Counterview

​By Haripriya B Harshan  ​Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as Union Education Minister on July 25, ending 36 days of protests led by student organizations after the NEET-UG papers held on May 3 and May 7 were leaked and cancelled. The fallout forced a re-exam on June 21 and a CBI probe. Nearly two million students had sat for the exam, and the opposition has counted over a hundred such leaks in the past decade with almost no senior official ever held accountable. Most media coverage will treat this as a political story, or at best an academic one—a minister’s exit, a broken exam system. What keeps getting left out is the financial trail: who paid, who profited, and who is actually held accountable for the money.

By Ram Puniyani*  The formation of the Cockroach Janata Party and the protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar are too well known by now. The torture of youth, the lathi charge by uniformed police and other dubious elements, the use of pellet guns and even AK-47s were totally against the norms of democratic values. The other side of the protest was equally remarkable: youth singing and dancing, making posters collectively, laughing and celebrating, reminding one of Karl Marx’s famous adage that “revolution is the festival of the masses,” though the scale and context of the Jantar Mantar protest and many other protests across the country were entirely different.

By Mohd Ziyauallah Khan   For more than a decade, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has excelled at defining politics through identifiable adversaries—Pakistan, China, George Soros, the so-called "Khan Market Gang," Urban Naxals, and a fragmented political opposition. These narratives have often reinforced the party's image as the defender of national interests against external and internal threats while helping consolidate its electoral base.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   India is witnessing something that cannot simply be dismissed as another wave of student protests. Across cities and towns, young people are raising their voices with an intensity that has surprised many observers. To some, the protests appear sudden. In reality, they are the culmination of years of frustration, broken promises, and institutional failures.

By A Representative   The Supreme Court of India has allowed an intervention application filed by transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri in an ongoing matter concerning the live-streaming of court proceedings and the regulation of recording, extraction, and dissemination of audio-visual recordings of judicial proceedings. The matter, Harshita Grover v. Union of India & Ors. (Item No. 21, Court No. 1), was heard by a Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V. Mohan. The intervenors were represented by senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, along with advocates Cheryl D'Souza and Alice Raj.

By A Representative   Civil society groups and activists from across India have issued a joint appeal to more than 30 Indian banks and financial institutions, urging them to exercise stronger environmental, social and cultural diligence before financing the Sijimali bauxite mining project in Odisha.

By Harsh Thakor*  The arrest of senior Communist Party of India (Maoist) Politburo member Misir Besra in Jharkhand marks a significant development in India’s long-running counter-insurgency campaign against the CPI (Maoist). With his arrest, the organisation has lost one of the last active members of the leadership that helped build it into a nationwide insurgent movement. Besra remained a key figure in the Jharkhand-Bihar region for nearly four decades, continuing to operate despite repeated security operations that resulted in the deaths, arrests, or surrenders of many other senior Maoist leaders.