Ritu رِتو ऋतु☀

Going with the flow!!

[Ritu رِتو ऋतु☀ @r_itujoshi]

Happy Independence Day everyone. Long live the freedom that our elders got for us and hope that we are able to give to the next generation. It is hard earned, value it. Jai Hind!!🇮🇳🇮🇳

[Weatherman Navdeep Dahiya @navdeepdahiya55]

Monsoon covers national capital #Delhi along with parts of central #Haryana, #Punjab and parts of east #Rajasthan till 2nd July morning.
Satellite imagery indicates good cloud cover over the region with rains since last night. Rains to taper down from noon onwards and shall return after mid night.
#Monsoon2026 #Monsoon

[Backpirch Weather @BackpirchCrew]

The Earth just experienced FOUR significant earthquakes in a single day.

First, it was a Magnitude 5.6 in California’s Redwood Valley.

Then, 7 hours later, a devastating “double” quake inflicted massive destruction in northern Venezuela. The first one at Magnitude 7.2, followed by an even larger Magnitude 7.5 only 39 SECONDS later.

Finally, a mere 25 minutes after the Venezuela twins, a Magnitude 6.9 marine earthquake struck offshore of Kuji, Japan.

Very rare to see this much seismic activity across the globe in such a short period of time.

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

This statement came out yesterday on Passport Seva Divas, and the internet has been burning since.

Let me walk through what happened.

Yesterday was the 14th Passport Seva Divas. June 24 marks the anniversary of the Passports Act of 1967, so every year the Ministry of External Affairs holds a press event to talk about passport services.

This year they had a lot to celebrate. India issued 1.39 crore passports in 2025. They have 545 Passport Kendras across the country, up from 77 a decade ago.

They launched chip-based e-passports with biometric data stored on a microchip. Dr. S. Jaishankar put out a warm message talking about Surakshit Passport, Sugam Seva, Sashakt Nagrik.

Good news all around.

And then an MEA official said this: a passport is a travel document, not a document of citizenship.

Now here is the thing. Legally, the official is correct.

The Passports Act of 1967 defines a passport as a document issued by the government to enable its citizens to travel internationally.

Citizenship is governed by a completely different law, the Citizenship Act of 1955. The passport has always technically been a travel document in the eyes of the law.

But practically for most Indians, the passport is the single most trusted piece of identity they carry. It has their name, their photo, their date of birth, and the "Republic of India" on the cover.

When they go abroad, immigration officers at foreign airports look at it and decide whether to let them in or not.

Every country in the world treats an Indian passport as proof that you are an Indian citizen.

So when the MEA says it is not proof of citizenship, people have a very simple and very valid question.

If not the passport, then what?

The government has no answer to this question.

Aadhaar is held by over 135 crore Indians.

It is built into almost every government service. You need it for LPG subsidies, bank accounts, mobile connections, income tax returns, school admissions.

But Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act of 2016 explicitly says Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship or domicile. The Supreme Court confirmed this again as recently as 2025 in a case involving Bihar's electoral rolls.

The Election Commission went to court and said Aadhaar cannot be treated as conclusive proof of citizenship. The Supreme Court agreed.

Voter ID is issued by the Election Commission of India.

It is the document you use to vote in a democracy. Surely that proves you are a citizen?

No. The Bombay High Court has ruled that Voter ID is not proof of citizenship. Foreign nationals have obtained Voter IDs through fraudulent enrolment.

The document proves you are on the electoral rolls, not that you are legally a citizen.

PAN card?

Even foreign nationals on valid visas can get a PAN card. It is a tax identification document, not a citizenship document.

Driving licence? It is issued based on residency, not citizenship.

Ration card is a welfare card for subsidized food. It proves nothing about nationality.

The Bombay High Court has ruled that owning an Aadhaar card, PAN card, voter ID, or even a passport are not proof of Indian citizenship, which is determined solely under the Citizenship Act, 1955.

So what actually proves you are Indian?

The legally correct answer is a birth certificate showing you were born in India, or a citizenship certificate issued under the Citizenship Act, or documentary evidence of descent from Indian citizens.

These are the documents that hold up in court.

But the problem is that about 38 percent of children under 5 in India do not have birth certificates.

For large sections of the country, especially in rural areas, these documents simply do not exist. Births were never registered. Land records are incomplete or disputed.

School leaving certificates have name spelling variations across documents because nobody was paying attention to consistency 40 years ago.

This is exactly what happened in Assam.

In August 2019, the final NRC list was published and 19.06 lakh people were left out of 3.30 crore applicants.

These people, many of whose families had lived in Assam for generations, found themselves in legal limbo with no clear path to prove citizenship.

Cases included a 108-year-old woman whose name had been in the very first NRC of 1951 and who had voted in India's first election, but was still declared a doubtful voter.

Documents were rejected for spelling mismatches between two government papers. Family members were split, with some included and others excluded based on the same underlying documentation.

A Kargil war veteran was detained and had to go to court to prove he was Indian.

The MEA did not make a controversial political claim. They stated a legal fact.

But that legal fact has now reminded 140 crore people that the document they trust most does not actually do what they think it does.

And it opened a question that the government, courts, and Parliament have been quietly avoiding for years.

If the passport is not a document of citizenship, does the government give it to non-Indians as well? And wouldn't this announcement create doubts in the minds of other countries?

The government verifies that before issuing one. But once issued, the government is now saying that same document cannot be used to prove what was verified to get it.

The fact of the matter is that India does not have a clean, universally accessible answer to this question.

The courts have carved out what does not count.

Parliament has not legislated what definitively does.

And millions of people, especially those without clean documentation histories, live with that uncertainty every day.

[Man Aman Singh Chhina @manaman_chhina]

Deadbody of a merchant seaman lies decomposing on his ship while his fellow sailors try to use cold water bottles to battle decomposition.
Is anyone even bothered?
Saara Jahaan Hamara?

[Mumbai Nowcast @s_r_khandelwal]

NOAA has confirmed that El Nino has officially formed🚨

It can be a record breaking one🚨
Directly impacting our Monsoon & #MumbaiRains

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

This notification is one of the most important fuel documents of the decade.

Let me explain what just happened.

The government charges a tax called excise duty on petrol. This paper says petrol mixed with 22%, 25%, 27% or 30% ethanol will pay zero excise duty.

Zero tax is the government's way of telling oil companies, start blending more ethanol, we will make it worth your investment.

This was coming.

On May 15, the Bureau of Indian Standards quietly notified IS 19850:2026, the official specification for E22, E25, E27 and E30 petrol. So they have mentioned the standard, and then the tax exemption.

But why is the government in such a hurry?

Three reasons;

Reason 1

The programme has been a genuine success on its own terms. India hit 20% blending in 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 timeline.

Twenty years ago we could barely manage 5%. Crude imports fell, foreign exchange was saved, and over ₹1.18 lakh crore has gone to farmers through ethanol purchases.

For a country that imports most of its oil, every litre of ethanol is a litre of crude oil we did not buy from abroad, making us self-sufficient in our crude oil needs.

Reason 2

There is a supply glut because distilleries went on an expansion spree. India's installed ethanol capacity is close to 20 billion litres a year, with 4 billion more coming, while E20 needs only about 11 to 12 billion litres.

So we have built double the capacity we need. Those plants took loans. They need buyers. The only buyer big enough is the petrol pump.

E20 cannot absorb the supply, so the blend has to go up. The push to E30 is partly climate policy and partly capacity bailout.

Reason 3

Maize has now overtaken sugarcane as the biggest ethanol feedstock, supplying nearly half of all ethanol. The farm lobby behind this programme is now two crops.

But all of this has come at a cost;

When E20 rolled out, regular car owners paid the cost.

A government-funded study by ARAI and Indian Oil found fuel economy dropping up to 6% on E20 depending on the vehicle.

Owners of older cars reported worse.

So even though ethanol is cheaper than petrol. The blending saved money only for oil companies. The pump price you paid did not fall.

On top of that, you got no choice. Most pumps stopped offering plain petrol or E10.

E27 and E30 raise the same questions, with higher stakes. Cars sold in India were made E20-compatible only from around 2023.

There are crores of vehicles on the road before that were never designed for 27 or 30% ethanol. The industry's own target is E30 rollout between 2028 and 2030, which means a huge chunk of today's fleet will still be running when the new fuel arrives.

Brazil is the comparison everyone uses, and it is worth understanding properly.

Brazil runs E27 with nearly universal flex-fuel vehicles. Their cars were built for it over decades. The fuel and the fleet moved together.

So, we are moving the fuel first and hoping the fleet catches up.

So in nutshell, the notification tells oil companies and distilleries to blend more, and it says nothing to the car owners.

Three questions deserve clear answers before E27 petrol shows up at our neighbourhood pump.

1. Will pump prices actually fall this time, since both the ethanol and now the tax are cheaper? Will the zero excise duty gain disappear into oil company margins again?

2. Will older vehicles get a protected option, a pump that still sells E10 or E20 for cars that cannot handle more blending?

3. And will mileage loss be communicated honestly, with numbers, instead of being discovered by drivers at the fuel station?

The ethanol programme is one of the few Indian policies that has been implemented at a break neck pace.

Farmers have earned, imports have fallen, and an entire industry has been built in a decade. That deserves credit.

But going from E10 to E20 strained the system. Going from E20 to E30 with an unprepared vehicle fleet will most likely break it.

30 crore vehicle owners are waiting for answers.

[Dr. Brahma Chellaney @Chellaney]

The Silence Over Indian Lives: If three American merchant mariners were killed in an airstrike, it would trigger a round-the-clock political crisis in the United States. Yet the deaths of three Indian crew members in a U.S. airstrike on a Palau-flagged tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday have attracted little international attention. Modi has not publicly commented on the attack, leaving it to the foreign ministry to lodge a routine diplomatic protest.

Nor was this an isolated incident. It was the third tanker carrying Indian crew members to be struck by the U.S. military this week. On Monday, a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet used precision-guided munitions against another tanker in the Gulf of Oman, forcing Omani authorities to evacuate all 24 Indian sailors aboard.

Then today, a U.S. aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of a Guinea-Bissau-flagged tanker off the Omani coast, sparking a major fire. Fortunately, all 20 Indian crew members survived.

[SpaceWeatherNews @SunWeatherMan]

That…. Is a big earthquake

[Mumbai Rains @rushikesh_agre_]

BREAKING: Tsunami alert has been issued for the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Taiwan & Papua New Guinea after massive 8.2 magnitude earthquake.

[🔴All India Weather @allindiaweather]

Please remember that a very severe western disturbance is likely to impact North India from June 11 to 15. So please continue to check the latest weather alerts and advisories.

[Surajit @surajit_ghosh2]

More than 18 earthquakes have been reported across the Philippines following a powerful 7.8 magnitude quake

Multiple regions around the world are experiencing increased seismic activity

Something bigger happening beneath the Earth's surface

[Nagendar Sharma @sharmanagendar]

Make No mistake !
Whether the horrific Malviya Nagar (Hauz Rani) hotel fire or Saket building collapse - these are NOT accidents - these are disastrous consequences of deliberate official blind eye to illegal activities since the bribery cut right from lowest level of babudom to top bureaucracy and political bosses is pre-decided on percentage basis.
Has any action been taken on anyone for any fire or building collapse since the beginning of hostile weather season this year been taken ?
Simple answer to this question will provide the basis for what is going wrong !
It is deliberate and nothing else !

[Abhijeet Dipke @abhijeet_dipke]

Why is there no woman spokesperson in the CJP?

We did offered the role to our female team members, but many told us they would prefer to be actively involved without being at the forefront due to the constant online attacks and threats we are receiving. We respect their decision.

That said, we would like to invite young women who want to be part of this movement and are willing to step forward as spokespersons to join us.

[Sandeep Manudhane @sandeep_PT]

India is entering that extremely dangerous zone where sons and daughters of several top policymakers, industrialists, civil servants, defence officials and politicians are settled in America, or are citizens of America.

How can they ever take on America when push comes to shove? They'll never ever push back, given direct family interests.

China sidelines all such officials as a principle. No compromise.

But here? They're leading the show.

[🥑 @OracleOfTumul]

Those who are in power right now are playing with the future of India's next generation..

- There is plenty of land in Australia; still, they want to make data centres in India..

- Data centres don't create that much of a job; most of the process is automated.

- many European countries stopped the data centres on their mainland.

- it directly affects the Vegetation patterns and Rise in carbon footprint

-Similar patterns were seen in America; they started renting out the data center to the African country and some of the South American country

- Similar things are happening in Odisha too, but when I point them out, they start abusing me, and I'm being told I have nothing to do with Odisha.
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Indians have the habit of eating the shit out of the white people,in 2010's they started dumping the E wasted and we india bought that kachra

[Himalayan Hindu @himalayanhindu]

The obsession with breaking records has successfully turned the fragile Himalayas into the world's longest PARKING LOT. Joshimath is currently choking under a massive 25-30 KM long traffic jam. From Vishnuprayag to 15 km beyond, tourists are stuck in their cars for hours.

[Weatherman Rajasthan @Rajsthanweather]

Seen yellow Duststorm many times but seeing the Red for the first time.

📍 Lunkarnsar , Bikaner
📍Bhanipura , Churu

[Weatherman Navdeep Dahiya @navdeepdahiya55]

Western disturbance brought Duststorm, rains and thunderstorms at a widespread extent. Temperatures dips significantly across north, east and central #India.
On 30th May, Maximum temperatures were below normal by 10 to 15°c across #Punjab. #Chandigarh reported T-Max of 25.3°c, almost winter standard!
Overall day temperatures were below normal by 4 to 8°c for other states.

As easterly winds along with limited thunderstorm activities will continue for next 3 to 4 days, we will enter June with similar temperature departures.
#Summers

[Parveen Kaswan, IFS @ParveenKaswan]

No. This is not a shot from dunes movie.

It is a sandstorm as observed from Bikaner, Rajasthan today.