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Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption An empty stretch of the road and Delhi Police barricades to screen commuters during lockdown, at Delhi Gate on April 16, 2020 in New Delhi, India.
India has eased some restrictions imposed as part of a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Most of the new measures are targeted at easing pressure on farming, which employs more than half the nation’s workforce.
Allowing farms to operate again has been seen as essential to avoid food shortages.
But some other measures announced last week, will not be implemented.
This includes the delivery of non-essential items such as mobile phones, computers, and refrigerators by e-commerce firms – the government reversed its decision on that on Sunday.
And none of the restrictions will be lifted in areas that are still considered “hotspots” for the virus – this includes all major Indian cities.
Domestic and international flights and inter-state travel will also remain suspended.
So what restrictions are being eased?
Most of the new measures target agricultural businesses – farming, fisheries and plantations. This will allow crops to be harvested and daily-wagers and others working in these sectors to continue earning.
To restore the supply chain in these industries, cargo trucks will also be allowed to operate across state borders to transport produce from villages to the cities.
Essential public works programmes – such as building roads and water lines in rural areas – will also reopen, but under strict instructions to follow social distancing norms. These are a huge source of employment for hundreds of thousands of daily-wage earners, and farmers looking to supplement their income.
Banks, ATMs, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and government offices will remain open. And the self-employed – such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters – will also be allowed to work.
Some public and even private workplaces have been permitted to open in areas that are not considered hotspots.
But all businesses and services that reopen are expected to follow social distancing norms.
Who decides what to reopen?
State governments will decide where restrictions can be eased. And several state chief ministers, including Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal, have said that none of the restrictions will be lifted in their regions.
Mr Kejriwal said the situation in the national capital was still serious and the decision would be reviewed after one week.
India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, will also see all restrictions in place, as will the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.
The southern state of Kerala, which has been widely acknowledged for its success in dealing with the virus, has announced a significant easing of the lockdown in areas that it has demarcated as “green” zones.
This includes allowing private vehicular movement and dine-in services at restaurants, with social distancing norms in place. However, it’s implementing what is known as an “odd-even” scheme – private cars with even and odd number plates will be allowed only on alternate days, to limit the number of people on the road.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Millions are workers are defying a curfew and returning home
When I spoke to him on the phone, he had just returned home to his village in the northern state of Rajasthan from neighbouring Gujarat, where he worked as a mason.
In the rising heat, Goutam Lal Meena had walked on macadam in his sandals. He said he had survived on water and biscuits.
In Gujarat, Mr Meena earned up to 400 rupees ($5.34; £4.29) a day and sent most of his earnings home. Work and wages dried up after India declared a 21-day lockdown with four hours notice on the midnight of 24 March to prevent the spread of coronavirus. (India has reported more than 1,000 Covid-19 cases and 27 deaths so far.) The shutting down of all transport meant that he was forced to travel on foot.
“I walked through the day and I walked through the night. What option did I have? I had little money and almost no food,” Mr Meena told me, his voice raspy and strained.
He was not alone. All over India, millions of migrant workers are fleeing its shuttered cities and trekking home to their villages.
These informal workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses, cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among other things. Escaping poverty in their villages, most of the estimated 100 million of them live in squalid housing in congested urban ghettos and aspire for upward mobility.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Informal workers are the backbone of India’s big city economies
Last week’s lockdown turned them into refugees overnight. Their workplaces were shut, and most employees and contractors who paid them vanished.
Sprawled together, men, women and children began their journeys at all hours of the day last week. They carried their paltry belongings – usually food, water and clothes – in cheap rexine and cloth bags. The young men carried tatty backpacks. When the children were too tired to walk, their parents carried them on their shoulders.
They walked under the sun and they walked under the stars. Most said they had run out of money and were afraid they would starve. “India is walking home,” headlined The Indian Express newspaper.
The staggering exodus was reminiscent of the flight of refugees during the bloody partition in 1947. Millions of bedraggled refugees had then trekked to east and west Pakistan, in a migration that displaced 15 million people.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Migrant labourers feel they have more social security in their villages
This time, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are desperately trying to return home in their own country. Battling hunger and fatigue, they are bound by a collective will to somehow get back to where they belong. Home in the village ensures food and the comfort of the family, they say.
Clearly, a lockdown to stave off a pandemic is turning into a humanitarian crisis.
Among the teeming refugees of the lockdown was a 90-year-old woman, whose family sold cheap toys at traffic lights in a suburb outside Delhi.
Kajodi was walking with her family to their native Rajasthan, some 100km (62 miles) away. They were eating biscuits and smoking beedis, – traditional hand-rolled cigarettes – to kill hunger. Leaning on a stick, she had been walking for three hours when journalist Salik Ahmed met her. The humiliating flight from the city had not robbed her off her pride. “She said she would have bought a ticket to go home if transport was available,” Mr Ahmed told me.
Others on the road included a five-year-old boy who was on a 700km (434 miles) journey by foot with his father, a construction worker, from Delhi to their home in Madhya Pradesh state in central India. “When the sun sets we will stop and sleep,” the father told journalist Barkha Dutt. Another woman walked with her husband and two-and-a-half year old daughter, her bag stuffed with food, clothes and water. “We had a place to stay but no money to buy food,” she said.
Then there was Rajneesh, a 26-year-old automobile worker who walking 250km (155 miles) to his village in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. It would take him four days, he reckoned. “We will die walking before coronavirus hits us,” the man told Ms Dutt.
He was not exaggerating. Last week, a 39-year-old man on a 300km (186 miles) trek from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh complained of chest pain and exhaustion and died; and a 62-year-old man, returning from a hospital by foot in Gujarat, collapsed outside his house and died. Four other migrants, turned away at the borders on their way to Rajasthan from Gujarat, were mowed down by a truck on a dark highway.
As the crisis worsened, state governments scrambled to arrange transport, shelter and food.
Image copyright SALIK AHMED/OUTLOOKImage caption Ninety-year-old Kajodi Devi is walking from Delhi to her village
But trying to transport them to their villages quickly turned into another nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of workers were pressed against each other at a major bus terminal in Delhi as buses rolled in to pick them up.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal implored the workers not to leave the capital. He asked them to “stay wherever you are, because in large gatherings, you are also at risk of being infected with the coronavirus.” He said his government would pay their rent, and announced the opening of 568 food distribution centres in the capital. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologised for the lockdown “which has caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people”, adding these “tough measures were needed to win this battle.”
Whatever the reason, Mr Modi and state governments appeared to have bungled in not anticipating this exodus.
Mr Modi has been extremely responsive to the plight of Indian migrant workers stranded abroad: hundreds of them have been brought back home in special flights. But the plight of workers at home struck a jarring note.
“Wanting to go home in a crisis is natural. If Indian students, tourists, pilgrims stranded overseas want to return, so do labourers in big cities. They want to go home to their villages. We can’t be sending planes to bring home one lot, but leave the other to walk back home,” tweeted Shekhar Gupta, founder and editor of The Print.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption There is a precedent for this kind of exodus during crisis
The city, says Chinmay Tumbe, author of India Moving: A History of Migration, offers economic security to the poor migrant, but their social security lies in their villages, where they have assured food and accommodation. “With work coming to a halt and jobs gone, they are now looking for social security and trying to return home,” he told me.
Also there’s plenty of precedent for the flight of migrant workers during a crisis – the 2005 floods in Mumbai witnessed many workers fleeing the city. Half of the city’s population, mostly migrants, had also fled the city – then Bombay – in the wake of the 1918 Spanish flu.
When plague broke out in western India in 1994 there was an “almost biblical exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from the industrial city of Surat [in Gujarat]”, recounts historian Frank Snowden in his book Epidemics and Society.
Half of Bombay’s population deserted the city, during a previous plague epidemic in 1896. The draconian anti-plague measures imposed by the British rulers, writes Dr Snowden, turned out to be a “blunt sledgehammer rather than a surgical instrument of precision”. They had helped Bombay to survive the epidemic, but “the fleeing residents carried the disease with them, thereby spreading it.”
More than a century later, that same fear haunts India today. Hundreds of thousands of the migrants will eventually reach home, either by foot, or in packed buses. There they will move into their joint family homes, often with ageing parents. Some 56 districts in nine Indian states account for half of inter-state migration of male workers, according to a government report. These could turn out to be potential hotspots as thousands of migrants return home.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The fleeing migrants could spread the disease all over the country
Partha Mukhopadhyay, a senior fellow at Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, suggests that 35,000 village councils in these 56 potentially sensitive districts should be involved to test returning workers for the virus, and isolate infected people in local facilities.
In the end, India is facing daunting and predictable challenges in enforcing the lockdown and also making sure the poor and homeless are not fatally hurt. Much of it, Dr Snowden told me, will depend on whether the economic and living consequences of the lockdown strategy are carefully managed, and the consent of the people is won. “If not, there is a potential for very serious hardship, social tension and resistance.” India has already announced a $22bn relief package for those affected by the lockdown.
The next few days will determine whether the states are able to transport the workers home or keep them in the cities and provide them with food and money. “People are forgetting the big stakes amid the drama of the consequences of the lockdown: the risk of millions of people dying,” says Nitin Pai of Takshashila Institution, a prominent think tank.
“There too, likely the worst affected will be the poor.”
But in Delhi and the financial capital, Mumbai, people fearing shortages quickly thronged shops and pharmacies.
“I have never witnessed such a chaos in my life,” the owner of one store in the Shakarpur district of Delhi said, quoted by the Press Trust of India.
“All our stocks, including rice, flour, bread, biscuits, edible oils, have been sold out.”
Police in the busy city of Ghaziabad, in Uttar Pradesh state, patrolled the streets with megaphones to tell residents to stay indoors.
Image copyright AFPImage caption People in Mumbai rushed to stock up on essentials following Mr Modi’s address
Under the new measures, all non-essential businesses will be closed but hospitals and other medical facilities will continue to function as normal. Schools and universities will remain shut and almost all public gatherings will be banned.
Anyone flouting the new rules faces up to two years in prison and heavy fines.
In his address, Prime Minister Modi also:
Stressed that the 21-day lockdown was “very necessary to break the chain of coronavirus”
Emphasised the seriousness of the situation and said that even developed countries had faced problems in combating it
Said that “social distancing was the only way to stop” the virus spreading
Announced that nearly $2bn (£1.8bn) would be made available to boost the country’s health infrastructure
Called on people not to “spread rumours” and to follow instructions
His announcement came after several Indian states introduced measures of their own, such as travel restrictions and the closure of non-essential services.
India has already issued a ban on international arrivals and grounded domestic flights. The country’s rail network has also suspended most passenger services.
Many parts of India, including cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, are already under tight restrictions. But this move extends those provisions to every corner of the country.
An earlier one-day curfew, which was seen as a trial, was flouted by many.
Mr Modi called on Indians to clap and cheer the emergency services from their balconies on Sunday. But many misunderstood the call and congregated in the streets as they danced and chanted.
“It’s impossible to fathom the cost that India may have to pay if such irresponsible behaviour continues,” Mr Modi warned at the time. “Social distancing is the only option to combat coronavirus.”
The implications of a total lockdown in India are huge, not just economically, but socially.
This is a nation where community is everything. Going to worship at a temple, mosque or church is an essential part of daily life for so many.
This is a seismic cultural shift but – like the rest of the world facing similar restrictions – a necessary one.
What’s the latest from around Asia?
Neighbouring Pakistan has almost twice as many confirmed cases – 878 as of Monday evening. Sweeping restrictions are in place although the government has stopped short of imposing a nationwide lockdown. However, several provinces have announced them independently. The army is being brought in to help enforce the restrictions
Bangladesh, which has reported 33 cases and three deaths, is also deploying its armed forces to help maintain social distancing and boost Covid-19 preventive measures. The soldiers will also monitor thousands of quarantined expatriate returnees. Across South Asia, there are concerns that the actual number of cases could be much higher than is being reported.
Indonesia, which has 49 confirmed Covid-19 deaths – the highest in South East Asia – has converted an athlete’s village built for the 2018 Asian Games into a makeshift hospital for coronavirus patients. A state of emergency was declared in Jakarta on Monday
In Thailand, a month-long state of emergency which will include curfews and checkpoints will begin on Thursday. The government has been criticised for failing to take strong action so far. Four people have died and nearly 900 tested positive
The most populous country that was without a case until now – Myanmar – has announced two cases
And what about the rest of the world?
Elsewhere, governments are continuing to work to stem the spread of the virus which has now affected more than 190 countries worldwide
More than 2.6 billion people are in lockdown now India has introduced its new measures, according to a tally by the AFP news agency
Media caption Reality Check tackles misleading health advice being shared online
Europe remains at the epicentre of the pandemic. On Tuesday, the death toll jumped by 514 in a single day in Spain and other European countries also reported sharp increases
Italy is the worst affected country in the world in terms of deaths. The virus has killed almost 7,000 people there over the past month
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the US has the potential to become the new epicentre of the pandemic
In other developments, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the International Olympic Committee has agreed that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics should be postponed by a year
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – Police shot dead a man holding around 20 women and children hostage at his house in northern India after a 10-hour standoff, state officials said on Friday.
The hostages who were held at gunpoint were safe, principal secretary home Awanish Kumar Awasthi said after the raid at the house in a village in Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh state.
The hostage taker was serving a life sentence for murder and was out on parole, he added.
Two policemen and a villager were injured in the rescue operation.
After the siege, a group of incensed villagers stormed the house where the children had been kept and attacked the hostage-taker’s wife, Awasthi said. The woman died from her injuries early on Friday, he said.
The abduction took place after the man had invited some children and women from the village to his house, saying he was throwing a birthday party for his daughter.
Police said his motive for holding the children was not clear.
MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s tourism industry has been hit by a wave of violent anti-government protests against a new citizenship law that have rocked several cities this month, with at least seven countries issuing travel warnings.
At least 25 people have been killed in clashes between police and protesters, and demonstrations against the law continue.
Officials estimate about 200,000 domestic and international tourists cancelled or postponed their trip to the Taj Mahal in the past two weeks, one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.
“There has been a 60% decline in visitor footfalls in December this year,” said Dinesh Kumar, a police inspector overseeing a special tourist police station near the Taj Mahal who has access to visitor data. He said the decline was compared to December last year.
“Indian and foreign tourists have been calling our control rooms to check security. We assure them protection, but many still decide to stay away,” said Kumar.
The 17th century marble monument is in Uttar Pradesh, the northern state that has witnessed the highest number of deaths and intense bursts of violence in two weeks of unrest.
A group of European tourists travelling in a group across India said they now planned to cut short their 20 day trip.
“We are all retired folks, for us travel has to be slow and relaxing. The newspaper headlines have led to a sense of concern and we will leave sooner than we had planned,” said Dave Millikin, a retired banker living on the outskirts of London, who spoke to Reuters from the capital New Delhi.
The Taj Mahal, situated in the town of Agra, attracts over 6.5 million tourists every year, generating nearly $14 million annually from entrance fees. A foreign tourist pays 1,100 rupees (about $15) to enter the grounds, although nationals from neighbouring countries get a discount.
Managers in luxury hotels and guest houses around the Taj Mahal said last minute cancellations during the festive season have further dampened business sentiment at a time when the country’s economic growth has slowed to 4.5%, its slowest pace in more than six years.
In a bid to clamp down on violence and unrest, authorities have suspended mobile internet services in Agra.
“Blocking the internet has affected travel and tourism in Agra by about 50-60%,” said Sandeep Arora, president of the Agra Tourism Development Foundation that groups over 250 tour operators, hotels and guides.
The United States, Britain, Russia, Israel, Singapore, Canada and Taiwan have issued travel advisories asking their citizens to either refrain from visiting or to exercise caution when visiting regions embroiled in India’s protests.
Jayanta Malla Baruah, the head of the Assam Tourism Development Corp., said the state, home to the world’s largest concentration of one-horned rhinoceroses, is visited on average by 500,000 tourists during December.
“But this time, due to the ongoing protests and travel advisories by various countries, the number is down by 90% if not more.”
HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) – Indian police shot dead four men on Friday who were suspected of raping and killing a 27-year-old veterinarian near Hyderabad city, an action applauded by her family and many citizens outraged over sexual violence against women.
However, some rights groups and politicians criticised the killings, saying they were concerned the judicial process had been sidestepped.
The men had been in police custody and were shot dead near the scene of last week’s crime after they snatched weapons from two of the 10 policemen accompanying them, said police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar.
Thousands of Indians have protested in several cities over the past week following the veterinarian’s death, the latest in a series of horrific cases of sexual assault in the country.
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The woman had left home for an appointment on her motor-scooter and later called her sister to say she had a flat tyre. She said a lorry driver had offered to help and that she was waiting near a toll plaza.
Police said she was abducted, raped and asphyxiated and her body was then set alight on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Four men were arrested.
Sajjanar, the police officer, said the men – two truck drivers and two truck cleaners, aged between 20 and 26 years – had been taken to the spot to help recover the victim’s mobile phone and other personal belongings on Friday morning.
“As the party approached this area today (during the) early hours, all the four accused got together. They started attacking the police party with stones, sticks and other materials,” he told reporters near the site of the shootings.
The men, who were not handcuffed, then snatched weapons away from the police and started firing at them, but were killed after the police retaliated. He did not say how the accused were able to overpower their escorts.
“Law has done its duty, that’s all I can say,” Sajjanar said.
The National Human Rights Commission, a government-funded watchdog, said it had ordered an investigation. “Death of four persons in alleged encounter with the police personnel when they were in their custody, is a matter of concern for the Commission,” it said in a statement.
Indian police have frequently been accused of extra-judicial killings, called “encounters”, especially in gangland wars in Mumbai and insurrections in the state of Punjab and in disputed Kashmir. Police officers involved in such killings were called “encounter specialists” and were the subject of several movies.
People shout slogans as they celebrate after police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a 27-year-old veterinarian in Telangana, in a residential area in Ahmedabad, India, December 6, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave
‘LONG LIVE POLICE’
The victim’s family welcomed the news the alleged perpetrators had been killed.
“I express my gratitude towards the police & govt for this. My daughter’s soul must be at peace now,” Reuters partner ANI quoted her father as saying.
A Reuters reporter saw the four men’s bodies lying in an open field, all of them face up and barefoot, with their clothes stained with blood, surrounded by policemen.
A large crowd gathered at the site and threw flower petals at police vans in support of the action. Some shouted “Long live police”, while others hoisted police officials onto their shoulders and burst firecrackers.
There was no immediate word from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on the incident, but Maneka Gandhi, a lawmaker from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said the police appeared to have over-reached.
“You can’t take the law in your own hands. The courts would’ve ordered them (the accused) to be hanged anyway. If you’re going to shoot them with guns before due process is followed, then what’s the point of having courts, police and law?” she said.
Tough laws were enacted after the 2012 gang rape and murder of a woman in a bus in New Delhi that led to an outpouring of anger across the country, but crimes against women have continued unabated.
Fast track courts have been set up but cases have moved slowly, for lack of witnesses and the inability of many families to go through the long legal process. Some victims and their families have ended up being attacked for pursuing cases against powerful men, often local politicians.
Many Indians applauded the killings.
“Great work #hyderabadpolice ..we salute u,” badminton star Saina Nehwal wrote on Twitter.
In Uttar Pradesh state, where a rape victim was set ablaze on Thursday while she was on her way to court, opposition politician Mayawati said the police there should take “inspiration” from what happened in Hyderabad.
“Culprits should be punished, and if they are not punished then whatever happened in Hyderabad should happen,” the victim’s brother said in hospital.
She was on life support, hospital authorities said, news that could further inflame passions in a country where public anger over crimes against women has grown in recent weeks.
Indian police registered more than 32,500 cases of rape in 2017, according to the most recent government data. But courts completed only about 18,300 cases related to rape that year, leaving more than 127,800 cases pending at the end of 2017.
But some people said the lack of progress in the courts did not mean the police had a free hand to dispense justice.
“We now have to trust that a police force that managed to let unarmed suspects escape their custody, and needed to shoot them dead because they could not catch them alive, is somehow competent enough to have identified and arrested the real culprits?,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters from London.
AYODHYA/MUMBAI (Reuters) – Just six months after sweeping to re-election, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has delivered on two major promises of his party’s Hindu agenda, electrifying his base but sowing unease among liberals and the nation’s large Muslim minority
The latest boost for Modi came on Saturday, when the Supreme Court handed Hindu groups control of a contested site where a 16th-century mosque was razed over two decades ago, paving the way for the construction of a temple there that has long been an election promise of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
That followed New Delhi’s move in August to strip Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its special status as a state in what Modi’s government said was a bid to integrate the restive region with the rest of predominantly-Hindu India.
Now, the BJP may move towards delivering on its third traditional plank: Creating a uniform civil code that does away with the independence of religious communities on certain issues.
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“After just a few months of Modi 2.0, they’ve accomplished two out of three (main cultural objectives). It’s quite possible that they will accomplish all three by next year,” said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C.
“It’s striking that the government has moved with a clarity of purpose on its social agenda that’s completely absent when it comes to economic matters,” added Vaishnav in reference to the slowing of the country’s once red-hot economic growth.
Many Muslims have watched with a mix of fear and resignation as the BJP has morphed into the officially secular country’s near-undisputed political force.
The controversial site in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh has been one of the most explosive issues in the nation of 1.3 billion, where Muslims constitute about 14% of the population.
In 1992, a rally led by the BJP and affiliate organizations spiralled out of control and a Hindu mob destroyed the Babri Masjid or mosque in the city of Ayodhya. That triggered riots in which about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed across the country.
In its verdict on Saturday, the Supreme Court called the mosque’s demolition illegal but handed the plot of land to Hindus, who believe the site is the birthplace of Lord Ram, a much venerated god-king. The court directed that another plot in Ayodhya be provided to a Muslim group that contested the case.
In over a dozen interviews, Muslim community leaders, businessmen, and students said they respected the verdict but it exacerbated their sense of alienation.
“Why did the court then give a ruling which is completely one-sided? Was the court under pressure? We don’t know. We can’t trust anyone now. No door is open for us,” said local Muslim community leader Azam Quadri during evening prayers in Ayodhya.
“BEST TO BE NUMB”
While Modi himself has said the court verdict should not be seen as a “win or loss” for anyone, many Muslims Reuters spoke to expressed resignation after the ruling.
Some were bitter that a probe into the demolition has inconclusively dragged on for three decades and that many of the politicians accused of conspiring to take down the mosque are prominent BJP members. Those people have said the demolition was spontaneous and not planned.
“I feel humiliated by the Supreme Court verdict,” said one affluent Mumbai-based Muslim businessman, who declined to give his name. “Others don’t care. They have become numb. It’s best to be numb in Modi’s India.”
Some people believe that Hindu nationalists, galvanized by the Ayodhya triumph, could turn their attention to two other Uttar Pradesh mosques they believe Mughal conquerors built over the remains of Hindu temples centuries ago.
“This (verdict) seems to generate incentives for Hindus to take down mosques and resettle,” said Neelanjan Sircar, an assistant professor at Ashoka University near New Delhi.
Another likely move is the uniform civil code.
New Delhi has already taken steps toward creating such a code, with the BJP-led parliament in July outlawing the centuries-old right of a Muslim man to instantly divorce his wife. While many activists thought the Muslim custom was wrong, some Muslim groups said Modi was targeting them while turning a blind eye to discrimination in Hindu society.
For a factbox on the BJP’s plans, please see:
Despite the focus on social issues, political analysts predict the government and the BJP will have to shift attention quickly to a sagging economy and surging unemployment or risk losing popular support.
India, long touted as the world’s fastest-growing large economy, has seen economic expansion wither to six-year lows.
Two college students – one Hindu, one Muslim – in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Lucknow separately said after the court verdict that they hoped the government would now focus on economic issues.
“This case has gone on for so long… Now that it’s done with altogether, maybe more economic issues can come forward”, said Rajat Mishra, a business student.
“Attention can now move beyond topics of religion,” said medical student Irfan, 22, who declined to give his surname.
Image copyright AFPImage caption The dispute turned to violence in 1992 when a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque at the site
The Ayodhya dispute, which stretches back more than a century, is one of India’s thorniest court cases and goes to the heart of its identity politics.
Hindus believe that Ayodhya, a city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, is the birthplace of one of their most revered deities, Lord Ram.
But Muslims say they have worshipped there for generations.
A court case pertaining to the ownership of the land has been dragging on in the Supreme Court for years, but a verdict is expected next month.
The court concluded its final hearing into the case on Wednesday.
What is the row actually about?
At the centre of the row is a 16th Century mosque that was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992, sparking riots that killed nearly 2,000 people.
Many Hindus believe that the Babri Masjid was actually constructed on the ruins of a Hindu temple that was demolished by Muslim invaders.
Muslims say they offered prayers at the mosque until December 1949 when some Hindus placed an idol of Ram in the mosque and began to worship the idols.
Over the decades since, the two religious groups have gone to court many times over who should control the site.
Since then, there have been calls to build a temple on the spot where the mosque once stood.
The case currently being heard by five judges in the top court is to determine who the land in question belongs to.
A verdict is expected between 4 and 15 November.
Hinduism is India’s majority religion and is thought to be more than 4,000 years old. India’s first Islamic dynasty was established in the early 13th Century.
Who is fighting the case?
The long and complicated property dispute has been dragging in various courts for more than a century.
This particular case is being fought between three main parties – two Hindu groups and the Muslim Waqf Board, which is responsible for the maintenance of Islamic properties in India.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
The Hindu litigants are the Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing political party, and the Nirmohi Akhara, which is a sect of Hindu monks.
They filed a title dispute in the Allahabad High Court in 2002, a decade after the mosque was demolished.
A verdict in that case was pronounced in September 2010 – it determined that the 2.77 acres of the disputed land would be divided equally into three parts.
The court ruled that the site should be split, with the Muslim community getting control of a third, Hindus another third and the Nirmohi Akhara sect the remainder. Control of the main disputed section, where the mosque once stood, was given to Hindus.
The judgement also made three key observations.
It affirmed the disputed spot was the birthplace of Lord Ram, that the Babri Masjid was built after the demolition of a Hindu temple and that it was not built in accordance with the tenets of Islam.
The Supreme Court suspended this ruling in 2011 after both Hindu and Muslim groups appealed against it.
What are the other important legal developments?
In 1994 the Supreme Court, which was ruling on a related case, remarked that the concept of a mosque was “not integral to Islam”. This has bolstered the case made by Hindus who want control of the entire site.
In April 2018, senior lawyer Rajeev Dhavan filed a plea before the top court, asking judges to reconsider this observation.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Hindu activists are demanding the construction of the Ram Temple
Have religious tensions eased in India in recent years?
Ever since the Narendra Modi-led Hindu nationalist BJP first came to power in 2014, India has seen deepening social and religious divisions.
The call for the construction of a Hindu temple in Ayodhya has grown particularly loud, and has mostly come from MPs, ministers and leaders from the BJP since it took office.
Restrictions on the sale and slaughter of cows – considered a holy animal by the majority Hindus – have led to vigilante killings of a number of people, most of them Muslims who were transporting cattle.
An uninhibited display of muscular Hindu nationalism in other areas has also contributed to religious tension.
Most recently, the country’s home minister Amit Shah said he would remove “illegal migrants” – understood to be Muslim – from the country through a government scheme that was used recently in the north-eastern state of Assam.
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – Heavy rains have killed at least 113 people in India’s Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states over the past three days, officials said on Monday, as flood waters swamped a major city, inundated hospital wards and forced the evacuation of inmates from a jail.
India’s monsoon season that begins in June usually starts to retreat by early September, but heavy rains have continued across parts of the country this year, triggering floods.
An official said that at least 93 people had died in most populous Uttar Pradesh since Friday after its eastern areas were lashed by intense monsoon showers.
Rising water levels forced authorities to shift 900 inmates from a prison in eastern Ballia district, police officer Santosh Verma said.
In neighbouring Bihar, an impoverished agrarian region that was hit by floods earlier this year, the death toll from the latest bout of rain had reached 20 on Monday, a state government official said.
Bihar’s capital city of Patna, home to around 2 million, has been badly hit, with waist-deep flood waters across many streets, and entering homes, shops, and even the wards of a major hospital. In some parts, authorities deployed boats to rescue residents.
“The rains have stopped but there is waterlogging in many areas,” Bihar’s Additional Secretary in the Disaster Relief Department Amod Kumar Sharan said.
In its bulletin on Monday, India’s Meteorological Department said the intensity of rainfall over Bihar was very likely to reduce. Showers in Uttar Pradesh are also expected to abate this week.
Weather department officials said this month that monsoon rains were likely to be above average for the first time in six years. [nL3N26B1MD]
The highest number of such cases has been registered in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which borders Delhi.
“At least 46 cases have been reported until 29 August. In all cases, we found that there was no evidence of child trafficking,” director general of police OP Singh told the BBC.
“We appeal to the people to not believe in such rumours. If you are in doubt, just reach out to the police through phone [dial in number 100] or social media,” he added.
Media captionThe India WhatsApp video driving people to murder
In Ghaziabad district, which is on the outskirts of Delhi, six cases were registered in August.
“In one case, a group of people attacked a grandmother while she was out with her grandchild. People attacked her because her skin colour was different to her grandchild,” senior police officer Neeraj Jadaun said, adding that all suspects in the case had been arrested.
While incidents like this are being reported across India, it is not clear if kidnappings are on the rise.
Rumours of child kidnappings often spread over text messages or WhatsApp, according to reports.
Officials have urged people not to believe messages linked to child abductions and are yet to find any incidents of child abduction related to the spate of messages and videos being shared online.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
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