The Wire Wrap

Prime minister Narendra Modi celebrated his 76th birthday on Thursday with an unprecedented scale of nationwide grandeur where BJP state governments sought to outdo each other with their spectacles of light and sound shows and prayers for Modi However the celebrations made no mention of the challenges being faced by his government including the up to 100% tariffs being placed by a US legislation on India as part of sanctions for pu...

The latest draft voter rolls released after the third phase of the Election Commission's special intensive revision have brought the scale of deletions back in focus. And while the Modi government is celebrating 7.8% quarterly GDP growth figures, this number has come under scrutiny. Jahnavi Sen is joined by former Union agriculture secretary Siraj Hussain, Associate Professor of Economics at Zakir Husain College Shirin Akhter and j...

While the union government sought to enter the monsoon session armed with a series of defections and a possible delimitation plan, the session ended with prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah sitting out the entire session without delivering any statement on the police action on protesters on July 20. The government was also not able to pass any of its contentious bills including delimitation, while the FCRA Bill...

In the weeks following the recent student protests, the demonstrations may have faded from the headlines, but for many of the women who participated, the consequences have not. During the protests, images and videos of women protesters being forcefully detained and handled by the police circulated widely, prompting questions about the treatment of women demonstrators and the use of force against them. In the days that followed, sev...

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan was forced to resign under sustained public pressure, but BJP leaders continue to celebrate his tenure rather than grapple with the serious concerns raised during the youth movement. The Wire's Jahnavi Sen is joined by Saroj Giri, Associate Professor of Political Science at Delhi University, and Surajit Mazumdar, Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, to talk about what re...

Violence continues in Manipur, with at least 26 people being killed in the last four months. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to take questions from journalists is under scrutiny again. And the Election Commission appears to have quietly changed the rules for new voters trying to enrol. The Wire's Managing Editor is joined by transparency rights activist Amrita Johri and journalists Vrinda Gopinath, Greeshma Kuthar and ...

The special investigation team put together by the UP government to probe the theft and embezzlement taking place at the Ayodhya has submitted its interim report, which comes with some answers and many questions. Meanwhile Honey Trehan’s film Satluj, earlier named Punjab95, was released on Zee5 only to be pulled down less that 48 hours later. The Wire's Managing Editor Jahnavi Sen is joined by senior journalists Saba Naqvi an...

The passport is the latest document that the government of India has said is not a proof of citizenship even though it is being used to verify voters' citizenship under the SIR of electoral rolls. Over a fortnight after allegations first surfaced, an FIR has been lodged against alleged misappropriation and embezzlement of donations at the Ram mandir in Ayodhya while Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mohan Yadav too is facing the heat o...

It is the season of political defections in India. While a faction of TMC MPs have announced their merger with little known regional party Nationalist Citizens Party of India; 6 Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs are ready to jump ship having missed a parliamentary party meeting on Thursday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has met US President Donald Trump in his first face to face meeting in 16 months, raising questions about the cold realities beh...

India has been directly affected by the US’s attacks on maritime vessels in West Asia this week, with three Indian sailors being killed. The Trinamool Congress has seen multiple splits over the last two weeks. The BJP has won all three Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh unopposed after the Congress candidate was disqualified. The Cockroach Janata Party has moved its protest to various cities across the country. And the Del...

The Supreme Court has upheld the Election Commission of India’s power to conduct a special intensive revision of voter rolls, and said that the EC must forward names of people deleted from voter rolls because of doubtful citizenship within four weeks. Meanwhile, students across ages and states have been raising serious concerns over the way examinations are conducted and evaluated, from the CBSE board exam to entrance exams l...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's five nation tour just days after he urged Indians to adopt austerity measures including not travelling abroad, has been in the headlines for reasons that have little to do with bilateral relations. Press freedom questions in Norway and the Netherlands, and a reel with Italian PM Georgia Meloni have been the major takeaways amid questions of how the Indian economy is coping in the aftermath of the shoc...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the citizens of India to adopt some Covid era-like measures in light of the continuing West Asia crisis, including limiting the use of fuel and cooking oil, working from home, avoiding gold purchases and foreign travel, and reducing the usage of chemical fertilisers. Meanwhile across India’s industrial belt, reports of MSMEs freezing production and workers losing their jobs have been com...

It has been a week now since the Narendra Modi government’s three-Bill push for delimitation and an expanded Lok Sabha has failed, and it’s also today that the first phase in West Bengal and voting in Tamil Nadu are being held. Meanwhile, a large number of people in Noida have been arrested after the workers' protest, and the police and state government appear keen to mask the whole thing as a law and order issue. The W...

The Narendra Modi government has failed to pass bills-The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026 that sought to increase the strength of the Lok Sabha to 850 and delimitation through its stated objective of operationalising 33% reservation for women. The final vote in the Lok Sabha recorded 298 ‘ayes’ and 230 ‘noes’. There were 528 MPs present and voting. The government needed two-thirds majority to pass ...

US President Donald Trump threatened genocidal action against Iran on Tuesday, recanting it only an hour before the deadline he had imposed to say that Iran’s 10-point peace proposal was “workable”. A two-week ceasefire was agreed upon, which is now on tenuous ground as Israel continues to bomb Lebanon. Meanwhile in India, the names of about 89 lakh voters were deleted from the West Bengal voters list just weeks b...

Almost a month after Israel and US started its war on Iran, leading to closure of the Strait of Hormuz and fuel disruptions in India the union government on Wednesday held an all party meeting to discuss its impact on India. While the government has said that there is enough supply to meet domestic needs, queues for fuel and shortages are being reported across the country. Meanwhile ahead of elections in Kerala the Election Commiss...

Two recent habeas corpus petitions – in the Sonam Wangchuk case and on the detention of 10 students and activists in Delhi – raise questions around police action and when and how the judiciary intervenes. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has not only banned a class 8 textbook but also told the government to no longer associate with some of the experts who drafted it. And in New York City, mayor Zohran Mamdani's remarks abou...

t has now been 13 days since the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader Ayotallah Ali Khamenei. The US and Israel have not spared civilian sites in Iran, and heartbreaking images emerged on February 28 when a girl’s elementary school in Minab was hit and 165 schoolgirls were killed. Iran has retaliated to these aggressions by launching missiles at US military bases in Gulf states and at Israel...