Outlook Magazine - Election Omission - 11 September 2025 Issue

It is difficult to recall politicians from other states campaigning in Bihar. The participation of M K Stalin, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and that of CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya in a road show in Bihar tells the importance of the upcoming Bihar elections—both for the Opposition India Bloc, and the ruling Nitish Kumar-BJP combine. Rahul Gandhi’s Vote Adhikar Yatra in Bihar is gathering enough crowds. Can Rahul Gandhi and Tejaswi Yadav pull it off? The columns and a ground report from Bihar offer some answers, in this issue of Outlook. In Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura, where voter rolls have swelled and warped, N K Bhoopesh unravels a decades-long saga of duplicate names, bogus entries and unexplained surges in voters. Rajya Sabha MP and fiery voice of the Opposition, Manoj Kumar Jha, warns in 'How Free and Fair?' that without moral courage, democracy will fade. Aditya Sondhi, a seasoned advocate, reads the fine print of the Election Commission’s actions and silences in 'A Chink in the Edifice'. Nalini Singh, the veteran journalist who exposed booth capturing during elections in the 1980s and '90s, recalls the lessons from that pursuit. Avantika Mehta tracks the ideological spin being given to NCERT textbooks, speaking to historians and teachers, and educationists, who highlight the dangers of history being used as propaganda. Ishfaq Naseem visits experts and teachers, uncovering how they feel about the past being rewritten through textbooks. Read this and more in the latest issue of Outlook.