“Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that ‘she bids him begone’, for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them, and has moreover, a good deal of truth in it under existing conditions. If, then, the problem is not to make the ‘surplus population’ useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the strenuous exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population.”
― Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
Lionel Messi has quietly built relationships with companies and security firms closely linked to Israel's military-intelligence establishmen
As the world’s foremost football star, Lionel Messi is understandably protective of his image. The Argentinian forward carefully picks and chooses whom he is associated with, and has signed lucrative long-term deals with enormous global brands, such as Adidas, Pepsi, and Mastercard.
That is why many were surprised when, in 2020, he announced a partnership with OrCam, a relatively small Israeli A.I. firm that makes wearable artificial vision devices (similar to Google Glass). OrCam markets itself as helping visually impaired people live more fulfilling lives. Messi became its global brand ambassador and the face of the company.
[...]
The Argentinian has made multiple visits to Israel during his career. In 2013, he and his club, F.C. Barcelona, went to Israel and Palestine on a supposed “Peace Tour.” During his trip, he met and talked with Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, and glad-handed with IDF soldiers. He also donned a yarmulke and visited the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.
Even after leaving, however, Messi takes a small part of Israel with him everywhere he goes. His security is handled by an elite force of former Israeli agents, who plan his every move, especially internationally. He takes his security very seriously, even missing his sister-in-law’s wedding in Argentina due to safety concerns.
Those same Israeli forces were in charge of security at his own 2017 wedding, ESPN reports, although it did not detail whether those agents are from the Mossad, Shin Bet, or an elite commando group.
I really don’t want to open this can of worms because Tumblr hath no fury like people called out on their political performativeness but it is literally driving me up the wall to watch people react to Serkis’ ‘keep Tolkien white’ commentary by insisting twice as hard that Tolkien would descend down to earth and dropkick the entire Republican party to hell or whatever, just because they want to ensure that a piece of media they enjoy isn’t seen as being morally impure. Case in point: I have seen at least five instances of Tolkien’s ‘I hate apartheid’ valedictorian address being used as a ‘counter’ to Serkis being racist, including by actual news outlets.
Except it’s only ever the ‘I hate apartheid’ line that’s shared, and not the actual quote in its full context. Because here it is:
If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.
Which is to say. This isn’t exactly the antiracist quote of the century, to say the least. This is a white South Africa born man and a white Australian shaking hands and going ‘omg we relate’ and expressing what is a very, very mild ‘segregation is not great’ opinion in order to convey his thoughts on an academic subject, ie the confluence of language and literature. Using race to make a point about his own subject of interest, in his own interest, which is, amusingly enough, what a lot of ostensibly well meaning progressive seem to be doing.
I also think that some of the general surprise around ‘what do you mean large swathes of the Tolkien fandom are incredibly conservative!?’ in lib/left Tolkien fandom is the result of a tendency in said parts of the fandom to transpose one’s own progressiveness onto Tolkien and turn a blind eye to things like, say, the Shire being a very specifically mid-century British racist construct that is very, very clear in its politics, often going so far as to insist it’s anarchist or an ideal society or whatever the fuck… and then getting really Pikachu-meme ‘but they’re misreading it’ every single time a conservative explains exactly what it is about the legendarium that they really love, and get surprised when someone uses the Shire being a racist construct to do more racism. It is 2026 let us do away with ‘I don’t see colour’ interpretations of media, I beg. Nobody is cancelling you for enjoying a book that is not kind to race. Most of the books I love are not kind to race.
I genuinely don’t have the energy to go deeper into it now because I and others have been beating this drum for ages but like man. Man. I’m not surprised by Serkis’ comment. I don’t really give a shit about what Andy Serkis says and does because if I was the kind of person who gave a fuck about Andy ‘I felt like an ethnic minority on the Black Panther set’ ‘I somehow interpreted Animal Farm in the most ridiculous way possible’ Serkis’ opinions on anything, let alone race, my life would be much sadder. I think the adaptation will be an enshittified money-grab, and I will probably embrace cannibalism when McDonalds inevitably starts giving out little Gollums with every Happy Meal. Again.
What I am surprised and disappointed by is how the liberal-left reaction to this shit is to always and forever just either pretend it doesn’t exist in the text, or is the result of a complete misreading. So seldom is the response ‘fuck me, this book has some real wild thoughts on race, let’s see how we can engage creatively with that in an adaptation’. Which has never happened. In fact, all your thoughts on Amazon and lore faithfulness and other adaption criticism or applause aside, TROP, the only Tolkien interpretation that has directly engaged with race has thus far done so very, very badly, and only on a surface level. Why?
Because the loudest parts of liberal Tolkien fandom is not interested in exploring race as it exists in the text, to explore it progressively, to engage creatively with the structural conservatism present within the very construction of Middle Earth. They’re interested in concessions that change very little: you can have your brown elves, as long as we don’t have to think about the implications of foundational aspects of our beloved world, which we relate to greatly and do not wish to think about why we relate to it beyond our own experience of encountering the text.
No, it’s always either an insistence that the Racists are Wrong because the Text is Pure, or a slight, grudging concession that Tolkien had ‘a few racist elements’ but ‘nothing like the racism of today’. Of course it’s nothing like the racism of today. Tolkien isn’t writing in 2026. It was the racism of yesterday, and it is very clearly written into the text. Tolkien is not your mildly problematic grandpa. Tolkien was an Oxford don with an enormous, wide-ranging cultural impact, and refusing to acknowledge that is the misreading, not the pointing out of or engagement with structural racism within the text.
There's also a version of this where people cite Tolkien's 1938 letter to the German publisher, ie the one where he refuses to confirm he's of "Aryan" descent and basically tells them to fuck off, as the other canonical "proof text" that Tolkien Was Not Racist, and it does the same flattening as the valedictorian quote. It's a great letter, very ‘get thee gone from my gate’ but it is also a letter about refusing a specific, legally coded Nazi racial category, not a statement about the internal racial logic of his own fiction.
Nobody is saying Tolkien was a fascist white supremacist Nazi. Hell, Tolkien’s own thoughts on military atrocity in general is pretty clear in the depictions of the escalating kinslayings. But people love to conflate "hated actual fascism, said so on the record and is very evident in his fiction" with "therefore the legendarium contains no racialised hierarchy," as though those two things have to rise or fall together, when they don't. You can be sincerely, personally opposed to Nazi race science and apartheid violence and still write a mythology where moral and aesthetic worth consistently map onto a Northern-European somatic ideal. Because the racialisation Tolkien both inherited and passed on wasn't Nazi race science, it was the broader Edwardian/interwar philological raciology he was actually swimming in, hell, drowning in, considering the Oxford environment. And I find it so, so frustrating how fandom keeps failing to make this distinction: structural racialisation and personal bigotry are not the same axis, and refusing to be measured on one doesn't clear you on the other.
The Southrons/Easterlings material is obviously the part most quoted when it comes to Tolkien’s ‘problematic elements’ except it's imo super telling how rarely it actually gets quoted compared to how often it gets vaguely waved at (except Charles E Mills. I love you Charles E Mills). Anyway “Black men like half-trolls," swarthy, slant-eyed, riding out of the south and east to serve Sauron… it’s the same mapping of good-north/evil-south-and-east you get in a dozen other early-twentieth-century adventure texts. And this imo actually undermines the "it's just medievalism, calm down" defense, because medievalism is a selectively retrospective construction of which past you're claiming and which one you're othering, not some sort of static, neutral historical styling.
Tolkien's medievalism is specifically Northern European heroic-elegiac medievalism, the "Northernness" he talks about loving as a kid, and that aesthetic preference is not extractable from the racial hierarchy it produces on the page. You cannot keep the aesthetic and disclaim the politics because as in all art, the aesthetic is the politics, that's what "structural" means as opposed to "incidental”, and I just wish that many extremely clever people who understand this in a contemporary sense would allow themselves to feel uncomfortable and look at it in a beloved text.
Jackson's trilogy didn't invent racialisation in Tolkien, hell I think he even softened some of it because the Scouring is straight up impossible to adapt without it being very clear about its politics, but his adaptation does go quite some way make the existing racism legible… casting, costuming, choreography and cinematography does the same racialised sorting the text does, and does it visually: Uruk-hai as a kind of grunting brutalised, brutalistic mass, Haradrim on oliphaunts as a fairly straightforward Orientalist boogeyman, and the Fellowship itself photographed like a Pre-Raphaelite fantasy lmfao. Serkis isn't introducing a new interpretive layer with his commentary, hell Serkis was in all those Jackson films as well! Serkis is being very clear about what aspects of the legendarium matter to him, and that aspect happens to be the whiteness of it all. And I genuinely cannot understand why the huge ‘scandal’ around his comment is not that someone said the quiet part, but that saying it out loud is what became the scandal, taken as some kind of transgression against Tolkien and all his readers with Good Politics™️, rather than the quarter-century of adaptations, readings, and analysis of the text that wordlessly encoded the racism and got called faithful and dedicated for it.
I didn’t want to go to author is dead territory but. Fandom discourse keeps reaching for authorial intent as the arbiter of textual meaning in exactly the way most of these same people would reject in any other context. Everyone is a massive New Critic the second the author in question is someone they love. But Tolkien doesn’t need to have consciously intended a racial hierarchy or a white nationalist mythology for the text to functionally produce one, for it to be so loved by conservatives and ethnonationalists who come fifty years after his time.
Intent is not even a contested position in literary theory, it's just the very basic understanding that "text has ideology independent of authorial intent". The insistence on relitigating Tolkien's personal feelings as though that settles the structural question is wild to me, and I find it so extremely unproductive how liberal fandom reaches for this constantly, repeatedly chanting Tolkien’s few vaguely liberal statements that read far less liberally in context. But I guess the alternative, ie reading the actual construction of race in the legendarium on its own terms, requires giving up the fantasy that the thing you love is politically inert. And it’s just so sad man. Like I fucking love the legendarium, and I think insisting on its moral purity is the worst thing you can do to it.
I think my entire argument can be summed up in a few questions. Why do conservatives keep saying "I love Tolkien" completely unashamedly, in a way they don’t realy say about most other ‘canonical’ twentieth-century texts, while we on the left have to perform a whole apologetic dance before we say it? What is it that they embrace about the text, that we have to occlude in order to express an unproblematic ‘love’? Why do we have to disavow parts of a text to claim we love it? Who are we performing to? What are we losing in focusing so hard on this performance?
This is why the Serkis-style comment, or the Rings of Power casting discourse, ends up being the deepest engagement we collectively get in fandom terms. Because both "sides" of that fight are actually shallow in the same way, just from opposite ends. The right-wing backlash to diverse casting is, repulsively, responding to something absolutely present in the text: a defensive crouch around a racial aesthetic it identifies as being under threat. The liberal-left response, the "just add brown elves" gesture, claims the problem to be one of representation and casting rather than structure, which is precisely why the racial elements of The Rings of Power satisfies no one and changes nothing.
You can put actors of colour in Númenor and Harfoot villages and yet the underlying moral framework of who is coded as inherently noble and who as inherently monstrous, whose skin colour the textual narrative uses as a standin for corruption, stays completely untouched. Again, see my TROP link above, with the jihadi-coding of the villains. Because that framework isn't located in the casting of an adaptation, it's located in the construction of Arda itself and physiognomy-as-morality at the level of the prose itself, constantly present throughout the text. Casting a Black actor as an elf doesn't do anything to the fact that "evil race coded as racially other" is still sitting right there in the Southrons and the orcs, unadapted, undiscussed, doing exactly the same work it always did, and this work takes on a new look in post-2001 adaptations.
So what you get is two adaptations of the same tiresome insanemaking discourse rather than two different arguments: the right defends the racial aesthetic as the substance of their love, and the liberal mainstream defends the fantasy that representation-level tweaks constitute engagement with race. And so, nobody actually produces the adaptation that takes seriously what nonwhite Tolkien scholars have been saying for decades, which is that you'd have to touch the orc/Southron/Valar/Valinor/blondeness architecture itself to ever productively have this conversation. Not diversify who plays the good guys, but interrogate why "evil" in this legendarium has a face and a hair colour and points compass east.
But if the talk about this goes on as it does, and continues between Tolkien the Pure versus Tolkien the Misread, there will never be anyone willing to make that adaptation, and we’ll go on forever in a sisyphean climb, where both the reactionary embrace and the progressive denial are just two versions of refusing to read the same damn book. Basically, I think we on the left etc need to stop treating "is Tolkien racist" as a yes/no gate you have to clear before you're allowed to enjoy the books, and stop acting like enjoying problematic media makes you a fascist. We need to start treating the racialised architecture within Tolkien’s world as the actual object of study, same way you'd read imperial romance or Forster or Kipling or Haggard, without needing to acquit or convict the author first.
Which means we have to name the conservatism specifically rather than gesturing at "some outdated attitudes," trace where it comes from historically (the philological Northernness Tolkien grew up steeped in, not some special personal failing that reflects badly on you), and then ask what an adaptation would look like which dramatised that rather than smoothing over it or weaponising it. We have to let go of the idea that critical engagement is disloyalty, and let go of the idea that loving something requires defending its honour. We need to get the resilience needed to engage with the idea that a work can be both formative and ideologically compromised at the same time.
We don’t need to resolve that tension into either adoring hagiography or totalising cancellation. If we do, we're going to keep getting “keep the Shire white” Serkis soundbites and “hooray we cast a brown elf in our we-invented-elf-jihadis show!” news cycles standing in for a conversation that hasn't actually started yet, and ngl buddies I have to say I personally will be biting people the next time I see yet another rendition of the same damn response-reaction cycle start again because everyone, both the conservatives and the left, wants the things they love to be a reflection of themselves, and will twist themselves into pretzels to ensure that remains the case.
the zendaya thing isnt even a new phenomenon by any means!! the article mentions margot robbie wearing the taj mahal diamond as well, and in addition to that i also want to remind people that diljit dosanjh's request to wear the patiala necklace for the 2025 met gala was denied by cartier because they said it was in a museum and could not be loaned. however they had no issues at all loaning it to emma chamberlain, a white woman, for the 2022 met gala, while they turned down the request of a punjabi man who wanted it to honor his heritage.
this behavior is nothing new. the global south and everything in it - the people, the culture, our heritage - is seen as nothing more than a decoration or commodity to colonizers. i don't even need to bring up the koh i noor or the entire british museum; these examples are recent and egregious enough on their own.
of course this is not to imply that any of the people involved here - zendaya, margot robbie, or emma chamberlain - had any sort of malicious intentions. but the ignorance is just as bad in my opinion. the ignorance is just as harmful, if not more. because it means we are not even an afterthought. it means that the real people and histories and heritages of the global south do not even register when these people are putting together looks for their movie premiers and met gala appearances. everything is just reduced down to a shiny piece of jewelry whose history they need not bother with. it's just a continued reminder of the way colonization affects us all even long after independence, of how barely-healed wounds keep being reopened even decades later. even now, we are being denied connections to our histories and heritages while they are freely being given out to those that have nothing to do with it and don't care for it. and i'm sick of it.
The Rampur Development Authority has ordered the demolition of 38 buildings at Mohammad Ali Jauhar University over alleged approval violatio
The Rampur Development Authority (RDA) has ordered the demolition of 38 out of 40 buildings at Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur, alleging that they were constructed without the required approvals from the competent authority, drawing criticism over the alleged selective targeting of the institution and its potential impact on students.
The university, run by the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust chaired by jailed former Uttar Pradesh minister and senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, has been given 15 days to remove the allegedly unauthorised structures, failing which the authorities will carry out the demolition.
The demolition order was issued on Wednesday by Rampur District Magistrate and RDA Vice-Chairperson Ajay Kumar Dwivedi under Section 27 of the Uttar Pradesh Urban Planning and Development Act, 1973.
According to the RDA, a scrutiny of official records found that only the university's medical college building and one academic block had valid building approvals. The remaining 38 buildings, covering a total built-up area of 82,309 square metres, were allegedly constructed without permission from the competent authority.
District Magistrate Ajay Kumar Dwivedi said, "The buildings of Jauhar University were constructed in Gram Singhan Kheda, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Rampur Development Authority (RDA).
Officials said the buildings stand on land where their present use is not permitted under the applicable land-use regulations and that the violations cannot be regularised under existing law, making demolition the only legally permissible course of action.
The order followed notices issued on June 28 and 29 to the secretary of the Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust and the university registrar after a complaint was received.
The respondents submitted a joint written reply on July 8, and representatives of the university appeared before the authority on Wednesday to present their case.
The university argued that the land was outside the jurisdiction of the Rampur Development Authority when the buildings were constructed.
However, the RDA rejected the contention, holding that approval from the competent authority was mandatory under the Zila Panchayat Act and other applicable laws even before the area came under the authority's jurisdiction.
The order also cited Supreme Court judgments on unauthorised constructions, observing that such violations warrant strict enforcement of the law.
Meanwhile, the District Magistrate directed officials to ensure that the demolition process does not adversely affect students enrolled at the university.
The Regional Higher Education Officer and the District Inspector of Schools have been asked to set up counselling camps on the campus to guide students and help safeguard their academic interests.
Mukrim Rawl, a fourth-year B.A. LL.B. student of Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, appealed to the authorities to halt the proposed demolition, expressing deep concern over its impact on thousands of students pursuing their education at the institution.
(...)
"However [in regards to birth control access], a strong gender divide prevailed: men were much more likely to denounce birth control as genocide than women, especially young, less well-educated, poor, and northern men. In contrast, most Black women embraced birth control and more women than men countenanced abortion.
In 1970, social activist Donald Bogue found that 80 percent of the Black women he surveyed in Chicago approved of birth control and 75 percent were using it. Unlike Fannie Lou Hamer, many Black women of the post-Pill generation had career options, thanks to the racial integration of schools and workplaces. Women were eager to leave unskilled labor behind and to enter the professional sphere, so they wished to delay the responsibilities of motherhood until they were ready.
But many Black women who desired and used birth control did so despite a strong distrust of the whites who distributed contraception in their communities. In 1972, Black social worker Urelia Brown voiced this ambiguity: "Negroes don't want children they can't take care of, but we are afraid to trust you when your offered help has so often turned out to be exploitation."
Black Chicago activist Lonnie Myers confessed her discomfort with the fact that some birth control funding came from those "racists" who simply "wished to decrease the number of Blacks in the city", but she noted that "any cause has strange bedfellows."
Blacks also drew a distinction between physician-controlled methods and those they could control themselves: 87 percent of surveyed Blacks said they approved of public contraceptive clinics, while 47 percent rejected sterilization."
Chapter 8- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington
it is beyond cruel that venezuela is now a US colony for all intents and purposes and the US still continues to wield sanctions against it to the detriment of the nation's poorest and most desperate people even in the aftermath of an earthquake that's killed thousands
Maktoob Media also has a factual record of the Baruipur case as it has developed thus far. It can be read here. It should be noted that all persons killed up to this point have been working class individuals, i.e. both the little girl and the people accused of her rape and murder. Not to mention, these are not the only deaths Baruipur has seen this month.
apologies for the news media spam, but this blog will be attempting to document the concrete changes that are taking place in west bengal following the ascension of the BJP into the legislative assembly.
34 incidents of violence, mosque attacks and demolitions in West Bengal after BJP win: Report
The Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) has released a report documenting incidents of violence and intimidation in West Bengal following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) electoral victory in the state assembly elections.
The report covers incidents recorded between May 4 and May 7 across several districts of the state.
According to the report, 34 incidents of violence were documented across at least eight districts, with Cooch Behar and North 24 Parganas reporting seven incidents each, followed by South 24 Parganas with five incidents and Kolkata Metro with five incidents. Murshidabad recorded three incidents, while Howrah recorded four.
APCR said at least two people died during the violence, including a Muslim man who was killed while allegedly trying to protect a mosque in Gosanimari in Cooch Behar district.
The report alleged that Muslims, Muslim-owned properties, mosques, cattle markets, meat shops, and Trinamool Congress offices and residences were among those targeted in the violence. It said at least 54 properties were attacked or damaged and at least 50 Muslims were affected “physically or otherwise.”
According to APCR’s findings, the violence included attacks on mosques in Cooch Behar, demolition of Muslim-owned hotels in Barasat, vandalism of Muslim houses in Nandina and Abutra villages, attacks on hawkers and shopkeepers in Kolkata, and bulldozer processions allegedly targeting Muslim-owned establishments.
The report categorised the incidents into multiple forms of violence, including murder, assault, intimidation, attacks on property, demolition, bulldozer violence, and what it described as “economic delimitation.” It documented 19 incidents involving attacks on property, 14 incidents of intimidation, four demolitions, and three instances of bulldozer violence.
The report also alleged that several incidents specifically targeted the sale and transport of non-vegetarian food. It documented forcible closure of cattle markets in Howrah, Kolkata Metro, and South 24 Parganas, along with attacks on meat shops and Muslim-owned hotels in Barasat.
Among the incidents listed in the report were alleged attacks on three mosques in Cooch Behar, a mosque attack during a “Jai Shri Ram” procession in Gosanimari, vandalism of 15 Muslim residences in Nandina and Abutra villages, and assaults on an imam in Birsibpur in Howrah district.
The report further alleged that Muslim women were prevented from wearing hijab at Azad Hind College in Domjur, Howrah.
In North 24 Parganas, the report documented attacks on mosques and demolition of two Muslim-owned hotels in Barasat. It also alleged attempts to rename “N Para Masjid Bari Road” as “Netaji Palli Road” and “Sirajuddaula Udyan” as “Shivaji Udyan.”
The report also claimed that BJP processions in parts of South 24 Parganas included threats and abusive language, while processions were organised against Jamaat-e-Islami over allegations that the organisation had urged people to vote against BJP.
APCR said the incidents documented in the report were compiled from local sources due to “restrictions and gaps in mainstream reporting.” The organisation stated that the incidents reflected “a wider climate of hostility rather than isolated clashes.”
West Bengal govt approves land transfer to BSF for Bangladesh border fencing
In its first Cabinet meeting, the BJP government led by Suvendu Adhikari approved the transfer of land to the Border Security Force (BSF) for the construction of fencing along the Bangladesh border.
Adhikari said the decision was crucial for national security and alleged that the previous government had delayed the process “to save illegal infiltrators.”
“The West Bengal government gave a nod to the transfer of land to the BSF for fencing the border with Bangladesh. The process starts from today and will be completed within 45 days,” Adhikari told reporters.
The BJP and the BJP-led Union government have repeatedly campaigned on claims that Bangladeshi Muslims are illegally crossing the border and living in India. Critics have often accused the party of falsely branding Bengali-origin Muslims with valid Indian documents as “Bangladeshis.”
The decision also comes amid allegations of human rights violations by the BSF and security personnel against Bengali Muslims living in border regions.
This is a developing story.
West Bengal: Persons excluded during SIR will not receive welfare benefits, says BJP government
The BJP government’s indication that persons whose names were deleted during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and whose appeals remain pending before appellate tribunals, may be excluded from welfare schemes has deepened anxiety among thousands of disenfranchised voters in West Bengal.
Around 27.16 lakh voters were deleted during the “Logical Discrepancy” or adjudication phase of the Special Intensive Revision process, a move that became highly controversial as opposition parties and many affected residents alleged that genuine voters were wrongly removed due to spelling mismatches, minor data discrepancies, lack of proper notice, and issues linking old and new electoral rolls.
Addressing a press conference after the first Cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said welfare schemes would continue through what he described as a “transparent process,” but asserted that “no deceased person, illegal infiltrator, or non-Indian individual” would be allowed to receive benefits meant for citizens.
Minister for women and child development, and social welfare Agnimitra Paul stated that individuals whose names were deleted during the SIR process and whose appeals remain pending would not receive benefits under the proposed Annapurna Bhandar scheme, which is set to replace the previous Lakshmir Bhandar programme.
She said the government intended to conduct an “analysis” to identify deleted voters, deceased persons, and “non-Indian citizens” before distributing benefits.
Paul also stated that individuals who had applied for Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and whose names were pending before tribunals would temporarily be kept out of the beneficiary list.
[...]
Several affected residents said they feared being treated like “second-class citizens,” while voter Hasir Mallick from Uttarpara questioned whether deleted voters could eventually be forced to prove their nationality.
Meanwhile, at a hearing before the Supreme Court of India, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee argued that in several constituencies the number of deleted voters either exceeded or closely matched the BJP’s victory margins, raising concerns over the impact of the SIR exercise on the election outcome.
Similarly in Bihar, Speaking to The Indian Express, CM Samrat Choudhary said that people whose names were deleted from Bihar’s electoral rolls during the SIR process would not be entitled to government benefits, including ration and welfare schemes, and added that their bank passbooks could also be cancelled “in due course of time.”
Bihar Food and Consumer Protection Minister Ashok Choudhary stated that around five lakh names had already been removed from ration-card holders’ lists following the SIR exercise.
"Muslims never harm us": Hindu traders slam West Bengal BJP govt’s anti-Muslim Eid cattle crackdown
After the Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government sworn in West Bengal, strict enforcement of the decades-old West Bengal Animal Slaughter Control Act, 1950, has triggered anxiety among cattle traders and livestock farmers ahead of Eid al-Adha later this month.
The state government recently reiterated that cattle and buffalo slaughter can only take place after official certification confirming that the animal is either over 14 years old, permanently incapacitated, or otherwise legally fit for slaughter.
Authorities have also moved to restrict slaughter to designated locations and crack down on illegal cattle markets.
The BJP government’s crackdown, criticised by many as part of a broader Islamophobic targeting around Eid al-Adha, has now also triggered backlash from Hindu cattle traders and livestock farmers dependent on the seasonal cattle economy. Videos from multiple districts have gone viral on social media, showing distressed Hindu traders claiming that markets have collapsed after the new restrictions.
In viral videos, traders from different communities said they had borrowed large sums of loans to purchase and fatten cattle for Eid al-Adha sales scheduled around May 27-28, only to find buyers disappearing amid fears of police action and tighter scrutiny.
West Bengal to exclude SIR-deleted voters from ration benefits
The West Bengal government has begun verifying the eligibility of Public Distribution System (PDS) beneficiaries based on the outcome of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state's electoral rolls, a move that could render thousands of people ineligible for ration benefits if their names have been deleted from voter lists.
According to an order issued by the Food and Supplies Department, ration cards of individuals removed from the electoral rolls as "absent", "shifted", "duplicate" or "dead" will be marked inactive.
Persons excluded during the revision process, including those removed after adjudication and unmapped voters who failed to establish eligibility during hearings, will also lose access to PDS benefits.
The exercise is expected to conclude by June 15. However, individuals who have filed appeals before appellate tribunals or submitted applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) will continue to receive benefits until their cases are resolved.
Around 27.16 lakh voters were deleted during the “Logical Discrepancy” or adjudication phase of the Special Intensive Revision process, a move that became highly controversial as opposition parties and many affected residents alleged that genuine voters were wrongly removed due to spelling mismatches, minor data discrepancies, lack of proper notice, and issues linking old and new electoral rolls.
The move comes after the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the Special Intensive Revision on May 27, while clarifying that the Election Commission's inquiries for electoral purposes do not amount to a determination of citizenship and carry only electoral consequences.
Earlier, Minister for women and child development, and social welfare Agnimitra Paul stated that individuals whose names were deleted during the SIR process and whose appeals remain pending would not receive benefits under the proposed Annapurna Bhandar scheme, which is set to replace the previous Lakshmir Bhandar programme.
Reacting to the development, AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi criticised the linking of welfare benefits to voter rolls. “Government schemes are not rewards for voters. They are meant for all eligible citizens,” Owaisi said.
He questioned why access to ration and welfare should depend on a person's presence in the voter list and argued that the policy would disproportionately affect the poorest sections of society, particularly women, Scheduled Castes and Muslims.
“This move looks less like verification and more like an attempt to cut beneficiary numbers while making life harder for the poorest people,” Owaisi said, adding that welfare schemes are funded by public money and should not be treated as political patronage.
West Bengal CM says 4,800 alleged Bangladeshi immigrants deported, 836 more to be deported
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Sunday claimed that 4,800 alleged undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh had been deported from the state over the past month, and another 836 persons currently held in detention centres would soon be deported.
The statement comes amid growing allegations that Bengali-speaking Muslims are being expelled or pushed across the border without due process, nationality verification or formal deportation orders.
Speaking at the BJP's “Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Prashikshan Maha Abhiyan 2026” training programme in New Town, Kolkata, Adhikari said that 836 persons identified as “illegal infiltrators” and currently lodged in holding centres would soon be deported to Bangladesh.
The holding centres were established following a state government order issued on May 22 to house alleged undocumented immigrants as well as foreign nationals released from prisons who are awaiting deportation or repatriation.
Defending the move, Adhikari said there was a legal provision that allowed alleged undocumented immigrants to be handed over to the Border Security Force (BSF) instead of being kept in prisons.
“"We have provided land to the BSF for the construction of fencing along the Bangladesh border. We have asked those who came from Bangladesh to leave. We will not treat them as honoured guests by providing them with medicines and food,” he said.
Criticising the previous administration, he alleged that such persons had earlier been treated as “guests”, housed in prisons and provided food, clothing and medical care at the state's expense.
The chief minister also highlighted the BJP government's border security measures, stating that its first cabinet meeting approved the transfer of land to the BSF to facilitate border fencing.
“Border security is our top priority,” Adhikari said, adding that nearly 100 kilometres of land had already been handed over for fencing work out of the 556 kilometres required along the border.
Adhikari's remarks come days after Bangladesh accused India of attempting to push people across the border in at least 10 incidents within a 24-hour period.
Bangladesh's border guards alleged that Indian authorities were trying to send individuals into Bangladeshi territory without following established procedures, amid growing criticism of alleged "push-back" or "push-in" operations in which Bengali-speaking Muslims are reportedly deported or expelled without due process, nationality verification or formal deportation orders.
Over the years, several complaints, including cases raised before the Supreme Court of India, have alleged that security personnel have branded Bengali Muslims as Bangladeshi nationals and expelled them across the border despite their possession of valid identity documents.
"Collective violence": APCR report alleges post-poll killing of Muslim man left West Bengal's Hooghly village in fear
A fact-finding report released by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), West Bengal, has alleged that the murder of 71-year-old Muslim man was part of a pattern of post-election violence, describing it as "a serious incident of collective violence" that has left residents of Kelepara village living in fear, with witnesses "hesitant to speak openly for fear of retaliation."
The report, released on Wednesday on the killing of Sk. Shahaalam, a daily-wage labourer and the sole earning member of his family from Kelepara village under Pursurah Police Station in Hooghly district, whose family alleged that a group of unidentified persons dragged him out of his home and assaulted him with bamboo sticks, wooden objects, bricks and stones, leading to his death.
Women members of the family who attempted to intervene were allegedly threatened and prevented from rescuing him.
Earlier, the family had alleged that Sk. Shahaalam was assaulted by a group of BJP supporters in West Bengal's Hooghly district after being accused of supporting the Trinamool Congress.
He was taken to Arambagh Prafulla Chandra Sen Government Medical College and Hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries.
The report stated that family members alleged they had been subjected to threats, intimidation and extortion demands since the Assembly election.
Residents told the fact-finding team, comprising Md. Jawed Alam, Advocate Md. Altamash Haider, Abdul Malek Molla and Md. Noor Alam, that several violent incidents had occurred in Kelepara village over recent weeks, creating an atmosphere of fear and insecurity within the community.
According to the report, the victim's family said they had repeatedly received threats before the killing.
Witnesses also recounted earlier incidents in which groups of persons allegedly attacked villagers, including two separate assaults on June 3 in which government school teacher Altaf Mullick (41) allegedly suffered grievous injuries, including a fractured right leg after being attacked with bamboo sticks and wooden objects.
Sk. Abdul Rahim (56) also allegedly sustained a fracture to his right leg, incidents that residents said contributed significantly to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and insecurity in the village.
Citing information obtained during the inquiry, the report said Pursurah Police Station had registered FIR No. 175/20 in connection with the case and arrested six accused persons. The investigation was ongoing and efforts were underway to trace and arrest the remaining accused.
In its findings, APCR described the killing as "a serious incident of collective violence" and said the victim's family had allegedly faced repeated threats and intimidation prior to the attack.
The report found that the incident had created "fear and insecurity" among residents of Kelepara village, with "witnesses hesitant to speak openly for fear of retaliation."
It further said the victim's family had been pushed into "extreme financial hardship" following the loss of its sole earning member and called for close monitoring of previously reported incidents of violence in the village.
