Overview

• At a press conference on August 17, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar categorically dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s 'vote theft' allegations and demanded a sworn affidavit or apology within seven days.
• The Commission defended Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision as a legal door-to-door 'purification' using ganana forms and reiterated that machine-readable voter data release is barred under Supreme Court privacy orders, with form verification ongoing through September 30.
• Law enforcement this week included the Assam CID arresting a 26-year-old from Dewas for allegedly sexually assaulting and blackmailing a Guwahati minor and Kanpur police detaining four suspects in an eight-month-old Shahjahanpur gangster murder after a tattoo enabled identification.
• International security updates saw Israeli airstrikes reportedly kill a senior Hamas commander and strike a Gaza school sheltering displaced families, while a Russian ballistic missile in Kharkiv wounded civilians, including a 13-year-old girl.
• The BJP’s announcement of C.P. Radhakrishnan as its NDA candidate for vice president has introduced fresh strategic questions over opposition cohesion.