The Hindu Morning Digest: August 14, 2025
In a late night operation on Wednesday (August 13, 2025), the police detained all the conservancy workers of the Greater Chennai Corporation, who have been staging a protest for the past 13 days demanding that privatisation of conservancy operations be dropped in two zones of the city. Nearly 400 police personnel, who were deployed from around 11.30 p.m. on Wednesday (August 13, 2025), began removing the conservancy workers.
Thousands of forest rights titles go missing in Chhattisgarh records, officials claim 'reporting error'
Thousands of forest rights titles distributed across at least three districts in Chhattisgarh seem to have disappeared from the records of the State government's Tribal Welfare Department at various points over the last 17 months, according to documents accessed by The Hindu through the Right to Information Act. State government officials claimed that the earlier, higher figures were faulty, due to 'miscommunication and error in reporting', which has now been corrected.
Supreme Court notice to Centre on plea to introduce a system 'similar' to creamy layer concept for SC/ST reservations
The Supreme Court has decided to examine a plea to introduce a 'system', similar to the creamy layer concept in Other Backward Classes (OBC), to achieve equitable distribution of reservation benefits among Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) communities. A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi issued notice to the Union government on a petition filed by Ramashankar Prajapati highlighting that the current reservation policy disproportionately benefitted groups within the SC/ST who were already well-off and enjoying social clout, while the most deprived members continued to swirl in the cycle of extreme poverty.
Jaishankar to visit Moscow; Wang Yi to be in New Delhi
Against the backdrop of growing uncertainty in trade ties with the United States, India is on track to intensify engagements with Russia and China in the coming days. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar is scheduled to visit Russia on August 21 to hold discussions with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, while officials here are preparing to host Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi before that, sources here have confirmed.
Bihar SIR a battle between Election Commission's power, citizens' right to vote: Supreme Court
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral rolls is a battle between the Election Commission of India's 'power' over elections and the ordinary citizen's right to be named in electoral rolls, and to be allowed to vote, the Supreme Court observed on Wednesday (August 13, 2025) J.ustice Joymalya Bagchi, part of the Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant hearing petitions against the SIR, observed that poll-bound Bihar was in the middle of a contest between Article 324, which empowers the Election Commission (EC) to control elections, and the constitutional right of adult suffrage enshrined in Article 326 of the Constitution.
Google will let you pick preferred sources for news
Google is rolling out a feature that will allow those who read Top Stories curated by the tech giant to see more stories from their preferred sources. The feature, known as Preferred Sources, will allow users to customise their news experience in Search so more content from their favourites sites is shown.
Fathers losing out in child visitation battles, says report
A first-of-its-kind report on child visitation rights for estranged fathers highlights the absence of balanced shared parenting laws in India and the urgent need for reforms. The report by NGO Ekam Nyaay Foundation warns that fathers across India face prolonged separations from their children, bias in custody decisions, non-compliance with court-
AAP steps up efforts to rebuild after Delhi poll loss
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been quietly working behind the scenes to rebuild and reorganise its political machinery over the past four months following its loss in the Delhi Assembly poll, according to multiple party insiders. With volunteer outreach drives, a restructured Delhi unit, and a rejuvenated students' wing, the party is setting the stage for a political comeback even as its top leadership's gaze shifts to Punjab, Gujarat, and Goa ahead of the 2027 elections.
West Bengal migrant worker repatriated from Bangladesh after family moves Calcutta HC
Amir Sheikh, a 19-year-old migrant worker from Kaliachak in West Bengal's Malda district who was allegedly detained from Rajasthan in May and 'pushed back' into Bangladesh, was reunited with his family on Wednesday. Mr. Amir's family members said the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel handed him over to the Basirhat police in the State's North 24 Parganas district. Earlier this month, Ziyem Sheikh, the father of Mr. Amir, had filed a habeas corpus petition before the Calcutta High Court.
Undocumented migrants leaving via eastern border tripled in 2025 compared to 2024, government data show
The number of undocumented migrants — suspected to be from Bangladesh — apprehended by the Border Security Force (BSF) while attempting to voluntarily leave India through the eastern border this year was over three times higher than in 2024, government data show. In 2024, as many as 1,049 undocumented people were apprehended while leaving the country while till July 15 this year, 3,536 undocumented people were caught by the BSF, a senior government official said. The number of people who were stopped when they tried to enter the country from Bangladesh last year stood at 2,425, while till July 15 this year, the number was 1,372.
Zelenskyy tells European leaders and Trump that Putin 'is bluffing'
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he told European leaders and Donald Trump on Wednesday (August 13, 2025) that Russian President Vladimir Putin 'is bluffing' ahead of the planned summit with the U.S. in Alaska. Mr. Putin, Mr. Zelenskyy said in a meeting, 'is trying to apply pressure ... on all sectors of the Ukrainian front' in an attempt to show that Russia is 'capable of occupying all of Ukraine.'
Netanyahu floats 'allowing' Palestinians out of Gaza as mediators renew truce push
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday (August 12, 2025) revived calls to 'allow' Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip, as the military prepares a broader offensive in the territory. Past calls to resettle Gazans outside of the war-battered territory, including from U.S. President Donald Trump, have sparked concern among Palestinians and condemnation from the international community.
Rahul to lead 16-day 'Vote Adhikar Yatra' in Bihar as Congress intensifies fight against SIR
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, is all set to start a 16-day-long 'Vote Adhikar Yatra' from Sasaram in Bihar on Sunday (August 17, 2025), as the principal Opposition party steps up its campaign against alleged irregularities in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the State.
82% human-street dog encounters in India 'peaceful', research finds amid Supreme Court order
Human-street dog interactions in India are predominantly uneventful, with 82% of observed encounters involving approachable or neutral behaviour, according to research on street dogs and public health by the University of Edinburgh. Data from the research show that only 2% of human-street dog interactions involved aggression such as barking, chasing, or biting.
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Economic Times
29 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Rahul Gandhi to embark on 16-day 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' in Bihar from Sunday
Synopsis Rahul Gandhi is set to launch a 16-day 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' from Sasaram, Bihar, covering 1,300 km to Patna, aiming to protect voting rights. The Congress underlined what it said was a BJP conspiracy to disenfranchise marginalised communities through electoral roll revisions. ANI Rahul Gandhi Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi will on Sunday begin his 16-day-long 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' from Sasaram in poll-bound Bihar. The Yatra will cover 1,300 kilometres and will conclude with a mega rally in Patna on September 1, where leaders of various INDIA parties would attend. Sharing details of his Yatra in a post on X, Gandhi said, "16 days. 20+ districts. 1,300+ kms. We are coming among the people with the Voter Rights Yatra." "This is the fight to protect the most fundamental democratic right - 'one person, one vote.' Join us in Bihar to save the Constitution," Gandhi said. Party spokesperson Pawan Khera told reporters that this Yatra will be yet another milestone in the democratic history of India. "Whenever Rahul Gandhi has embarked upon such a march, democracy has turned a new page," he said, adding that "The Yatra will be a historic journey, which will prove to be a milestone in the fight for the existence of all of us". Giving details, he said, besides Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, other partners of the INDIA bloc will also be part of the Yatra. Khera alleged that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls had exposed the BJP's designs to disenfranchise lakhs of voters belonging to the Dalit, Adivasi and minority communities, the poor and daily wagers. He alleged that it was a conspiracy to not only steal the votes, but also steal the identity. "Today they will snatch the underprivileged people's right to vote, tomorrow they will refuse them the share in government schemes like free food and housing," he warned, while claiming that the conspiracy was much deeper. Training his guns on the Election Commission (EC), Khera said, the EC is becoming like one of the "train bogeys" of the so-called "double engine", asserting that it is not acceptable and the Congress will not let that happen. "The Election Commission becoming just a compartment of this 'double engine' - this is something we will not accept. We are fighting against this and will continue to do so in the future. "We urge the people of Bihar that this is a journey for your rights and entitlements. Join this journey so that democracy can find direction from Bihar," he said. Khera said that after the people of Bihar, activists, and the Congress and INDIA bloc workers raised their voice against the SIR, the EC was forced to do a course correction. He said it was only after the intervention by the Supreme Court that the national poll body was compelled to address the concerns of common people and voters. The 'Voter Adhikar Yatra' is aimed at ensuring awareness and alertness among the common people so that the Modi government's conspiracy to deny voting rights to the people of Bihar does not fructify, the Congress leader asserted.
Hindustan Times
29 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Zelenskiy braces for perilous Trump talks in Washington on Monday
By Tom Balmforth, Yuliia Dysa and Pavel Polityuk Zelenskiy braces for perilous Trump talks in Washington on Monday LONDON/KYIV -Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy flies to Washington on Monday under heavy U.S. pressure to agree a swift end to Russia's war in Ukraine but determined to defend Kyiv's interests - without sparking a second Oval Office bust up with Donald Trump. The U.S. president invited Zelenskiy to Washington after rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin, Kyiv's arch foe, at a summit in Alaska that shocked many in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have died since Russia's 2022 invasion. The Alaska talks failed to produce the ceasefire that Trump sought, and the U.S. leader said on Saturday that he now wanted a full-fledged peace deal and that Kyiv should accept because "Russia is a very big power, and they're not". The blunt rhetoric throws the weight of expectation squarely back onto Zelenskiy, putting him in a potentially perilous position as he returns to Washington for the first time since his talks with Trump in the Oval Office spiralled into acrimony in February. The U.S. president upbraided Zelenskiy in front of world media at the time, saying Ukraine's leader did not "hold the cards" in negotiations and that what he described as Kyiv's intransigence risked triggering World War Three. Trump's pursuit of a quick deal now comes despite intense diplomacy by the European allies and Ukraine to convince the U.S. president that a ceasefire should come first and not - as sought by the Kremlin - once a settlement is agreed. The New York Times, citing two senior European officials, reported on Saturday that European leaders were also invited to attend Monday's meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Trump briefed Zelenskiy on his talks with Putin during a call on Saturday that lasted more than an hour and a half, the Ukrainian leader said. They were joined after an hour by European and NATO officials, he added. "The impression is he wants a fast deal at any price," a source familiar with the conversation told Reuters. The source said Trump sought to convince Zelenskiy to agree to the idea of a deal in which he would withdraw troops from the partially-occupied eastern Donetsk region that Russian troops have been trying to capture for years. Zelenskiy replied that was not possible, the source added. Kyiv has publicly dismissed the idea of withdrawing from internationally recognised Ukrainian land they control as part of any deal. Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials say, serves as a fortress holding back Russian advances deeper into Ukraine. Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the Ukrainian parliament's foreign affairs committee, told Reuters by phone that Trump's emphasis on a deal rather than a ceasefire carried great risks for Ukraine. "In Putin's view, a peace agreement means several dangerous things – Ukraine not joining NATO, his absurd demands for denazification and demilitarisation, the Russian language and the Russian church," he said. Any such deal could be politically explosive inside Ukraine, Merezhko said, adding he was worried that Putin's international isolation had ended. SECURITY GUARANTEES Avoiding a repeat of the Oval Office acrimony is critical for Zelenskiy to preserve the relationship with the U.S., which still provides military assistance and shares intelligence. For Ukraine, robust security guarantees to prevent any future Russian invasion lie at the foundations of any serious peace settlement. Two sources familiar with the matter said that Trump and the European leaders discussed potential security guarantees for Ukraine that would be outside NATO but similar to the alliance's Article 5 during their call on Saturday. NATO, which Kyiv seeks to join, though Trump has made clear that will not happen soon, regards any attack launched on one of its 32 members as an attack on all under its Article 5 clause. One of the two sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said European leaders were seeking clarity on what kind of U.S. role this guarantee would involve, but that there were no details yet. Zelenskiy has repeatedly said a trilateral meeting with the Russian and U.S. leaders is crucial to finding a way to end the full-scale war launched by Russia in February 2022. Trump this week voiced the idea of such a meeting, saying it could happen if his bilateral talks in Alaska with Putin were successful. "Ukraine emphasizes that key issues can be discussed at the level of leaders, and a trilateral format is suitable for this," Zelenskiy wrote on social media on Saturday. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Indian Express
29 minutes ago
- Indian Express
‘Can't assume powers Constitution has not vested': Centre warns Supreme Court against judicial overreach
Opposing the Supreme Court fixing a three-month timeline for the President and governor to act on bills forwarded by the state legislature, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta has said that the judiciary does not hold answers to all problems in a democracy and 'if any organ [of state] is permitted to arrogate to itself the functions of another…the consequence would be a constitutional disorder…'. In written submissions to the court, where a five-judge bench is hearing a reference made by the President on whether time schedules can be fixed for the actions of the President or governor, on August 12, Mehta stressed the importance of the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Despite this, he pointed out, 'there are certain zones which remain exclusive to either of the three organs…and cannot be trenched upon by the others. The high plenary positions of Governors and President fall within that zone. While they are political positions, they are also representations of democratic will'. 'While the President is elected and governors are appointed by Council of Ministers [acting through President], direct elections are not the only form of democratic processes in a republican democracy. The positions of power, where appointments are made by elected representatives, are also legitimate centres of democratic faith,' Mehta said. On governors, he said, they 'are thus not to be treated as alien/foreigner in the federating units of the Union. Governors are not just emissaries of the Centre rather representatives of the entire nation in each and every federating unit. They represent national interest and national democratic will in the States as part of the larger Indian constitutional brotherhood.' Responding to the question of granting assent to bills, he said: 'The gubernatorial assent is a high prerogative, plenary, non-justiciable power which is sui generis in nature. Although the power of assent is exercised by the person at the apex of the Executive, however, the assent itself is legislative in nature.' Mehta pointed out that 'this blended and unique nature of assent, clothes it with a constitutional character whereby no judicially manageable standards exist. Thus, despite the expanding contours of judicial review, there are some zones like assent that remain non-justiciable. The classical notion of judicial review cannot be lifted and applied to assent as the factors at play during the grant or withholding of an assent have no legal or constitutional parallel.' Mehta said that 'a wide-ranging judicial review of assent procedures, either post-assent or at a stage anterior to the grant of assent, would potentially destabilise the constitutional balance between organs of State. It would create an institutional hierarchy and upset the constitutional balance of powers between the three organs' and 'has the potential to convert the Indian Constitution, into one which postulates supremacy of Judiciary as a doctrinal principle'. This, he said, was against the 'basic structure of the Constitution' and 'against any justifiable reading of the Constitution as a whole'. Mehta underlined that 'judicial deference and restraint have come to define the high ideals of Indian judiciary, and the judicial branch does not hold keys or solutions for every conundrum that may arise in a democratic polity'. Saying that the Constitution framers, advisedly, left some questions outside the judicial realm, he added: 'This has been recognised as an inherent limitation of judicial procedures and judicial forums across the world….The power of mandamus thus, cannot be exercised over such functionaries owing to their constitutional status and inter-organ comity.' The law officer said that 'each organ of the State in the Constitution has certain core functions, one organ interfering with the core functions of another would breach the separation of powers which is a fundamental feature of Indian Constitution'. Saying that certain political questions may have only democratic remedies under the Constitution, Mehta said: 'In the zest of finding a solution to the problem presented before one organ, such organ must follow the essential feature of separation of powers in such core functions.' He further pointed out that 'when the Constitution seeks to impose time limits for taking certain decisions, it specifically mentions such time limits. On the other hand, when it designedly sought to keep the exercise of powers flexible, it does not impose any fixed time limit. Since the text of Article 200 or 201 does not provide a specific time limit, no form of judicial review or judicial interpretation can impose the same.' Mehta said that 'the exercise Article 142 is not a supervening judicial power which can override the constitutional provisions or run contrary to them. The Apex Court, even under Article 142, is bound by constitutional provisions and principles'. He added that 'the alleged failure, inaction, or error of one organ does not and cannot authorise another organ to assume powers that the Constitution has not vested in it. If any organ is permitted to arrogate to itself the functions of another on a plea of public interest or institutional dissatisfaction or even on the justification derived from the Constitution ideals, the consequence would be a constitutional disorder not envisaged by its framers.' The SG said it 'would dissolve the delicate equilibrium that the Constitution establishes and would negate the rule of law. The perceived lapses, if any, are to be addressed through constitutionally sanctioned mechanisms such as electoral accountability, legislative oversight, executive responsibility, reference procedures or consultative process amongst democratic organs etc. Thus, Article 142 does not empower the Court to create a concept of 'deemed assent', turning the constitutional and legislative process on its head.'
