India

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Winter Lok Sabha Session Marked by Disruptions and Legal Challenges Over Electoral Roll Revision

Dec. 4, 2025 | Governance & Law

The winter session of the Lok Sabha beginning December 1, 2025 centers on debates over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and related electoral reforms.

**The Lok Sabha session has faced repeated disruptions over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.**
At an all-party meeting chaired by Speaker Om Birla, MPs agreed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of “Vande Mataram” on December 8 and to debate electoral reforms—including the Opposition’s demand to discuss the SIR—on December 9 and 10. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Vande Mataram debate, and the House allocated ten hours to each debate, extendable if necessary. However, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju insists that the Election Commission of India (EC) holds sole administrative authority over the SIR and that Parliament cannot treat it as a standalone agenda item.

**The SIR exercise has entered its second phase in 12 states and Union Territories, following its completion in Bihar, with the final voter list scheduled for publication by February 14, 2026.**
Opposition parties have frequently walked out of sessions to demand a direct debate on the SIR, citing alleged irregularities such as wrongful voter deletions, intimidation of Booth Level Officers (BLOs), and fears of voter disenfranchisement. RJD MP Manoj Jha and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge also protested telecom ministry policies, warning they could compromise voter privacy and democratic norms.

**In parallel legal challenges, petitioners have questioned the constitutionality of the nationwide SIR.**
Senior advocates Vrinda Grover and A.M. Singhvi argued that the Election Commission has exceeded its mandate by treating mere suspicion of impurities in electoral rolls as grounds for a sweeping revision that could render citizens stateless and violate constitutional presumptions of citizenship. Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi pointed out that this marks the first full-scale preparation of electoral rolls since 1950, conducted under unprecedented time pressure and with extensive manual data handling. The EC defended its approach by invoking Articles 324 and 327 of the Constitution, which grant it plenary power to supervise elections.

**The Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission to consider the Kerala government’s request for a one-week extension of the SIR deadline beyond December 13, 2025, to accommodate concurrent local body elections.**
Kerala officials reported distributing 98 percent of enumeration forms and digitizing 81 percent, assigning 25,468 government employees as BLOs and 176,000 staff across election duties, with no overlap between revision and polling responsibilities. The Kerala State Election Commission confirmed that voters faced no disruptions on election day and stood ready to resume SIR activities once polls concluded.

**In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party alleged systematic misclassification of voter forms by BLOs who assigned the “Third Option” instead of the prescribed “First” or “Second.” The party’s memorandum detailed 805 missing voters in Allahabad West, 154 lost forms in Bhadohi Sadar, unreceived forms in Mirzapur, failure to issue receipts at polling stations 329–338 in Rae Bareli, and claims that BJP leaders collected forms at Bulandshahr stations 2 and 6.**
The SP has called for immediate investigations and corrective measures to safeguard transparency.

**The Election Commission continues to defend the SIR process and emphasizes its reliance on the ECINet system, even as most legacy electoral data from 2002–2004 remain in paper records.**
These older archives contain incomplete names, missing unique identifiers, and typographical errors, and they do not integrate fully with digital verification tools, creating obstacles for voters and increasing the manual workload for election staff. EC search tools currently struggle to handle more than 600 million non‐digitized entries.

**Analysts have proposed modernizing the SIR through full digitization of the electoral database, standardizing searchable fields in English, and linking records to Aadhaar and PAN via secure APIs.**
They recommend deploying online submission platforms supported by mobile digital kiosks, implementing end-to-end digital workflows for verification and grievance redressal, and establishing mandatory fact-checking protocols. Proponents argue that these measures are feasible within an extended SIR timeframe and essential for restoring voter confidence and streamlining operations ahead of the 2026 publication deadline.

### IMPACT ANALYSIS
**From this Development, various impacts could cascade through the system, to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the severity and criticality of the shocks.**

Domain	Causal Chain	Possible Outcome
Politics	(Parliamentary gridlock duration ↑ → Legislative throughput rate ↓ → Policy-uncertainty index deviation ↑ → Investor political-risk premium ↑ → FDI project postponement count ↑)	Heightened policy uncertainty and risk premiums prompt multinational firms to defer FDI projects.
Politics	(Judicial intervention in electoral disputes ↑ → Separation-of-powers design tension ↑ → Regulatory-volatility index ↑ → Regulatory-approval lead time (days) ↑ → Ease-of-doing-business percentile ↓)	Increased regulatory volatility and longer approval times weaken India’s ease-of-doing-business ranking.
Governance & Law	(Public-trust in elections index ↓ → Sovereign governance-risk spread ↑ → Sovereign-credit-rating momentum ↓ → Foreign direct investment net inflow (% GDP) ↓)	Eroding electoral trust widens sovereign risk spreads and dampens FDI inflows as investors pull back.
Social Cohesion	(Media-polarisation score ↑ → Misinformation exposure rate ↑ → Protest frequency & size (pre-election) ↑ → Intergroup conflict incidence ↑ → Democratic-backsliding score ↑)	Rising polarization and misinformation fuel larger pre-election protests and intergroup clashes, signaling democratic backsliding.
Competitiveness	(Ease-of-doing-business percentile ↓ → Business-confidence diffusion index ↓ → Private fixed-investment growth deviation ↓ → Labour productivity growth (non-farm) ↓)	Lower ease-of-doing-business scores depress business confidence, shrink private investment growth, and slow non-farm productivity.

### BOTTOM LINE

- Widespread manual records, legacy paper archives, and reported misclassification or loss of forms in states like Uttar Pradesh are likely to generate localized allegations of voter disenfranchisement and administrative corrections that will delay finalization of the rolls before the February 14, 2026 deadline and spur additional legal challenges.

- Repeated parliamentary walkouts and disputes over whether the Special Intensive Revision of rolls is subject to parliamentary debate will continue to slow legislative throughput, heighten policy uncertainty, and make multinational firms more likely to defer or renegotiate investment timelines in the near term.

- Continued Supreme Court involvement—already visible in the Kerala extension order and constitutional petitions—will institutionalize judicial oversight of the revision, increasing regulatory volatility and prolonging approval lead times for projects that require legal or regulatory certainty.

- If allegations of systematic misclassification and form mishandling in Uttar Pradesh are substantiated or remain publicly persuasive, opposition parties will escalate political mobilization, media polarization will intensify, and the frequency and size of pre-election protests are likely to grow.

- Declining public confidence in roll integrity and reports of intimidation of Booth Level Officers will translate into reputational costs for electoral administration and could widen sovereign-governance risk premia, reducing attractiveness for foreign portfolio and direct investment.

- Implementing practical corrective measures—such as a one-time SIR timetable extension in affected states, expedited digitization of legacy records, standardized English-searchable fields, secure Aadhaar/PAN API linkage, online submission portals with mobile kiosks, mandatory digital receipts, and an end-to-end electronic grievance workflow—would materially reduce manual error rates, litigation risk, and voter disenfranchisement if deployed before publication of the final list.

- Because ECINet and current tools cannot reliably process the older 600+ million paper-era entries, targeted independent audits, spot-checks of BLO activity, mandatory chain-of-custody logs for forms, and public disclosure of error rates are urgent operational priorities for the Election Commission and state election bodies.

- Political actors, civil-society monitors, and investors should plan for a plausible scenario of incremental delays and courtroom-controlled remedies rather than a single clean resolution; opposition groups will exploit procedural grievances for campaigning while investors should bake in modest timing and cost contingencies for near-term projects.

- Core causal links to monitor are: deficient digitization and form handling leading to disenfranchisement claims, which generate legal petitions and state extension requests, prompting judicial orders that increase regulatory uncertainty and feed back into parliamentary disruption and investor caution.

- To limit further erosion of institutional credibility, Parliament should authorize a limited, transparent review of SIR procedures, the Election Commission should publish a concrete remediation and digitization roadmap with milestones, and state authorities should open targeted probes in areas with documented irregularities so that electoral confidence and policy predictability can be restored ahead of subsequent elections.

Nationwide Check-In System Outage Disrupts Indian Airport Operations on December 2

Dec. 4, 2025 | Transportation & Logistics

A system glitch at a third-party provider on December 2, 2025 disrupted check-in operations at multiple Indian airports and led to widespread flight delays and cancellations.

**On the evening of December 2, a fault in the third-party system halted check-in services at several airports, including those serving Air India, resulting in at least 45 minutes of cumulative delays.**
Simultaneously, Kempegowda International Airport reported technical and operational issues, and Chennai airport canceled twelve flights, citing the system error as the cause.

**At 9:49 p.m., Air India took to social media to advise passengers to verify their flight statuses and allow extra time for check-in and security procedures.**
Airport teams worked through the night to restore normal operations, and by 10:49 p.m., the third-party systems were fully back online. Air India confirmed that check-in services had resumed and most flights were operating on schedule, though it warned that some departures might remain delayed until full stability returned.

**During the same period, IndiGo experienced flight delays it attributed to internal operational factors rather than the external system fault.**
The airline contacted affected customers directly via social media, apologized for the inconvenience, and outlined the steps it was taking to preserve timely connections.

**Media outlets, including NDTV, linked the outage to a malfunction in the Amadeus reservation and departure control software used by several carriers.**
Passengers were consistently directed to airline websites for real-time updates on flight statuses and encouraged to arrive at airports earlier than usual until the issue was fully resolved.

Monitored Intelligence for India - Dec. 5, 2025

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2

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Intergovernmental agreements dealing with mobility are very important part of India’s diplomacy: Jaishankar

The Statesman | English | News | Dec. 5, 2025 | UndeterminedPolitics and Elections

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar emphasized the significance of intergovernmental agreements focused on mobility as a key element of India’s diplomatic efforts. India currently has 21 such agreements, along with mobility clauses embedded in various free trade agreements, reflecting the country’s commitment to facilitating the movement of its talent internationally.

Jaishankar highlighted the progress made over the past decade in supporting Indian mobility abroad through enhanced passport services and welfare initiatives for Indians overseas. He pointed out India’s demographic advantage, noting that the country represents one-sixth of the global population and about one-quarter of the global young working-age population, positioning India as a crucial player in the global skilled labor market.

He also addressed the challenges associated with migration, particularly the difficulties that arise when mobility is illegal. Jaishankar explained that legal and formal mobility generates benefits, whereas illegal mobility often fuels criminal activities such as trafficking and is exploited by groups with political or separatist agendas, posing complex diplomatic challenges.

Labour codes likely to be fully operational from April 1, 2026, Govt to pre-publish draft rules soon

The Hindu | English | News | Dec. 5, 2025 | Regulation

The four labour codes—Code on Wages, 2019; Industrial Relations Code, 2020; Code on Social Security, 2020; and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020—are expected to be fully operational from April 1, 2026. The Ministry of Labour and Employment has started the process of enforcing rules under these codes, which were notified on November 21. The draft rules will be pre-published soon for public feedback before final notification.

The government will allow 45 days for public comments on the draft rules, after which they will finalize and notify them. Labour & Employment Minister Mansukh Mandaviya emphasized that the new labour codes maintain the standard working hours at 8 hours per day, replacing 29 fragmented laws with a unified modern framework. The codes also incorporate provisions for overtime as per international practices.

The ministry aims to extend social security coverage to 100 crore workers by March 2026, up from the current 94 crore, with coverage having increased from 19% in 2015 to over 64% in 2025. Since labour is a concurrent subject, both Central and State governments must notify rules under the codes to ensure nationwide enforcement.

Key features of the labour codes highlighted include mandatory appointment letters, free health check-ups for workers aged 40 and above, equal pay for equal work, and equal opportunities for women to work in different shifts. The full enforcement of these codes is expected to broaden worker protection, improve ease of doing business, and promote a pro-worker labour ecosystem.

Cyclone Ditwah: IMD predicts more rain in TN, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh heavy showers batter Chennai, Tiruvallur

Livemint | English | News | Dec. 5, 2025 | Extreme Weather Events

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued a weather warning predicting isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall on 3 December over north coastal Tamil Nadu, Kerala, coastal Andhra Pradesh, Yanam, and Rayalaseema. This comes after a week of persistent rainfall in the region. The weather system, a remnant of Cyclone Ditwah, weakened from a depression into a well-marked low-pressure area and is moving southwestward across north coastal Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The IMD expects it to further weaken within 24 hours.

The heavy rains have significantly impacted Tamil Nadu, especially in Chennai, Tiruvallur, Chengalpattu, and Kancheepuram districts, causing sudden inundation. Residents in Chennai neighborhoods like Nungambakkam and Perambur have faced knee-deep water. Other districts such as Villupuram, Cuddalore, Tiruvannamalai, and Ramanathapuram also experienced heavy rain and flooding. Emergency services used boats to rescue stranded individuals in Chennai, and relief efforts include over 200 camps providing food and shelter to displaced families.

Authorities have declared holidays for schools and colleges in multiple districts to manage safety. A Red Alert was issued for Tiruvallur, Chennai, Kancheepuram, and Chengalpattu, warning of heavy rainfall exceeding 15 mm per hour, thunderstorms, and winds up to 40-60 kmph. Fishing operations are suspended in affected coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, the Gulf of Mannar, and the Comorin region until further notice.

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