Latest news with #AshokaUniversity
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Business Standard
15 hours ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Women's labour participation in India far from matching G20 peers: Poll
Indian women's participation in the workforce will take at least two decades to catch up with G20 peers, according to a Reuters poll of economists and policy experts, many of whom said they believed poorly-paid self-employment is inflating an already-low rate. Overall job creation is falling short of the needs of India's mostly young, rapidly-growing working-age population. Women, who make up half of that pool, are largely absent from the workforce and most women with jobs are not formally employed on payrolls. The official female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) rose to 31.7% from 27.8% in the latest 2023-24 Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), but is well short of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2047 development goal to raise it to 70%, putting it more in line with advanced economies. India is at the bottom of the G20 table, behind Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and lower than even neighbouring Bangladesh and Bhutan, according to World Bank data. The G20 average is around 50%. A majority, 80%, of top independent economists and policy experts surveyed over the past month, 32 of 40, said it would take at least 20 to 30 years for India to reach a rate comparable to other G20 economies, including 18 who said it would take more than three decades. The remaining eight said it would take 10-20 years. "The kind of work women are involved in is not really what we call good jobs or good quality work. It's really just bottom of the ladder, survivalist kind. It's good they're participating but it's not the kind of transformational participation you might imagine," said Ashwini Deshpande, a professor and head of the department of economics at Ashoka University. "The job crisis is much more acute than in countries with similar levels of when jobs are scarce, men get the first priority everywhere," added Deshpande. Only 15.9% of working women are in regular wage or salaried jobs, the kind that come with contracts, steady pay or benefits. While officials have noted the recent rise in female labour force participation as a sign of progress, the latest PLFS survey showed 73.5% of rural working women and over 40% with jobs in urban areas are self-employed. Asked what they make of the official data over 70% of economists surveyed, 32 of 43, said it masked the real picture. " should see household earnings also go up when women are participating and that has not happened, which is a very big marker that this is potentially not the best kind of employment. It's potentially distress-driven," said Rosa Abraham, assistant professor at Azim Premji University. Asked if the recent rise in FLFPR signals real progress, she said: "That level of shift is still nowhere near what you would expect at this level of economic development that we are in and there's still a long way to go." Over 70% of experts said the Indian government's overall unemployment data was inaccurate and masked the severity of joblessness and underemployment. Even when jobs are available, safety concerns and unpaid care work prevent many women from applying. They spend nearly five hours daily on household duties, over three times as much as men, according to the 2025 Time Use Survey. "For women the productive and reproductive age coincide. Hence childcare and lack of suitable facilities serve as a constraint," said Sangeeta Shroff, former professor at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. "To address such issues, it will require aggressive policy intervention which will require considerable time and resources." Asked what the government should prioritise, respondents highlighted expanding childcare, safer workplaces and stronger anti-discrimination measures. Bina Agarwal, professor of development economics and environment at the University of Manchester, said young women need safe hostels in cities and small towns, safe transport to work and enforcement of workplace sexual harassment laws. "These are among many ideas feminist economists in India have been advocating for years. Is anyone listening?" she asked. (Reporting by Devayani Sathyan and Veronica Khongwir; Polling by Pranoy Krishna, Rahul Trivedi and Susobhan Sarkar; Editing by Hari Kishan, Ross Finley, Alexandra Hudson) (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scroll.in
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘A new route for thinking': Four writers on ten years of Amit Chaudhuri's ‘Literary Activism'
In 2014, writer and academic Amit Chaudhuri wrote the mission statement on ' literary activism ' – as the starting point of the project. It began in 2014 with a series of annual symposia with Ashoka University. Its aim was to create a space for the kind of discussion on creativity no longer available in mainstream contexts (literary festivals, book launches) or in academic ones (conferences, classrooms, monographs). Chaudhuri writes, 'The idea of the symposium arose from a number of impulses: firstly, the belief that it's no longer enough for writers to simply devote themselves to 'creative' practice and teach or study creative writing and have nothing to do with the conceptual underpinnings of their writing and their lives, any more than it is for academics in literature departments to simply produce monographs and shut out the problem of writing itself. Secondly, there's been a feeling among many that there's an urgent need for a conversation, and a forum, that goes beyond what you hear or encounter either at a literary festival or an academic conference. To achieve this one has to, on the one hand, eschew celebrity and book signings in favour of dialogue and response; on the other hand, steer clear of the closed professionalism of the conference and open out the conversation to people from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds who have a stake in the discussion.' He got in touch with academics, novelists, poets, translators, and publishers and offered them the opportunity to speak on the subject in a way that they wouldn't. This established a pattern: an annual two-day symposium in India, and a one-day spin-off on the year's theme at another location: twice in Oxford, and once in Paris. Since 2018, the symposiums have been supported by Ashoka University. The Literary Activism website features a section called ' Magazine ', in which new writing – essays, poetry, fiction – and art and videos are uploaded. Chaudhuri adds, ''Literary activism' is interested in the place of creative (whatever the genre or art-form) and critical practice today. […] A unidirectional flow – say, from London or Delhi or Calcutta towards Brooklyn – drains the life-blood for all involved. Making the flow go in other directions is essential not for the sake of balance, but for the intellectual viability of these practices.' In 2023, Literary Activism, a new publishing imprint of the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University, partnered with Westland Books to publish three books a year under a collaborative imprint. The collaborative imprint publishes books on literature in English and in translation from other languages. The first book to be made available to the readers was Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's Book of Rahim & Other Poems. While launching the imprint, Chaudhuri had said, 'The new imprint, 'literary activism', is meant to carry forward new ambitions in the realm of publishing. The imprint wishes to recall that art and writing are not synonymous with the generalised academic discipline called the 'humanities': they have an angularity to it, and to the social science perspectives the humanities are now subsumed under. The 'literary activism' imprint wishes not only to publish good writing, but to pursue this angularity.' In the following conversation, poet and literary scholar Charles Bernstein, journalist Jonathan Cook, writer and academic Laetitia Zecchini, and novelist and academic Saikat Majumdar talk about the importance of the project and how it has affected the creative–cultural concerns of their own writing since its inception more than a decade ago. What were your first thoughts when you heard about the Literary Activism project? Charles Bernstein (CB): That it was necessary. 'Activism' is often associated with politics and surely political activism is necessary. But so is literary activism – conscientiously challenging the shibboleths and conformity that dominate literary awards, reviewing, and habits of attention. Jonathan Cook (JC): Amit Chaudhuri is a friend and former colleague of mine. When he joined the University of East Anglia, we had some wide-ranging discussions about the state or states of contemporary literature. Out of these discussions, Chaudhuri's analysis of the impact of both the marketplace and the academy on a certain way of writing and reading literature emerged. That analysis remains as pertinent now as it did ten years ago. Laetitia Zecchini (LZ): Amit Chaudhuri once remarked that his first novel was born from the desire to write about a young boy's 'sense of escape and freedom' in Calcutta. This may well be Chaudhuri's deepest impulse, and the driving force behind ''Literary Activism'. Through this project and platform, that is what he has given himself, and what he has given others as well: a sense of escape and freedom for those of us who feel a certain dissonance or discomfort with particular fields, discourses and platforms, and with the hierarchy of values they reinforce. In my case, the academic world which increasingly rewards visibility, citation counts, self-promotion (and self-importance!), buzzwords and 'buzz-genres'! But once academia is dictated by arithmetic success, quantitative impact, and competition – once it becomes a field of power in a sense – it doesn't just lose its purpose, it also becomes tedious. Saikat Majumdar (SM): I knew Amit Chaudhuri for quite a while by that time and also knew of his discontent with the literary culture of our time trapped between the dishonest commercialism of the mainstream and the narrow instrumentalism of academia. So it was exciting to see him launch a series of interventions to do something different. What made you agree to be part of the project? Were there intersections of intellectual ambition and creative-critical concerns between your work and the Literary Activism project? CB: I admire the work of Amit Chaudhuri, as an essayist and literary activist as much as a poet and novelist. We saw the strains of 'literary activism' in each other's work. Coming perhaps from different cultural spheres, East and West, we found we had more in common than those closer to hand. So, this gives me confidence that we can have a non-national exchange, and I use that word rather than trans-national or even international. We are beside one another. JC: I liked its openness to a variety of contributions from writers, academics, artists, film-makers, etc, and the resonance of the topics chosen for each of the symposia. I have a long-standing interest in the relations between the creative and the critical in my work as a critic and biographer, so, yes, there were many intersections. I felt we needed a new way of thinking about literature and its value in a period after the dominance of literary theory and the emergence of creative writing as a university discipline. The Literary Activism project offered a route into this new way of thinking. LZ: What I find so compelling, so necessary about the literary activism platform/project is that it has also restored a sense of delight: the delight in listening to one another and in thinking together; the delight in witnessing the unfolding of critical thought and minds; the delight in paying close attention to texts and to voices, and the delight in the discovery and the encounter of many new texts, voices, personalities; the delight also in being able to say, or hear and share: 'I don't give a damn' (remember: ' f*ck storytelling '!) SM: As a writer who is part of academia, but also someone who works in the literary sphere run by mainstream presses and newspapers, this felt personally connected to me. As someone who writes novels, scholarly criticism, literary essays and op-ed articles, I've long ceased to see any difference between the critical and the artistic. They are for me simply different genres of imaginative writing, such as poetry, prose, and verse. The Literary Activism seemed to feel the same way, and brought together people who felt likewise. Why do you think the Literary Activism project seemed urgent, timely and necessary ten years ago? What has it achieved, if anything at all, in these ten years? CB: In my most recent book, The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays and Comedies, I included several key works from Literary Activism: three short works of poetics and a long essay 'Up Against Storytelling' that comes in response to Chaudhuri's conference on that subject. So 'Literary Activism' has become one of the main forums for my work. JC: See above for my thoughts about timeliness and urgency. It has created a space between the academy and the marketplace where there can be serious, witty, open-minded thinking about what it means to write now and what needs to be resisted if a certain idea of literary value is to be both defended and developed. LZ: Chaudhuri has been able to gather around him a community of wonderfully talented people who, precisely, do not take themselves seriously, but who delight in each other's company. It's also in many ways a community of friendship. In the symposia that he organises, there is a real spirit of conviviality, and there is often humour as well, but it never comes at the expense of the gravity and sometimes the difficulty of certain questions and discussions. For me, that space of 'escape and freedom' – even just knowing it exists and persists: 10 years! – has been deeply sustaining. SM: Literature is the most intellectual of all art forms and the most artistic of all intellectual discourses. Consequently, literature and creative writing have easily found a core place at the university, amidst academic disciplines – more than filmmaking, visual or performative arts. This has also made it vulnerable to the malaises of academia. On the other hand, as an art form (at least in principle if no longer in reality), it has also inherited the ailments of the free market as we have moved through neoliberalism. These peculiar features and locations of literary culture made the Literary Activism project timely ten years ago – and it remains timely 10 years later as both academic and free-market cultures continue to move through transformative crises in the 21st century. Already facing this transformative crisis early in the 21st century, literature had more identity problems than one could imagine, and the Literary Activism project had put its fingers on several of them. It has certainly achieved the reality of a persistent set of interrogations. I would love to see it taken up more organically by different stakeholders in literary culture worldwide. What are the things you'd like to see Literary Activism being involved in? JC: I'm not sure it needs to be involved in anything but its own development. There is a valuable website called Creative/Critical and an associated book imprint. It might be worth connecting with them to raise the profile of the thinking underway in the Literary Activism project. But I don't want to lose the polemical edge of Literary Activism. The danger of market hyperbole is matched by the bland conformity of academic discourse. The LA project successfully resists both. What are your thoughts, if any, on the Literary Activism imprint? CB: The books extend the work of the meetings and the website is a necessary way. Because, in the end, books still serve to ground our discourse. JC: It strikes me as a valuable initiative. SM: I think we are becoming people with rapidly receding literary and cultural memories. We're now ruthlessly presentist, and almost immediately, ruthlessly futurist too. But literature and culture are nothing without the past, and memory and affection for it. One key thing the Literary Activism imprint does is to revive thoughts, archives, and books that we need to remember and re-remember. This is something I tried to do with a column I wrote for the Los Angeles Review of Books from 2020 to 2022, 'Another Look at India's Books'. The books published in the new imprint are exquisite, and the plainness of their covers is a bold statement. What does the Literary Activism project – and its timeline – say about our literary culture? CB: We are in a post-post-colonial world. Those of us working with 'Literary Activism' are peers engaged in exchange. For me, that means learning more about West Bengali literature and culture, and more generally Indian culture – beginnng to have a deeper and more resonant sense of the full resources of 20th century thinking and poetics. So then, in the 21st century, I am less hamstrung by the pervasive parochialism and underdevelopment of American culture. 'Literary Activism' wakes me up to the world. JC: The marketisation of literature and writers continues with very little understanding of what might be lost in this process. Since the Literary Activism project began this has been increasingly informed by the presence of social media and, more recently, AI. In the process a certain kind of literary experience is likely to disappear. We need to resist this disappearance and the Literary Activism project offers a way of doing so.
Hindustan Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
‘You need a dictionary': SC to probe team as Ashoka prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad gets relief
The Supreme Court on Wednesday remarked that the probe team looking into two social media by professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad was apparently 'misdirecting itself'. It added that since Mahmudabad had cooperated with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) and surrendered his devices, he need not be summoned again. Ashoka University associate professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad has said his comments on Operation Sindoor were misunderstood.(X/HT File) "You don't require him (Mahmudabad), you require a dictionary," Justice Surya Kant said, according to news agency ANI. Mahmudabad, associate professor and head of the political science department at Ashoka University in Haryana's Sonipat, got interim bail on May 21 after his arrest by the state police on May 18 over two Facebook posts related to Operation Sindoor. On Wednesday, the bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi set a four-week deadline for the investigation team, which the SC had formed to probe the two social media posts. The court also explained that its bail conditions allowed the professor to write articles and opinions online, except on matters that are sub judice. From the SIT, it enquired why it was expanding its scope beyond the two posts, though, and why it needed his gadgets at all. "We are asking why the SIT is, on the face of it, misdirecting itself. They were supposed to examine the contents of the posts," Justice Kant told Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, who was representing the state. 'Why take gadgets, ask about foreign trips?' The court's remarks came after senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Mahmudabad, told the bench that the SIT had not only seized his devices but was questioning him over his foreign trips of the last 10 years. He has been summoned four times by the SIT, Sibal said. Sibal said that by its May 28 order, the top court had directed the SIT to confine its probe to the contents of the social media posts. The bench thus noted that Mahmudabad has cooperated with the investigation and surrendered his devices; therefore, he should not be summoned again. Mahmudabad is charged with, among other things, endangering India's sovereignty, unity and integrity for his comments on Operation Sindoor. The State Women's Commission had earlier termed Mahmudabad's social media comments as disparaging toward women officers in the Indian Armed Forces and said it also promoted communal disharmony. Mahmudabad clarified that his comments had been completely misunderstood.
The Hindu
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
Top news of the day: July 16, 2025
Supreme Court relaxes bail condition of Ashoka University professor, questions SIT line of probe The Supreme Court on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) relaxed the bail condition of Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad, saying he can write articles, opinions except on sub judice matter. On May 18, 2025, Mr. Mahmudabad was arrested by Haryana Police after two separate First Information Reports were registered against him at Sonipat's Rai Police Station over his social media posts in connection with Operation Sindoor. Mamata Banerjee leads protest march in Kolkata, warns BJP of 'dire political backlash' if it doesn't stop 'harassing' Bengali-speaking people West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee lashed out at the BJP-led Centre on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) for what, she called, its policy of harassing and mistreating Bengali-speaking people across the country and warned the saffron party of dire political consequences if it did not put an immediate stop to such actions. Ms. Banerjee also alleged that the ruling dispensation at the Centre was 'influencing the Election Commission of India' to achieve its political ambitions across States. Self-reliance in UAVs, counter-unmanned aerial systems strategic imperative for India: CDS Chauhan Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) said recent conflicts globally have demonstrated how drones can 'shift tactical balance disproportionately', and asserted that self-reliance in UAVs and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) is a 'strategic imperative' for India. In his address at an event held at Manekshaw Centre here, Gen Chauhan also said Operation Sindoor has shown why indigenously developed Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and C-UAS 'built for our terrain and our needs are crucial'. Repairs on U.K. fighter jet grounded in Kerala enter final stages, aircraft refuelled The maintenance work on the grounded F-35B fighter jet of the Royal Air Force, United Kingdom (UK), has entered the final stages in Kerala. The expert team of engineers from the U.K., which started attending to the aircraft at Thiruvananthapuram international airport on July 6, 2025, have refuelled the aircraft as part of inspecting the operational efficiency and mandatory safety checks. The aircraft also requires the clearance of the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Defence to fly back to its base station in the U.K. Parliament Monsoon Session: Government to introduce eight new Bills A Bill that seeks to preserve and protect geoheritage sites and geo-relics is among the eight new draft legislation the government plans to introduce in the Monsoon Session of Parliament beginning Monday (July 21, 2025). Among the Bills planned for the Monsoon Ssession are the National Sports Governance Bill, the Geoheritage Sites and Geo-relics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill and the National Anti-Doping (Amendment) Bill. Congress OBC Advisory Council adopts Bengaluru Declaration, seeks national caste census The AICC OBC Advisory Council, chaired by Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in Bengaluru on July 16, unanimously passed a Bengaluru Declaration, which demanded conducting a national-level caste census by the Census Commission of India. After two days of deliberations, Mr. Siddaramaiah said the meeting passed a resolution demanding a national-level caste census by the Census Commission of India, officially known as the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India (ORGI). Cabinet clears PM Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana with annual outlay of ₹24,000 crore The Cabinet on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) approved Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana for a period of six years, covering 100 districts with an annual outlay of ₹24,000 crore. The programme, announced in the Union Budget, will converge 36 existing schemes and increase adoption of crop diversification and sustainable agricultural practices. Supreme Court defers 'Udaipur Files' case hearing till July 21, awaits outcome of Centre's decision The Supreme Court on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) recorded its expectation that a panel formed by the Centre will review the certification of the movie 'Udaipur Files - Kanhaiya Lal Tailor Murder', under the Cinematograph Act 'immediately without the loss of any time'. A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi did not interfere, for the time being, with a July 10 decision of the Delhi High Court to freeze the release of the movie, which has been criticised for vilifying the Muslim community. Restore Jammu & Kashmir's statehood: Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge to PM Modi Ahead of the Monsoon session of Parliament, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi jointly wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday (July 16, 2025), urging the government to bring a legislation to grant full Statehood to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. They also requested that the government bring forward legislation to include the Union Territory of Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution. Rifiness Warjri becomes Meghalaya's youngest person to conquer Mt Everest, aims for seven summits From serving tea and noodles at a roadside stall to dreaming of summiting the highest peaks across all seven continents, Meghalaya's Rifiness Warjri is charting a path of grit and grace. The 20-year-old mountaineer recently etched her name in history as the youngest person from the state to conquer Mount Everest. But even with this extraordinary feat, Rifiness remains deeply rooted in her humble beginnings. In an interview with PTI, Rifiness stood proud, yet grounded, as she shared her dreams of scaling the tallest mountains on every continent. Israel bombs Syria Army headquarters after warning Damascus to leave Druze alone Israel said it bombed Syrian Army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) after warning the Islamist-led government to leave the Druze minority alone in its Sweida heartland where a monitor says sectarian clashes have killed nearly 250 people. Syrian government forces entered the majority-Druze city of Sweida on Tuesday (July 15, 2025) with the stated aim of overseeing a ceasefire agreed with Druze community leaders after clashes with local Bedouin tribes left more than 100 people dead. Kremlin says it is closely monitoring Western weapons supplies to Ukraine The Kremlin said that the supply of weapons to Ukraine by the West is high on agenda and that Kremlin is monitoring this issue thoroughly, Russian news agencies reported on Wednesday (July 16, 2025). The supplies of weapons to Ukraine is a business and some European countries will pay for the weapons, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Sunil Chhetri says ISL pause is concerning, India's football ecosystem is 'scared' Former captain and top striker Sunil Chhetri on Wednesday (July 16, 2025) said the current state of 'uncertainty' in Indian football is very concerning and the sport's ecosystem is 'worried, hurt, and scared' by the top-tier ISL being put on hold indefinitely. Chhetri, who turns up for Bengaluru FC in the league, said he has been inundated with phone calls and messages expressing apprehensions about the future of the sport in the country.
Mint
6 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
‘You don't require him, you require a dictionary': SC to Haryana SIT probing Ali Mahmudabad's posts
The Supreme Court on July 16 asked why the Haryana Police Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted to investigate the two FIRs lodged against Ashoka University Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad over his two social media posts on 'Operation Sindoor', was 'misdirecting' itself. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi observed that the SIT was formed specifically to investigate the two social media posts and asked why it was expanding the scope. The top court directed the SIT to complete its inquiry within four weeks, legal news website LiveLaw reported. The bench pointed out that the SIT was constituted specifically to understand the true meaning of the social media posts and to ascertain if they constituted any offence. The bench asked why the petitioner's devices were seized. "We just want to know from what purpose they have seized devices? We will call them (officers)," Justice Kant told Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, who was representing the State. Noting that the petitioner has cooperated with the investigation and surrendered his devices, the Court relaxed his bail conditions and directed that he should not be summoned again. "You don't require him (Mahmudabad), you require a dictionary," Justice Kant said. The Court reiterated that the investigation must remain confined to the contents of the two FIRs and not become a broader inquiry. Mahmudabad, who teaches Political Science at Haryana-based Ashoka University, was arrested on May 18 for his remarks regarding press briefings on Operation Sindoor, India's military action in May on terror camps in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people, mostly tourists, in South Kashmir on April 22. The arrest was based on a complaint filed by Yogesh Jatheri, the general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Yuva Morcha in Haryana, reports said quoting his lawyers. On May 21, however, the Supreme Court granted interim bail to Mahmudabad and directed the constitution of a three-member SIT to investigate the case. The Haryana Police said the two FIRs were lodged at the Rai Police Station in Sonipat – one based on a complaint from the chairperson of Haryana State Commission for Women, Renu Bhatia, and the other on the complaint of a village sarpanch. Mahmudabad's remarks were annexed to the commission's notice, and in one of them, he purportedly said right-wing people applauding Col Sofiya Qureshi should demand protection for victims of mob lynchings and "arbitrary" bulldozing of properties. Mahmudabad was alleged to have described the media briefings by Col Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh as "optics". "But optics must translate to reality on the ground, otherwise it's just hypocrisy," he added. The commission previously said an initial review of Mahmudabad's remarks raised concerns about the "disparagement of women in uniform, including Col Qureshi and Wing Commander Singh, and undermining their role as professional officers in the Indian Armed Forces". Mahmudabad, 42, is a historian, political scientist, writer, poet and a faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana. Born in Lucknow on December 2, 1982, Ali is the son of Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan, popularly known as Raja Sahab Mahmudabad, who spent about 40 years in a legal battle to reclaim his ancestral property seized by the government under the Enemy Properties Act. Raja Saheb passed away in October 2023. Key directions and developments from the hearing: Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad is free to write articles and social media posts, except on the subjudice matter. -The Court clarified that its earlier orders did not restrict his expression. -The SIT does not need to summon him again for questioning. The Court noted that the petitioner has already joined the investigation and his devices have been examined. -The probe must be completed within four weeks, strictly limited to the language and content of the two Facebook posts related to the violence in Pahalgam. -Justice Surya Kant questioned the course of the SIT's probe, observing: 'Why is the SIT, on the face of it, misdirecting itself?' -The Court reminded the SIT that it was set up specifically to examine whether any offence was made out from the phrasing used in the posts—not to launch a roving inquiry. - Interim protection from arrest granted to Mahmudabad will continue.
