Schools in Uttar Pradesh will not observe a holiday for Christmas on December 25 but will stay open to commemorate the birth centenary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. An order issued by the state’s Basic Education Department said that attendance for students would be mandatory on Thursday.

The department directed schools to organise speeches, cultural programmes and remembrance activities to honour Vajpayee. The order applies to government primary and upper primary schools in the state.

The decision reportedly came amid demands made by the Hindutva group Bajrang Dal in Saharanpur district to celebrate December 25 as “Bal Gaurav [child pride] and Good Governance Day” instead of Christmas. Read on.

Meta restricted access for Indian users to two artificial intelligence-generated videos posted by the Congress showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adani Group chairperson Gautam Adani. The social media conglomerate took the action after it received takedown notices from the Delhi Police, it disclosed to the Lumen Database, a Harvard University project.

The company said that the videos did not violate its community standards, but it would risk losing safe harbour protections and would put its local personnel at risk of criminal penalties if it failed to comply with the notices.

Losing safe harbour protections would mean that the platforms would be legally responsible for the content in question.

The police said that the videos contravenes provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act pertaining to forgery, fraudulent use of forged documents and identity theft. Read more.

Security personnel stopped the complainant in the Unnao rape case and her family members from protesting in Delhi against the High Court granting bail to the convicted former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar. They were reportedly dragged and forcefully removed from India Gate on Tuesday.

The High Court on Tuesday also suspended the life sentence of Sengar, while directing him not to travel within a five-kilometre radius of the complainant’s home.

Hours after the judgement, the complainant, accompanied by her mother and activist Yogita Bhayana, staged a protest at India Gate against the bail. However, they were dragged and forcefully removed from the protest site, showed videos circulating on social media.

On Wednesday morning, the complainant’s mother alleged that the Central Reserve Police Force stopped her and her daughter from protesting at Mandi House. Read more.

India reported 14,875 instances of free speech violations in 2025, including the killings of eight journalists and one social media influencer, a report by a civil society group said. The report by the Free Speech Collective recorded instances of censorship, court gag orders, restrictions affecting academic autonomy in the past year.

The study said that the arrests of 117 persons, including eight journalists, were linked to free speech violations this year. Thirty-three of the 40 attacks related to free speech targeted journalists, the Free Speech Collective said.

Eight journalists were killed during the year: two in Uttar Pradesh and one each in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Odisha and Uttarakhand. A social media influencer was killed in Punjab. Read more.

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