ghate. During the debate, Bapat calmly explained his position on noise pollution. Ghate reportedly mocked him, asking who even knew Bapat in his neighbourhood. The exchange subsequently went viral. Within days, television channels, YouTube platforms and social-media personalities were interviewing Bapat. He repeatedly made the same argument, drawing on Sanskrit texts, the Mahabharata, Greek and Latin literature and his own rationalist worldview. His fluency in Marathi, Sanskrit, Hindi and English and his refusal to be provoked made him a social-media sensation.

The real issue is not whether festivals should be celebrated

The debate has sometimes been presented as a conflict between religious devotees and people opposed to Ganeshotsav. That is a misleading frame. Bapat has not argued against Ganeshotsav. Neither have many of the citizens who have subsequently joined the campaign.

At a Goodluck Chowk gathering, protesters explicitly said that their objection was to excessive noise from DJs, loudspeakers, dhol-tasha systems and other high-intensity sound equipment — not to Ganeshotsav itself. Hindustan Times reported similar assertions from participants who said the restrictions should apply to every religious celebration, irrespective of religion.

 

A constitutional democracy does not give religious expression a licence to override the rights of everyone around it. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from regulation. Public celebrations take place in shared civic spaces, and their exercise necessarily has to coexist with the rights of residents, children, elderly people, patients, workers, motorists and others. The question, therefore, should not be whether Ganeshotsav is important. It plainly is. The question is why excessive noise has been allowed to become synonymous with celebration in the first place.

The numbers make the argument harder to dismiss

The College of Engineering, Pune has measured noise levels on Lakshmi Road during Ganesh immersion for roughly 25 years. With the exception of the pandemic years, readings have consistently exceeded 80 decibels. The levels recorded in recent years were particularly stark: 105.2 decibels in 2022, 101.3 in 2024 and 94.8 in 2025.

The Union Environment Ministry’s prescribed limits are substantially lower. In residential areas, the permissible limit is 55 decibels during the day and 45 at night. Even commercial areas have limits of 65 and 55 decibels respectively.

For years, the state has known that noise levels during major processions can far exceed permissible standards. The more uncomfortable question is: why has enforcement remained so inconsistent?

The politics of noise

Several Ganesh mandal representatives and BJP leaders initially opposed Bapat’s position and defended DJs and dhol during the festival. Yet once the issue gained significant public support, political leaders began positioning themselves on the side of noise control.  BJP leader and Maharashtra Higher and Technical Education Minister Chandrakant Patil appealed to Punekars not to overuse DJs and laser beams. Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya similarly welcomed citizen mobilisation around clean air and reduced noise. Neither, however, publicly challenged the BJP’s local leadership that had been supporting the use of DJs.

Chief Minister Fadnavis adopted an equally cautious position at the BJP state executive meeting in Pune on August 31, calling for festivals to be celebrated in a “cultured” manner without directly taking a clear position on the DJ controversy. That changed somewhat after the assault.

On September 4, Fadnavis described DJ noise as being comparable to the sound of an earthquake and called for a return to more traditional forms of Ganeshotsav. Hindustan Times reported that he also argued that consensus and dialogue were necessary to reduce the use of such systems. But there is an obvious political contradiction here. If excessive noise is genuinely harmful, the state does not need to wait for a viral citizen campaign or an assault before taking a firm position. The legal framework already exists.

Solapur shows that another model is possible

Pune is not the first Maharashtra city to confront this issue. Solapur has moved towards a DJ-free Ganeshotsav, with the campaign emerging from citizen mobilisation rather than merely being imposed from above. The effort followed growing concern about the health and civic consequences of high-decibel celebrations.

The campaign acquired particular force following accounts of two incidents in 2025 involving the alleged health consequences of excessive festival noise. A citizen who objected to loud music during Shiv Jayanti reportedly suffered permanent hearing loss after being forced to sit near speakers, while another young man reportedly suffered a fatal heart attack after dancing to loud DJ music during a procession. The resulting campaign brought together lawyers, doctors, senior citizens and students and reportedly collected tens of thousands of signatures. Solapur demonstrates that religious celebration and restraint do not have to be opposites.

The movement is now larger than Bapat

Bapat may have become the face of the Pune controversy, but the demand predates him. The campaign against DJs has been building for several years. In 2023, Sunil Mane, an Ambedkarite and former journalist who is now associated with the NCP (Sharad Pawar), petitioned against DJ use during Ambedkar Jayanti processions, Hindustan Times reported.

By August 30, hundreds of people had gathered at Goodluck Chowk despite the cancellation of a proposed march by Sakal Hindu Samaj, as per the report of Free Press Journal. One participant told reporters that elderly residents and heart patients were particularly affected by the noise. Another directly warned the BJP leadership that voters who had supported the party could change their political loyalties if they felt their concerns were being ignored.

Nagpur has moved from appeals to enforcement

Nagpur Police have imposed restrictions on high-powered DJ systems, customised sound trucks, multi-speaker systems and other high-intensity amplified equipment under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. The order, effective from September 3 to November 1, covers multiple festivals, including Ganeshotsav, Eid, Navratri, Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. Importantly, systems operating within permissible noise limits are not covered by the prohibition.

Nagpur has also restricted high-intensity laser and beam lights on public-safety grounds, citing the possibility of temporary visual impairment for motorists and consequent accidents. The city has simultaneously created a mechanism through which citizens can report noise pollution, upload evidence and track complaints, with the system reportedly requiring action within 30 minutes and providing for escalation if no response is recorded.

The state must protect dissent, not merely condemn violence after the fact

The assault on Bapat should not become another moment when political leaders condemn violence only after it has occurred while ignoring the conditions that allow intimidation to flourish. Bapat was not attacked while obstructing a procession. He was attacked while speaking to journalists.

His position could be challenged. His arguments could be criticised. His understanding of tradition could be disputed. His demand for a ban could be opposed. But none of these disagreements legitimises physical violence.

The Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, while condemning the assault, warned that allowing violence to replace argument creates a dangerous precedent: if people become afraid to speak about noise pollution, they may eventually become afraid to speak about corruption, superstition, pollution or injustice more broadly. NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar similarly said that assaulting someone for exercising the right to express an opinion amounts to an attack on democracy. He also backed restrictions on DJs and loudspeakers and pointed to Solapur and other districts as examples.

Former MLC Sandip Joshi has supported a complete ban on DJs and laser systems and described the assault on Bapat as an act of cowardice. He has been campaigning for restrictions beyond the immediate festive period. But BJP city president Dayashankar Tiwari and MLA Pravin Datke have opposed the restrictions. Datke questioned why restrictions were being imposed during Hindu festivals, while the BJP maintained that the leaders were speaking in their individual capacities.

 

Related:

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Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

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

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

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]]> Kishtwar Minor’s Rape Case: Selective societal outrage and price of being Gujjar in Kashmir https://sabrangindia.in/kishtwar-minors-rape-case-selective-societal-outrage-and-price-of-being-gujjar-in-kashmir/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:46:42 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49164 Recent rapes, assaults and deaths of women and girls from Kashmir’s Gujjar and Bakarwal communities, repressed in the region’s social order and relegated to servitude raises serious questions of gender and Adivasi (indigenous) persons right to life, dignity and access to equal health care

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]]> A Thirteen-year-old girl was allegedly raped and subsequently died on August 20, 2026 in Chatroo, Kishtwar (J&K), after undergoing an abortion of a seven-month-old pregnancy. She belonged to the Gujjar and Bakarwal community, whose members have historically served as domestic workers, labourers, and pastoral workers across the Chenab region and the Kashmir Valley not merely because of poverty, but because of a deeply entrenched social perception that they are born to serve dominant social groups. The expression “Gujjar kott ya Gujjar koor gasay” (“We need a Gujjar boy or a Gujjar girl”) captures the normalisation of this relationship of servitude.

She was reportedly employed as a domestic worker by the alleged rapist, who was also her neighbour and teacher at the school where she studied in the eighth grade. She carried the pregnancy resulting from the sexual assault for seven months and ultimately died beneath the weight of a stigmatised identity ‘Gujjar’ while her financially and socially vulnerable father was allegedly pressured into compromising and settling through the dominant social apparatus. The tyranny of the local social hierarchy the ‘Kechari milieu’ is said to have terrified her father from the moment the pregnancy became apparent. He was reportedly terrified to succumb” either settle the matter or face consequences. Political cum social intervention of influential and dominant figures, allegedly, including former Sarpanch Haji Ghulam Qadir, raises an even more disturbing question about the manner in which social power can transform justice into a bargain. It was, in effect, a negotiation between the powerful and the vulnerable, as though a butcher were bargaining with a shepherd over the price of a life. After the matter remained unsettled, the girl returned to her father’s home, where she remained for approximately seven months. During this period, a neighbour, Mohd Iqbal, was paid to assume responsibility for the pregnancy and was settled with a certain amount of money. On August 19-20, however, she was reportedly suddenly and secretly taken to Kishtwar hospital. Hospital staff were persuaded that Mohd Iqbal was her husband. An abortion was subsequently carried out without informing her father.

Adivasi (tribal) activist Talib Hussain has claimed that this plan was designed to conceal the identity of the biological father and potentially manipulate subsequent DNA evidence by exchanging or disposing of the foetus through hospital personnel. These allegations, if established through an impartial investigation, would indicate an attempt not merely to terminate a pregnancy but to destroy potential evidence of sexual violence. When the initial reports and allegations are read together, the case raises disturbing similarity with the 2018 rape and murder of the minor tribal girl in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir. That how social power, political influence, and the vulnerability of a tribal minor intersect.

This is not necessarily an isolated event. Rather, it must be examined within a larger pattern of social stratification and institutional neglect. Consider the case of Suraya Begum of Kalaroos, Kupwara, on January 17, 2019. When she was nine months pregnant, she was reportedly carried on a charpoy through heavy snow to Lal Ded Hospital in Srinagar because the local roads were impassable. At Lal Ded, however, she was allegedly not admitted overnight. Her family repeatedly requested that she be allowed to remain in the hospital, explaining that they had travelled from a distant, snowbound area. They were reportedly refused and told to leave, with the alleged remark: “Gujjar happat” (“You Gujjars are bears”) and “Amis chu fakh yiwan, yim chi Gujjar” (“They smell foul; they are Gujjars”). At approximately 8:30 p.m., Suraya reportedly went into severe labour and delivered a baby girl by the roadside. The new-born died shortly afterwards. Srinagar’s temperature that night was reportedly around −0.7°C.

And how can we ignore Noor Jahan, a 45-year-old woman who was reportedly gang-raped on May 4, 2025 at Nishat, Srinagar? Neither civil society appeared to express comparable outrage, nor did the case receive significant national-media attention. Her case once again exposes the hierarchy of public empathy, whose suffering becomes a national outrage and whose suffering disappears into silence! The tragic death of Razim Akhter on December 23, 2024 at GMC Rajouri, and the fatal delay in medical care reportedly suffered by Naseem Akhter on February 18, 2021 at District Hospital Poonch, are among the recorded cases, yet they should not be dismissed as isolated medical anomalies. They point instead towards a deeper crisis in healthcare infrastructure and access in the border districts, where marginalised and nomadic communities can face disproportionate barriers to timely medical care.

While Gujjar and Bakarwal communities traverse harsh terrains to sustain an important pastoral economy, the state apparatus too often appears incapable of guaranteeing them equal access to healthcare and, ultimately, equal protection of the right to life.

In the Chenab region and, to some extent, in the Kashmir Valley, Gujjars and Bakarwals are often reduced, in the dominant social imagination, to a labouring and servile population. Their social position is frequently determined by dominant groups rather than by their own agency. Justice, therefore, becomes selective, and so does outrage. If Gujjar itself can function as a social slur, and if individuals can be judged through expressions such as “Gujjar khaslat” (“Gujjar traits” or “Gujjar habits”), then the problem is no longer merely individual prejudice. It is a structure of social perception. Generations of Gujjars and Bakarwals have grown up within conditions of poverty, exclusion, geographical isolation, and social stratification. In such a setting, a child can be socially assigned a position even before birth. The prevailing hierarchy can determine not merely where that child will live, but what kind of work, dignity, and social status society expects that child to possess. If a community is historically imagined as born to serve, how can one expect society at large to respond to violence against its members with the same moral urgency accorded to those belonging to socially privileged groups?

The deeper problem, therefore, is that crime, criminality, and the administration of social justice cannot be completely separated from the social structure in which they occur. As Hunter S. Thompson put it, “In a close society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In the world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

According to local media reporter Asif Iqbal Naik, there was allegedly no anaesthesia technician available during the thirteen year old girl’s abortion procedure and, consequently, she may not have been properly anaesthetised. Her initial medical reports, according to him, reportedly support this possibility. Asif also stated that, when he spoke to a woman who performed the girl’s final rites, she described injuries to the victim’s private parts that appeared to have been inflicted unprofessionally. If these facts are independently verified, the absence of qualified medical personnel and the manner in which the procedure was conducted could become crucial elements in determining the circumstances of her death. Otherwise, the thirteen-year-old girl might have survived. The irony is devastating. Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees the right to life and personal liberty to every person, yet social prejudice can determine whose life receives its full protection in practice.

Rape is one thing. But the collective response that follows when families, relatives, community elders, Sarpanches, local leaders, medical personnel, and politically influential individuals allegedly become involved in concealing the consequences of rape is something altogether different. Had she survived, the seven-month-long history of alleged sexual violence, pregnancy, and subsequent attempts at settlement might have not come to light.

Was her life also the culmination of a collective effort to prevent the truth from becoming public? The real tragedy is not merely that one individual allegedly committed sexual violence. It is that a wider social environment which have normalised, concealed, negotiated, and ultimately enabled the consequences of that violence because the victim belonged to a socially marginalised community. This is the brutality of identity-based dehumanisation.

When a society in general have expression such as “Agar toi wechew janglas manz aike anndhh saruf (snake) bai Gujjur, Gujjur gase marun, saruf gasai travun”— “If you ever encounter a Gujjar and a snake at the same time, kill the Gujjar and leave the snake” it becomes necessary to ask what happens when such prejudices enter institutions. How does one expect a doctor, teacher, administrator, political leader, or police officer to respond with ordinary human compassion if the social environment has already taught them to see a particular identity as inferior? It is like expecting a butcher to show compassion towards the goat standing before him. The problem, however, is not the individual butcher alone, it is the social system that has taught him to see the goat merely as an object for slaughter.

The victim may have been beaten, threatened, frightened, humiliated, and psychologically broken during those seven months. She may have cried out to the sky, while the social apparatus around her remained unmoved. And when, in the name of abortion, she allegedly underwent a procedure that ultimately ended her life, her screams may have disappeared into the trenches of the identity assigned to her. Perhaps her greatest tragedy was not simply that she was allegedly raped. It was that her suffering could be negotiated because she was Gujjar. Her identity became the very condition through which her vulnerability was interpreted.

Her screams have yet to shake a society sufficiently to demand a comprehensive and impartial investigation. She may have hoped that her suffering would not disappear into the trench of identity rather a beginning where no other girl would be ruined, bargained over, and ultimately sacrificed beneath the accumulated weight of social stigma. The identity that isolated her from the social mainstream was not created by her. The stigma attached to it was inherited from generations before her.

Gujjar and Bakarwal marginalisation cannot simply be explained through a supposed cultural fear of modernity or by attributing their deprivation to ignorance. Many of them have remained rooted in the pristine valleys and higher altitudes of the Himalayas, but they have simultaneously been left miles behind the rapidly changing capitalist, technological, educational, and globalised world. It was and remains the responsibility of socially privileged sections of society to bring such communities into confidence, to create meaningful access to modern education and to make them feel that they too belong to the wider socio-economic and political order. When that process fails, the responsibility becomes even more urgent for an educated and conscious class emerging from within the marginalised community itself. For example, in twentieth-century Kashmir, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah became associated, in a different historical context, with the mobilisation of people who had experienced generations of deprivation and political exclusion.

This thirteen-year-old girl must have been asking why has the social mobility achieved by a section of the Gujjar and Bakarwal elite not percolate into a sustained transformation of the conditions of the overwhelmingly deprived majority? The Gujjar and Bakarwal question deserve to be viewed through a similar lens. The relationship between an emerging community elite and an overwhelmingly deprived majority. A considerable socio-economic distance has emerged between sections of the Gujjar elite and the ordinary people whose identity has provided much of the basis for their political and institutional representation. Some politically and economically prosperous members of the community have built political careers and public faces around their tribal belonging. Yet examples of their sustained efforts to mobilise, educate, organise, and unite the most deprived sections of their own community remain comparatively rare.

Her death should not be reduced to another isolated crime report. It should force us to confront the deeper structures that determine whose suffering becomes visible, whose testimony is believed, whose death produces outrage, and whose identity makes suffering easier to ignore.

(The author is a Research Scholar in Modern Indian History at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). His writings engage with questions of history, society, identity, and contemporary Indian public discourse)


Related:

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5 Doctors Suspended After Pregnant Woman’s Death In Jammu And Kashmir

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]]> The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure https://sabrangindia.in/the-normalisation-of-suicide-at-iits-institutional-blindness-and-failure/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 05:32:39 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49159 The recent protest at the Lecture Hall of IIT Delhi where slogans of “Investigation, Compensation, and Resignation”, were raised by the student collective raises the crucial demand for redistributive justice, firstly demanding that the administration to recognise these deaths as the failure of institutions to recognise structural inequities, denials and cruelties.

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]]> In the middle of an ongoing suicide crisis, I am compelled to put my pain, anger, and reflections into this small reflective piece. From Rohith Vemula to Jason Arday, from Anitha to Delta, the crisis is a product of systemic failure and the failed project of the welfare state, which was expected to safeguard the interests of the more vulnerable and those who have no resources or cultural capital at their disposal to withstand a highly neo-liberalized, Brahminical, racially segregated, and gender-biased world engulfed in the fraught logics of ‘meritocracy’.

It was hardly two weeks since Jason Arday’s ordeal, which resulted in his suicide- I am rather inclined to term it systemic murder of marginalised bodies. When another Google search, returned with the headline, another IIT student allegedly committed suicide, at what is purportedly the country’s most ‘meritocratic shop’, producing efficient docile bodies for the neoliberal industry!

The recurrence of suicides across IITs compels a question: what makes a student at an institute celebrated as a guarantor of upward economic and social mobility take their own life? Possibly, the explanation lies not within the student at all; rather, the institution itself becomes the focal lens of our inquiry.

Why are these campuses becoming deathscapes?

At dawn on a Saturday in August, a second-year M.Sc. student took his life at IIT Delhi. His suicide stirred the same question that each lost life before his has opened- Is it the institutional environment of the IITs that produces this recurrence?

Recurrence of Suicide:

According to the statistics compiled by independent trackers, drawing on partial government data, records a staggering 160 suicides across IITs within the past two decades. The recent ruling by the Central Information Commission (CIC) flagged a persistent crisis of suicides across IIT campuses. At IIT Delhi alone, eight students have died by suicide in the past two and a half years, roughly once every fourth month at this institution. Nationally, IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur, the notorious ones, have been designated “concentration zones” owing to the high intensity of cases, alongside other premier institutes such as IISC Bangalore.

The rate of recurrence sprouts a question about the institutional experience of students who lost their lives. IITs as institutions invested in the fraught ideal of meritocracy, often function as competitive, toxic workplaces obsessed with productivity optimisation. The institutional environment of IIT needs to be viewed through this framework, in which intense academic pressure, coupled with social burden, creates conditions in which a student’s worth is seen as inseparable from their academic performance.

It is worth stressing that this burden isn’t evenly distributed nor does it reflect the collective institutional experience among students. The vulnerability gets compounded for students specifically hailing from marginalised social locations. Besides the relentless scholarly strain, they also carry the burden of representation- the weight of representing their community in a space that was never designed keeping them in mind. Caste, class and institution isolation intersect here, making the burden heavier. Therefore, framing this as a uniform institutional experience would inadvertently obscure those at greater risk. Each of these deaths lays bare the underlying reality of institutional negligence, the absence of robust student support systems, and the conditions students are left alone to endure. This isn’t merely an anomaly, it points to the long trend of “administrative lapses”, a refusal by universities to acknowledge these deaths as a systemic problem, and a corresponding negligence in curbing further deaths.

The Language of Evasion:

Media treatment of these suicides often frames this recurrence as a consequence of a “chain reaction”, the idea that one student’s suicide triggers suicidal ideation in another with pre-existing suicidal ideation. “Unofficially we are not supposed to discuss it amongst ourselves. Officially everyone knows, as if silence doesn’t spread just as fast, and trigger just as much”, Adarsh*, revealed an IIT student, characterising an undercurrent which runs through whisper networks. Beneath this, as an unofficial and incognito practice, students are advised to refrain from discussing suicide on campus, stemming from fear of “suicide contagion”. Though the clinical validity of this practice is questionable, the social effect of this approach does succeed in suppressing the conversation around this phenomenon, thus concomitantly aiding the institution evade confrontation. Even the administrative responses are composed in a deflecting register. Every death follows the same customary email template, under the header, “Sad news”, a performance of concern that changes nothing, while actively obscuring institutional accountability narratives. Further, the pattern of vocabulary across institutions deploying phrases such as “isolated incident”, “mental health” and “committee formed” remains consistent. This language reduces structural issues into a pathological and an individual predisposition.

Suicide cannot be adequately understood as a purely individual or psychological phenomenon. Notwithstanding the solitary nature of the act itself, the degree to which an individual experiences a sense of belonging, connectedness, and social integration constitutes as equally significant determinants. When this integration weakens, or when the society’s moral framework becomes either too rigid or too loose, a state of crisis unfolds within an individual. Institutions do not merely create rules; they actively structure an individual’s perception of the self and of success and failure. These normative rules constitute the very persona of the “successful individual”.

At the IITs, this image resonates with extraordinary intelligence, relentless competitiveness, and interminable productivity optimisation, all without exhibiting any vulnerability. A student’s failure to live up to this created image is not read as failure of the system, but as a matter of personal inadequacy. It’s framing as an individual’s inadequacy makes the pressure so effective, thereby requiring no external enforcement. The internalisation by students towards relentlessly performing and optimizing themselves, becomes both the source of pressure and its target. Academic competition curdles into self-exploitation, where any inadequacy towards meeting these high-academic standards is experienced as a moral and existential failure of the self, never as a flaw in the standard itself. Thus, the individual becomes the site of issue, their personal dejection becomes the victim, while the institution remains unquestioned.

Speaking of the recent death, when a death is coded as mental illness rather than the outcome of institutional negligence, issues such as “denial of hostel facilities”, “denied major academic project” never come close to being registered as evidence of a structural pattern. In the wider frame, explaining such a crisis through individualisation escapes scrutiny of deeper machineries such as the graded caste hierarchy and class inequality. These deaths aren’t mere idiosyncrasies; they’re better understood as failures of a system infused with institutional apathy. With regard to the structural pattern, there’s another dormant failure compounding the individualisation narrative: the absence of a standardised, consistent national database tracking students’ suicide across IITs. The existing data from the Supreme Court, Parliament, or the Ministry of Education are fragmented and mutually inconsistent, with figures either overlapping or spanning different timeframes. The very state apparatus meant to hold these institutions accountable is operating in the absence of a stable object of knowledge. This form of instability isn’t merely a clerical failure; it puts the political class in an uncomfortable position. Taken together, the individualisation narrative and the absence of reliable data reflect the practice of evasion by both the state and its institutions.

Fracturing the culture:

The culture of protest at IIT Delhi isn’t ordinary. It is highly unusual for IIT students to ruffle the administration’s feathers with this kind of agonistic confrontation, since the fear ingrained in the students here is deeply structural, not incidental. Any dissent has historically carried consequences, sometimes strained relationships with supervisors, rigged academic records, or being unofficially marked as an “unserious” student. Oftentimes, the culture of being indifferent to injustices within these institutions also emanates from the fear of getting penalised.  This suppression, and the fear of being labelled, has long dissuaded any dissent from emerging at all. The silence over this many deaths can plausibly be attributed to why these suicides became routine, rather than rupture. Yet this protest cannot be read in isolation, it also shares the wider wave of dissent witnessed across the state in recent months.  Weeks earlier, the nationwide protest drew the same generation onto the streets, ferreting accountability towards the precarious state of the Indian education system. The scale of mobilisation followed by Hrishikesh’s death is something that none earlier deaths within IIT, in recent memory, has produced.

The sloganeering of “Investigation, Compensation, and Resignation”, by the student collective in the Lecture Hall of IIT Delhi speaks to a demand for redistributive justice, from the administration to recognize these deaths as failure of institutions. In doing so, it has succeeded in rekindling the demand for institutional accountability from the institutions, in which earlier deaths, despite their recurrence, remained absent from public discourse. The protest extends beyond symbolic administrative fixes towards challenging the structural flaws persisting within the system. Beyond individual diagnosis, redistributive justice here would require adequately funded mental health personnel, not the faculty sporting a counsellor label, mandatory compensation for the deceased’s family, and ensuring faculty diversity proportionate to student diversity within committees. Such demands challenge the system to rethink and requisition the existing mechanisms and their speculation in academic spaces, which are deemed sufficient once the pressure becomes overwhelming.

According to Hrishikesh’s mother’s account, shared publicly during the protest, the deceased who lost his father years ago, had been battling mental health issues, previously been hospitalised for the same and later resumed his studies. He had also confided in the counsellor at the institute about his struggles. In the time since, he was denied “a major academic project under his supervisor, “denied hostel facilities”, due to his mental health illness. These facts reflect the administrative indifference shown towards his distress, despite having sought support from what the institute offers. When an institution flags a student as “severely depressive”, or exhibiting “suicidal ideation”, this identification should be followed by institutional duty of care, rather than employing this diagnostic function to depriving the student of essential amenities and pushing them towards further precarity. This scenario, in its most precise sense, is the institutional betrayal the deceased went through.

The larger question is, not merely to counsel students to survive within these institutions, but to confront the relentless culture of self-optimisation, and other structural harms such as caste-based discrimination, class inequality, and cultural alienation. Counselling isn’t the panacea for student’s survival, no specific remedy is, least of all counselling alone. Institutional redressal mechanisms such as counselling and campus wellness centres cannot mitigate the kind of distress manufactured by the institution themselves. Placing such mechanisms equivalent to addressing academic pressure silently shifts the blame onto the student’s incapacity to cope, rather than introspecting into conditions they are expected to cope within. It is worth situating this issue in a wider frame. When in a hyper neoliberal environment, where job markets are contracting, mental health concerns are soaring, even meritocratic showcase institutions such as IITs are no longer reliably delivering the economic security it once seems promising, it is worth laying out briefly here to not read these deaths as outcome of individual inadequacy, but these vulnerabilities as produced by the society itself. These deaths are often accumulated results of adverse conditions infused within the institutions.

*Adarsh (name changed for the reasons of maintaining anonymity of the respondent) is a scholar at IIT Delhi who shared his experience of being in the institute following a student’s suicide.

(The author is a second-year PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral research examines the student suicide crisis in higher educational institutions in India, with a particular focus on caste-based structural discrimination as a contributing factor)

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Systemic Prejudice, Absence of Grievance Redressal reasons for Dalit Suicides: Teacher Testimonies

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REPLUG: Rohith Vemula, Your Sacrifice was Not in Vain

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Mumbai Dharna for Darshan Solanki makes calls for law against caste discrimination

 

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]]> Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim https://sabrangindia.in/two-women-journalists-allege-police-assault-after-questioning-delhi-cm-say-attack-intensified-after-police-heard-they-were-muslim/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:58:54 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49155 Shaheen and Nafisa Khan say they were detained while covering a CM event and assaulted at Saket police station

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]]> Two women journalists working with digital news platform 4PM News Network have alleged that Delhi Police detained and assaulted them after they attempted to cover an event attended by Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Saket on Thursday.

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.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

Related:

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

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

 

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]]> Comrade Sonya Gill: A life dedicated to the struggle for equality and justice https://sabrangindia.in/comrade-sonya-gill-a-life-dedicated-to-the-struggle-for-equality-and-justice/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:17:43 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49147 The sudden and shocking demise of Comrade Sonya Gill on August 25, 2026 at the age of 71 is an immense loss to the women’s movement and the Left movement in Mumbai and Maharashtra. It is a big blow to all those who loved and respected her as a comrade and friend. Sonya Gill was […]

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]]> The sudden and shocking demise of Comrade Sonya Gill on August 25, 2026 at the age of 71 is an immense loss to the women’s movement and the Left movement in Mumbai and Maharashtra. It is a big blow to all those who loved and respected her as a comrade and friend.

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

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]]> Maharashtra SIR draft rolls leave 2.07 crore electors out; Pune records highest exclusions at 28.66 lakh https://sabrangindia.in/maharashtra-sir-draft-rolls-leave-2-07-crore-electors-out-pune-records-highest-exclusions-at-28-66-lakh/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:23:55 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49140 Maharashtra's SIR draft electoral rolls have excluded over 2.07 crore names in the enumeration period: Pune has recorded the highest number of deletions; electors can file claims and objections until September 30

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]]> The publication of Maharashtra’s draft electoral rolls under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has revealed that more than 2.07 crore electors whose names appeared in the pre-revision electoral rolls have not been included at the draft stage. Pune district alone accounts for 28,66,481 such electors, the highest among all districts in the state. The State Election Commission will publish the final electoral rolls on November 4

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.

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

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]]> “Balancing Principles”: Are Hindutva far-right supporters and Muslim illiberalism often cosy bedfellows? https://sabrangindia.in/balancing-principles-are-hindutva-far-right-supporters-and-muslim-illiberalism-often-cosy-bedfellows/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 09:16:36 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=49136 An open letter to Prof Faizan Mustafa from the students and faculty of Aligarh

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

]]> For years now, few critiques of the far Hindu(tva) right are equally sharp-nosed on calling out Muslim regressive or manifestations of Muslim communalism. Here, from within the Muslim community, academics and researchers from the famed Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have broken barriers as others have and penned this article in the form of an open letter. In the interests of both healthy debate and deepening of the battle against fundamentalism of all hues, SabrangIndia, as did Communalism Combat before it for decades, publishing this communication.

–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

 

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