Eleven years after Narendra Modi’s rise in 2014, with promises of “Achhe Din” and a transformed India, the nation stands at a crossroads. Expectations of a global powerhouse and inclusive democracy have been replaced by broken promises, manipulated data, and a Government obsessed with optics over outcomes.
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Civil liberties have declined since 2014. Freedom House rated India “Partly Free,” and V-Dem calls it an “electoral autocracy.” The 2025 World Press Freedom Index ranks India 151st of 180, citing journalist harassment. The ED registered 193 cases against political leaders from 2015 to 2025, with 95 per cent of CBI probes targeting opposition figures. The NIA’s questionable evidence in Bhima Koregaon, coupled with low UAPA (3 per cent) and PMLA (0.4 per cent) conviction rates, shows detention over justice. Read more
Congress has a UAPAwakening: Law parent cries ‘dangerous misuse’
12/06/2025
The Telegraph / by Pheroze L. Vincent
Khera mentioned the Bhima Koregaon case, the Delhi riots conspiracy, and the action on web portal NewsClick and other instances of journalists and activists facing arrest under the UAPA
The Congress on Wednesday skewered the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, alleging that the Narendra Modi government had weaponised it to stifle dissent and deny justice, but in the process starkly bared the irony that the party had itself passed the law and inserted the provisions that it now finds “draconian” and vulnerable to “dangerous misuse”. Read more
Modi govt using laws like UAPA to stifle dissent: Congress
11/06/2025
Deccan Herald / by PTI
Anand Teltumbde, Nodeep Kaur, and Mahesh Raut were arrested under UAPA in the Bhima Koregaon case
The Congress on Wednesday accused the Modi government of stifling dissent and said the “dangerous misuse” of laws like the UAPA to threaten free expression is part of the BJP’s broader attack on the Constitution.
“Under the Modi government, law has increasingly been used to stifle dissent and delay justice. Between 2014 and 2022, 8,719 UAPA cases yielded only a 2.55% conviction rate, exposing its misuse to target critics, students, journalists, and activists,” Congress’ media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said in a post on X. Read more
The Opposition’s Silence Has Let the BJP Diminish India’s Political Discourse
06/06/2025
The Wire / by Sarayu Pani
Today, the opposition faces a choice – they can either continue to allow the boundaries of political engagement in the country to be decided by the ruling party or they can ground their opposition in democratic principles.
… A vast majority of these instances have not been rhetorically resisted by the political opposition to the BJP. In 2019, for example, the Congress voted in favour of amendments that dangerously broadened the scope of the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in the Rajya Sabha. Few opposition political parties have stood in clear solidarity with the detainees of either the Bhima Koregaon case or the Delhi riots conspiracy case. Read more
Is the government campaign aimed at ‘finishing off’ the extremists, or are the larger goals to open up central India’s mineral and natural resources for exploitation? Or both?
… Over the years, Maoists, NGOs and even priests like Stan Swamy have mobilized these tribal communities to resist corporate expansion. The state forces, on the other hand, have intervened to crush the protests. Read more
Over her four-year tenure in the court, Trivedi developed a reputation for rarely granting bail, locking horns with lawyers, and favouring the BJP.
Trivedi was elevated to the Supreme Court from the Gujarat High Court in August 2021. According to a study by the Supreme Court Observer, till October 2024, almost 40% of the judgements authored by her as a Supreme Court judge were in criminal law matters – an unusually large number.
Her track record in many of these showed that she went against the oft-repeated adage by the Supreme Court that “bail is the rule, jail is the exception”. Read more
Elgar Parishad case accused at event that attacked Maharashtra Public Security Bill, cops to seek bail review
22/05/2025
Times of India / by Soumitra Bose
The Elgar Parishad case accused, who are out on bail, had thronged the Veera Sathidar memorial event at Vidarbha Hindi Sahitya Sammelan on May 13, top security sources told TOI.
Though the event was organised as a memorial for the acclaimed filmmaker, security agency sources stated it turned into a platform for attacking the Maharashtra govt’s efforts to table the proposed Maharashtra Public Security Bill to rein in frontal organisations of alleged urban Maoists.
… Activists like Sudhir Dhawale and former Nagpur University professor Soma Sen, who are out on bail in the Elgar Parishad case, participated in the event Read more
Actor’s wife, 2 others booked for reciting Pak poet’s poem
21/05/2025
Rediff.com / by pti, edited by Hemant Waje
The recitation of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge poem at an event in Nagpur has led police to slap charges of endangering India’s unity and integrity, and promoting enmity against three persons, including late actor-activist Veera Sathidar’s wife Pushpa.
… Police said they are also looking into the activities and background of the Samata Kala Manch, whose head, Sudhir Dhawale, is currently out on bail in connection with another case related to alleged inflammatory speeches made during the Elgar Parishad event in Pune in 2017. Read more
Singing Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ is ‘Sedition’: Nagpur Police Book Organisers of Vira Sathidar Memorial
19/05/2025
The Wire / by Sukanyana Shantha
Singing the revolutionary poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, once celebrated as a voice of resistance, now attracts sedition charges in India.
At an event organised last week in memory of actor and activist Vira Sathidar, a group of young cultural activists sang the lyrics of Faiz’s famous Hum Dekhenge.
… In October 2020, when the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Elgar Parishad case, Sathidar’s name appeared among the so-called “urban Naxals,” a term loosely used by the Devendra Fadnavis-led government to target dissenters. Now, with the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, the state government seeks to formalise the term “urban Naxal” within the legal framework. Read more
The downgrading of NHRC captured perfectly the many qualms civil society has had with how the institution has been run for several years.
… A reflection on this sad status reminds us of NHRC’s screeching silence on the death of Fr. Stan Swamy and Prof. G.N. Saibaba, on the fate of hundreds of political prisoners incarcerated following the CAA protests and the Kashmir unrest and on the Manipur riots. Read more
In 2019, WhatsApp informed more than 1,400 individuals across 20 countries after it discovered that these users were targeted by Pegasus spyware attacks. The list also included many victims in India.
… in 2019, WhatsApp alerted several individuals in India about possible monitoring of their devices. Among those notified were human rights activist Bela Bhatia and lawyer Nihal Singh Rathod, who is connected to the Bhima Koregaon case. Both confirmed that they received warnings from WhatsApp, indicating that their phones had been under surveillance with advanced technology for two weeks leading up to May 2019. Read more
Prashant Jalinder Kamble, an expert with computers, was arrested in Pune
The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) nabbed a Pune resident, who was reported “missing” 15 years ago, for allegedly being an active member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
… A graduate from a college in Pune, he was allegedly associated with the city-based cultural outfit Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), which according to the police is a “frontal organisation of Maoists”. Read more
While Dalit activism is generally understood as resistance to “Brahmanical Hinduism”, the Vivek Vichar Manch’s goal is to foster Hindu unity, something which is also a core ideological goal of the BJP and the Sangh
At a time when the Opposition, particularly the Congress, has made caste census, the representation of marginalised classes in structures of power, and their share in welfare benefits its key political planks, a recent initiative of Dalits subscribing to Hindutva and seeking to resolve caste faultlines is active in Maharashtra, with some support from the RSS and the BJP. Read more
On Pegasus, SC Says ‘Nothing Wrong’ With Country Possessing Spyware, Question is Against Whom it is Used
29/04/2025
The Wire / by The Wire Staff
Justice Kant said that the report of the Committee is lying sealed and even he has not seen its contents.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday (April 29) made the oral observation that there is nothing inherently wrong with a country possessing spyware for security purposes; the real concern lies in against whom it is used.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh made the observations while hearing a batch of writ petitions that were filed in 2021 seeking an independent probe into allegations of targeted surveillance of journalists, activists and politicians by using the Israeli spyware Pegasus. Read more
SC says use of spyware not illegal, but expresses concern over alleged misuse of Pegasus
29/04/2025
Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that ‘terrorists cannot claim privacy rights’.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday said there was nothing wrong with India possessing spyware for national security purposes, but expressed concern about its alleged misuse against private individuals, reported Bar and Bench. Read more
