Leaders of India’s Cockroach Janta Party have been detained after breaching a security cordon to demand the resignation of the country’s election chief over a controversial revision of electoral rolls. 

The activists claim the deletion of 130 million names from voters’ lists was designed to benefit Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which he denies. The Election Commission of India insists the aim was to remove voters who have died, moved or cannot otherwise be verified, and that people can apply to be re-enrolled. Thousands of people, including prominent lawyers and journalists, were detained over the weekend during protests that show no signs of slowing.

What did the commentators say?
It will be “difficult” for Modi to “quell the turmoil”, said Andres Schipani and Jyotsna Singh in the Financial Times. The Cockroach Janta Party emerged as a student-led movement focusing on alleged examination irregularities but it’s now targeting the institution that “oversees elections in the world’s largest democracy”, making it harder for the prime minister to “find the right response”.

If he concedes to the demands for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, Modi could open the door to wider questions about the legitimacy of his government, Ruchi Gupta, executive director of the Future of India Foundation, told the newspaper. This “government has a trust deficit that it needs to address”.

“If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, nobody notices,” said Vidya Krishnan on Al Jazeera, but Indian democracy has now been “stripped of its plumage”. Denying tens of millions of Indians their right to vote is an “exercise in bureaucratic fascism”.

Even so, Modi “remains popular” among large swathes of the population, said Faisal Mahmud on Asia Times. His “cult-like charisma, organisational strength and electoral record cannot simply be wished away”, and allegations of electoral manipulation cannot “substitute for evidence”. But “the government’s handling of dissent has become an issue in its own right”.

What next?
 “The youth will keep coming out,” Uday Bhanu Chib, president of the Indian Youth Congress wing of the opposition Indian National Congress party, told the FT. They’re “no longer afraid of this government”.

The death of a man in Yorkshire Wildlife Park’s big cat enclosure has prompted a health and safety investigation by the City of Doncaster Council. William Chapman was killed by a Siberian tiger after he reportedly climbed over the barrier on Saturday.

Some are calling for tighter security measures at wildlife parks, given similar high-profile incidents, but others argue that it is the changing behaviour of human visitors that poses a threat to their safety.

‘Deeply tragic’
This is the “second serious incident at a UK zoo in just a few months”, said The Guardian. In June, a three-year-old boy was seriously injured in Cambridgeshire, after allegedly being thrown into a crocodile enclosure by a stranger. Police arrested a man in his 30s, but he was released after being “assessed as not being fit for interview”.

Although Chapman’s death is “deeply tragic”, there are “millions” of visits to wildlife parks every year and such incidents are “vanishingly rare”, said Amy Dickman, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Oxford. The “harsh reality”, however, is that it is “virtually impossible for zoos to stop people who are very determined to breach safety measures”.

“Zoos are actually one of the safest places you can visit,” Jo Judge, chief executive of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums, told the BBC. They undergo a “huge number” of risk assessments, as well as “full inspections every six years and periodic inspections every three”.

‘Props’ for content
Zoo safety has not worsened, nor are the animals “somehow more dangerous”; “human behaviour itself has instead become a problem”, said The Telegraph. In the face of this human-led change, “zoos may now have to reflect not just on how they are run, but what they are even for”.

It is “unarguable” that phones and social media have altered the relationship between animals and zoo visitors. Where people would once have been “happy to see a photograph” of a famous animal, now they are “desperate to put their own interactions with endangered species” online. Dangerous animals have become “props” for content and, all too often, individuals “endanger their lives” for clicks.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches an unpiloted Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The cargo ship is loaded with research materials, spare parts and crew supplies for the International Space Station, and is due to arrive on Thursday.

Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich / EPA / Shutterstock

“As Brits battle the country’s often-dire rail network”, said Time Out, railway pubs are sometimes the only thing keeping us “sane amid countless delays, cancellations and strikes”. For travellers at a loose end or in need of refreshment, here are some of Britain’s best places for a railway pint.

Tap on the Line, London
“Perched right on the platform at Kew Gardens station is a charming little boozer,” said Secret London. London is known for its quirky pubs, but the Tap on the Line (pictured above) is “one of the very few places in the city where you can see your train coming, sink your pint, and still be on board by the time the train is ready to depart”. It also has regular live music, pub quizzes and a “wonderful atmosphere”.

The Sheffield Tap, Sheffield
This “Edwardian treasure” has been carved out of the station’s former “Refreshment Rooms”, said The Telegraph. It had been derelict since the mid-1970s, but after being given a second lease of life, it now oozes class, with a “mahogany bar, ornate barrel-plaster ceiling and terrazzo floor”. There’s even a brewery in the “magnificent inner room”, which used to be the first-class dining room.

Bank of Conwy, North Wales
This welcoming pub is opposite Conwy station at the “heart of this beautiful seaside town”, said The i Paper, and has “warmly embraced modern craft beer”, serving local favourites from Wild Horse Brewing down the coast at Llandudno. There are plenty of good cask ales on the pumps too, and the building itself is a “nicely restored Grade II-listed former bank”.

Burnham says exactly what he thinks. It’s starting to cost him
Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper
Andy Burnham’s “loose-lipped pronouncements” on everything from the Man City scandal to Russian interference in Brexit have left his ministers scrambling to “clean up the mess” in subsequent media rounds, writes Kitty Donaldson. But is this just a case of a “leader who shoots from the hip” or is “what looks like indiscipline actually” a “premier trying to soften up the public to his way of thinking”? Either way, those forced to do the “verbal hokey-cokey” amid the fallout could start “taking pot shots”.

Finally, positive discrimination done well
Celia Walden in The Telegraph
Met Commissioner Mark Rowley is right to say that recruiting from under-represented communities is an “operational necessity”, not an ideological box-ticking exercise, writes Celia Walden. Almost half of Londoners have an ethnic minority background, compared with 18% of Met officers, and Rowley argues that a more representative force will make “us better at protecting victims, catching criminals and preventing crime”. Many institutions have pushed DEI without being “entirely clear that it does anything useful”, but Rowley’s case is “strong enough to thaw cynicism and erode contempt”.

Posing with books can lead to better things
James Marriott in The Times
“Performative readers” are advertising their “intelligence, sensitivity and moral superiority”, writes James Marriott. So many people “have given up reading for pleasure” that books are now “exotic objects” to “flaunt” for “social prestige”. Reading requires more “graft” than “passively scrolling” TikTok, and these posers want “not only to be seen as better people but also to be better people”. That’s “cause for hope”. Some who start out “wanting to look sexy or be improved” will end up “realising that reading” is “much richer than that”.