Himachal Pradesh HC transfers the probe into the death of HPPCL chief engineer Vimal Negi to CBI
A single bench of the High Court, led by Justice Ajay Goyal, on Wednesday accepted a petition by Vimal Negi's wife, Kiran Negi, and ordered the transfer of the probe from the Himachal Police SIT, headed by Shimla SP Sanjeev Gandhi, to the CBI.
R K Bawa, the advocate for the petitioner, said the court accepted the family's plea that the state police was not conducting a fair investigation and directed that no Himachal Pradesh officer be involved in the probe.
"From day 1, Kiran was not satisfied with the probe by the SIT. Accepting our plea, the court has directed that no Himachal-cadre officer will be part of the CBI investigation. The government failed to act on the report of the additional chief secretary (Home and Revenue), Onkar Chand, in which he indicted officers accused by the family of misbehaviour. The government withheld his report. The SIT was biased and only looked into the medical history of the victim," the counsel stated.
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Scroll.in
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India's bulldozer demolitions are being fuelled by political silence
In June, the Assam government demolished just over 600 Muslim homes in Goalpara district in what it described as a crackdown on ' illegal encroachments '. In Jahangirpuri in Delhi, homes and shops were razed despite a Supreme Court stay in April. The next month, the Ahmedabad municipality demolished 8,500 houses in Danilimda in a drive aimed at 'illegal Bangladeshis'. The same month, in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, a mosque under construction was demolished without warning. Bulldozers have emerged as the state's favourite weapon in Narendra Modi's India, flattening Muslim neighbourhoods with clinical choreography. Each such demolition redraws the geography of citizenship and belonging. Like Israel's bulldozers in Gaza and the West Bank, India's bulldozers flatten buildings while erasing memory, rewriting history and reinforcing majoritarian rule. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben warns of the 'state of exception': legal limbo where democratic rights are suspended in the name of national interest. Agamben's 'state of exception' is evident when citizenship is overridden by suspicion, when due process is abandoned and when the law is fashioned into a tool of punishment. The state that is meant to protect rights becomes an agent of violation. 'We lost everything in a day,' Fatima Begum, a mother of four in Goalpara told The Observer Post. 'My children now suffer in the heat and rain. We only ask for dignity and safety.' Dignity is precisely what is being denied, deliberately. In Goalpara, the administration cited a 2021 land notification, claiming that the homes were located in a wetland. If that is true, why were only Muslim homes demolished? Were notices issued? What compensation was paid? Was there the basic recognition that these are landowners, labourers, teachers, children – citizens? 'This is not just an attack on property but on our identity,' schoolteacher Imran Hussain told The Observer Post. The bulldozer, as the mascot of a majoritarian state, arrives after riots, militant attacks or just before elections. It performs collective punishment, collapses the law into spectacle and leaves behind silence. It is demographic engineering bearing a saffron flag. The bulldozer is theology in motion. It enforces a belief that Muslims are intruders on Indian soil and their citizenship conditional. As damning as the state's actions is the near-silence or symbolic deflection of the so-called secular parties. In Assam, the Congress opposition leader wrote to Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of the Bharatiya Janata Party to halt the evictions and the police reportedly stopped an eight-member delegation from reaching the site. But beyond this procedural tokenism, there has been no serious political reckoning, no sustained outrage. 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The Print
14 minutes ago
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Modi's Bharat vs Indira's India: 11-yr report card of politics, diplomacy, economy, nationalism
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On the day Narendra Modi won his third term in June, 2024, it was inevitable that this year, he would become India's second longest serving Prime Minister in consecutive terms, surpassing Indira Gandhi (24 January, 1966 to 24 March, 1977). It also became inevitable, therefore, that around this time in 2025, the season of Modi vs Indira comparisons will begin. Let me be the first, or among the first, off the block. The picture for Modi in 2014 was the exact opposite. He won a majority, the first in India after 30 years, and was his party's chosen candidate; the economy was averaging a robust 6.5 percent growth across the preceding 15 years. His was a peaceful, planned, predictable electoral transition. The degree of difficulty on his first day in power was way lower than Mrs Gandhi's, just as his political capital was enormously higher. It is also important to underline that Mrs Gandhi's 11th year wasn't electorally earned, but self-gifted by mauling the Constitution in a Parliament where she had a brute majority (Congress was 352 out of 518) and the Opposition in jail. In contrast, Modi's third term was earned through general elections, though he fell short of a majority this time. His 11 years have seen no challenge, either within his party or from the Opposition. The global situation has also mostly remained stable and favourable, until the arrival of Trump 2.0. Also Read: RSS chief Bhagwat draws the line at 75. India's politics stares at the Modi Exception Now, the comparisons across the four dimensions we listed. On domestic politics, the first question is: who's been the strongest Prime Minister of India, Modi or Indira? The rest don't count. While Mrs Gandhi redefined her politics in an ideology (deep-pink socialist) first out of compulsion and then preference, Modi was born, dyed and seasoned in his (saffron). Mrs Gandhi's power ebbed and peaked with the times. Modi's has almost been constant, barring the few months of hard dip after the 240 seats of 2024. Even at 240 now, one challenge he need not bother about is from within his party. He's marginalised all, replacing the state satraps with unknown lightweights. That isn't so different from Mrs Gandhi. On ruthlessness, therefore, they are equally matched. On dealing with the Opposition and free speech, the Emergency will be a hard act to match even if somebody—God forbid—wished to do so. On the respect for institutions, the competition is tough, like a dead heat. For convenience, let's limit ourselves to just one institution: the Rashtrapati. With V.V. Giri, Mrs Gandhi reduced the job to that of a porcelain president: a fragile, ornamental object expected to do nothing except sign on the dotted line. The Modi era presidents have been of a piece with those. Modi rose with the power of a '56-inch chest', Mrs Gandhi was often described in times innocent of political correctness as the only man in her Cabinet. Both lived up to these propositions. With Mrs Gandhi, we saw another manifestation of political skill, out of power and back again in 1977-84. But that period is out of the syllabus in this 11-year comparison. Also Read: One prime minister's 19-month legacy is bigger than another's Emergency An important question is who kept India's cohesion better. Mrs Gandhi ruthlessly fought insurgencies in Mizoram and Nagaland. Her troubles on this score came post-1980. Modi has made a dramatic improvement in the Kashmir Valley, and continued with normalisation in the Northeast. But Manipur is an unending failure. A big positive is the near destruction of the Maoists in east-central tribal India. This dovetails neatly into strategic and foreign affairs. Mrs Gandhi's 11 years were across the peak of the Cold War. She signed a treaty with the Soviet Union with a cleverly drafted mutual security clause, endured the Nixon-Kissinger tilt to China, and deftly navigated the narrow spaces still available to India. Modi started out with a 'friends with all' approach but Pakistan-China realities soon caught up with personalised diplomacy. Mrs Gandhi announced India's nuclear status in 1974 (Pokhran-1) but it took Modi in 2019 (Balakot) and in 2025 (Operation Sindoor) to call Pakistan's nuclear bluff. That's a big plus in his corner. As things soured in the neighbourhood, India warmed up to the US/West and then the complexity of Ukraine arose. This gave rise to multi-alignment. The Trump bull has trampled all over this China shop. Pakistan is playing the US and China as it did in 1971. And like Mrs Gandhi then, Modi has to look for alternatives, but then, the Soviet Union is long gone. His predicament is tougher than Mrs Gandhi's in 1971, but India is enormously stronger. The economy is where we might have expected to see many contrasts, but surprisingly, there are many similarities, too. Modi came to power promising to be the exact opposite of Mrs Gandhi, asserting that it's no business of the government to be in business. But on many basic instincts, he's emulated her. The larger, if enormously more efficient distributive politics, for example. An abiding commitment to the public sector instead of privatisation. Even this year, the budget allocated Rs 5 trillion for fresh investments in PSUs. Compare that with our defence budget, Rs 6.81 trillion. Modi has brought in some significant reform—digital payments, GST and the bankruptcy code. Many others, from mining to manufacturing and electricity economics, are meandering. In his first and second terms, Modi attempted some audacious reform—land acquisition, farm and labour reform laws, lateral entry into civil services. All have been given up now. Until Trump came to power, Modi seemed settled into the 6-6.5 percent figure, which we'd risk calling the Hindutva rate of growth. The logic: a politics driven by Hindu identity and polarisation would win elections with 6-6.5 percent risk-free. The Trump arm-twisting and the resultant free trade agreements have rocked that leisurely cruise. Let's see if this can force fresh reform at gunpoint. And finally, how do we compare the two greatest proponents of employing nationalism in their politics? For Mrs Gandhi the backdrop was multiple wars between 1962 and 1971. India was already a jai jawan, jai kisan country. The liberation of Bangladesh, Green Revolution and non-aligned world's adulation fuelled her nationalism. Modi's nationalism is more muscular, in military livery. We can't prejudge the consequences of a commitment trap in promising to respond militarily to a terror act and leave it to historians to reflect on the consequences of such strategic predictability. Under Modi, a new Hinduised nationalism has emerged. While this has united a critical mass of Hindus to keep him secure, it has also created divisions. India's adversaries would be tempted to run a dagger through these. We've seen the Pakistanis try that not just with our Muslims but also the Sikhs, especially during Operation Sindoor. Also Read: You can put words in Mrs Gandhi's mouth & get away. But too much fiction, and you mess with Bhindranwale
Hans India
14 minutes ago
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Fund Diversion: Temple committees demand crackdown on false claims
Mangaluru: In a bid to counter rising misinformation, members of temple management committees from Dakshina Kannada have urged the Karnataka government to initiate legal action against individuals alleging that temple hundi funds are being diverted for non-Hindu religious causes or to the state treasury. The demands were made during a consultation session hosted by the Department of Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments at Kudmul Ranga Rao Town Hall on Friday. District in-charge and Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao, who presided over the meet, described the campaign of falsehoods as dangerous and politically motivated. 'These claims are often broadcast on national television and are misleading the public. Temple committees must counter these narratives with facts,' he said. Rao also highlighted that tastik payments to certified priests had been increased from ₹24,000 to ₹72,000 under the Congress government. 'The system was introduced by my father, former CM Gundu Rao, and has been consistently strengthened,' he noted. MLCs Manjunath Bhandary and Ivan D'Souza expressed concern over the misuse of temple spaces. Bhandary advocated for ID cards for B and C-grade committee members and visible notices at temples assuring donors that funds are not misappropriated. Cultural scholar Lakshmish Gabladka stressed the need to preserve temple-based traditions in coastal Karnataka while limiting political interference. He advocated development of temples belonging to Scheduled Castes and called for recognition of poojaris as legitimate Hindu leaders. Committee member Raghava H from Beltangady suggested reviving art forms such as Yakshagana and devotional music within temple precincts. Other speakers, including Dilraj Alva, Venkappa Gowda, and Balakrishna Gowda, recommended a fast-track mechanism for temple land disputes, funding parity, and expansion of tastik grants. The session was attended by several dignitaries including former minister Ramanath Rai, Cashew Development Board chairperson Mamatha Gatti, MUDA chairman Sadashiva Ullal, former MLC Harish Kumar, Kannada and Tulu Academy president Sadananda Mavanje, deputy commissioner Darshan H V, ZP CEO Vinayak Karbari Narvade, and ADC Dr Santosh Kumar. The programme began with a welcome by endowment department assistant commissioner Jayamma and an introduction by Bappanadu Temple officer Shwetha Pally.
