Columbia Uni/ACJ; words, audio, video; Bylines: Al Jazeera, The Hindu, The Wire, Frontline, TheNewsMinute, Suno India, The World, Views mine
Depends on the story
Joined June 2009
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Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Speaking at Semiconductor Summit 2026, Dr Suraj Rengarajan, Managing Director and Principal Technologist, Applied Materials India, Bengaluru, and Divya Gurudutt, General Manager, Krypton (India) Solutions, discussed India's journey towards building a complete semiconductor ecosystem. Moderated by @kunalshankar, Deputy Business Editor, The Hindu, the session explored the critical role of R&D, advanced manufacturing, talent development and deep-tech innovation in strengthening India's semiconductor ambitions.
Watch the full video on The Hindu's YouTube channel!
#semiconductor #SemiconductorSummit2026
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
In September, @IndianExpress' investigation revealed that two Election Commissioners had written separately to the Cabinet Secretary seeking action against a senior officer inside the EC.
What happened to those letters is now on record.
File notings obtained under RTI by Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd) show the Cabinet Secretariat discussed the letters on August 3 & 4, then decided to do nothing beyond acknowledging them.
The reasoning? Sandhu and Joshi had written in their individual capacity, not as the Commission.
“In the absence of any official communication from the Commission as a whole, any action at this stage may be inappropriate. It may also be construed as interference in the functioning of the Constitutional Body.”
The Commission, as our investigation has shown, had not met as a full body for FOUR months.
indianexpress.com/article/in… via @IndianExpress
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
ECINet, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) comprehensive digital platform, has a feature through which viewing of enumeration form details is enabled State by State. This means that access for State Nodal Officers (SNOs) could be switched off anytime making it a centralised platform, according to an audit by ‘Charchagram’, a civic tech initiative.
✍️@sreeparna_c
thehindu.com/news/national/o…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
As the Election Commission launches a special drive in 20 states to bring back voters “left out” in the SIR, its officers are staring at a unique problem: persuading lakhs, possibly crores, of people to fill Form 6, the “Application Form for New Voters,” which asks them to declare they are applying “for the first time.”
Form 6 is the right route back, and officials say signing it invites no legal action. But people who’ve voted for decades balk at calling themselves new, and many believe the declaration is false.
Against that backdrop, Maharashtra’s CEO has proposed a fix: drop “New Voters” from the title, and let the deleted say they were enrolled before and cite their old EPIC number.
Break by @vallabhozarkarr
indianexpress.com/article/in… via @IndianExpress
Telling that a young protestor did not know Srinivasan Jain, a seasoned journalist of 40 years. If this doesn't signify the arrival of a new era in news media, then what is?
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Hundreds of tribal residents along India's Ken River voiced anger over an $87 billion government project to link some 30 rivers nationwide, championed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi reut.rs/4hSgEOT
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Sudarshan Venu, the 37-year-old CMD of TVS Motor Company, named as Significant Beneficial Owner (SBO) sets cats among pigeons.
✍️@kunalshankar
thehindu.com/business/owners…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
It isn't just the current SIR process that needs a review, but all the elections already conducted under it that must be studied.
How the SIR deletions affect the Bengal election results? Were certain categories of voters targeted and if so, what were the consequences?
Does the analysis of Bengal elections suggest any lessons for the forthcoming state elections?
Prannoy Roy (@PrannoyRoy7749) uses data on SIR deletions and swings in votes to answer these and other questions about the impact of SIR on the Bengal elections.
Watch the full analysis and follow DeKoder for more.
#ECI #SIR #VoterDeletion #WestBengal #BJP #TMC #WomenVoters #VotingRights #IndianElections #ElectionAnalysis
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Significant differences have emerged over the interpretation of ownership and succession plans within the family of Venu Srinivasan, involving his wife, Mallika Srinivasan, daughter Lakshmi Venu and son Sudarshan Venu, in relation to their interests in TVS Motor Company and its holding firm, TVS Holdings Limited.
✍️@kunalshankar
thehindu.com/business/owners…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Dear Prime Minister Ambani,
Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India.
Naturally, you would prefer to maintain your monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India, but would you nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete?
There are many areas of India, as there are in all countries, with no Internet access, which denies children the opportunity for education and for small businesses the opportunity to sell their goods to a global market. Starlink would change their lives for the better.
Thank you 🙏
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Don’t miss this editorial page lead article by Srinivasan Ramani & Pon Vasanth B.A. in The Hindu (October 9, 2026). The article explains in clear, precise, and accessible terms what a massive scandal — an exercise fatally flawed in conception and design, and deliberately exclusionary in impact — the Gyanesh Kumar-directed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was. It also draws attention to the Supreme Court of India’s failure in the big test and expresses the hope that it will now act decisively to undo the damage.
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
The one news org in Arunachal to keep reading as it's fine reporter @itsMarinaDai and her colleagues track the rising state suppression of people who want to voice their opinions and views against Siang Upper dam.
@arunachaltimes_, associate editor
@tongamrina.
A Yingkiong-based news channel covering the #SiangUpperMultipurposeProject has reportedly been restricted in #India. Upper Siang News 24x7, which has been covering the people’s #protest against the project’s pre-feasibility report studies, has been a go-to social media news channel for the region. The government has already shut down the #socialmedia accounts of individuals critical of the project, including activist #EboMili. The #hydropower project proposal has been strongly opposed by local residents.
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
SIR Investigation: The mysterious 16.4 lakh voters added to Uttar Pradesh Roll
Flouting the law, ECI has hidden names and details of 16.4 lakh voters added to Uttar Pradesh's voter roll.
That's 18.5% of the total voters added to the final voter roll in the state which soon goes to polls.
And some irreconcilable numbers emerge from SIR in UP...
@ayushikar1998 and @TweetSumedha investigated for The Reporters' Collective @reporters_co
reporters-collective.in/trc/…
1/2
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
More extraordinary that relatively rich countries couldn't protect their wildlife, and routinely cull dogs and cats. Unsure what link between humane behaviour and wealth is...
It is extraordinary that India, still a relatively poor country, can achieve something as selfless as protecting other creatures. We explain how it became remarkably good at animal conservation economist.com/asia/2026/10/0…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Kudos to these @indianexpress reports that have made the Election Commission make a full u-turn, now make efforts to bring voters back on the rolls.
The question now is who is being held responsible for the heartless treatment of those voters for the past year, and what does it mean for the elections that were held with such clearly faulty rolls?
The widest-reaching impact of @IndianExpress' Election Commission investigation yet.
10 days after our investigation into the rupture inside the Election Commission, the poll watchdog has told all 20 states where SIR is over to run a “special drive” to bring back voters “left out” of the rolls.
State CEOs have been told to identify voters deleted as unmapped or for “logical discrepancy” and that BLOs should go house to house to help bring them back. They will use Form 6 to apply for inclusion of such “left out” voters.
And the question added to Form 6 in July, asking whether your parents were on the last SIR roll, which one Commissioner called “unauthorised/illegal,” now applies only during the “SIR phase.”
What does that mean? In the 20 states where SIR is over, “left out” voters and first-time voters will use the plain statutory Form 6, without the question seeking details of their family’s link to the last SIR.
Reporting with @vallabhozarkarr.
indianexpress.com/article/in… via @IndianExpress
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
#Watch | Booth Level Officers received bulk Form-7 applications seeking deletion of Muslim names. They were reported at at least six polling stations in Belagavi North Assembly constituency — four in Veerabhadra Nagar (polling parts 194, 195, 196 and 199) and two at the Government Kannada Higher Primary School in Shettigali (polling parts 209 and 210). BLOs at these stations told The Hindu that two men, claiming to be from the Belagavi City Corporation, brought a bulk of Form-7 applications seeking deletion of only Muslim names. The voters’ names and other details were pre-filled, while the objectors’ names were either handwritten or left blank.
✍ @rishitaakhanna
🎥 Special arrangement
thehindu.com/news/cities/ban…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Hope this Tata Group donation has nothing with TCS getting the ERONET 2.0 contract for India's voter roll backbone; with no tender, no published contract, no audit trail?
This ERONET deleted 13 crore names off SIR rolls.
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
On August 26, floods hit Nepal’s Rasuwa, Nuwakot and Dhading districts, wiping away entire towns and communities. Roads and bridges were washed away, and telecommunications networks were down. The immediate focus was on rescuing people trapped under debris and providing relief to those affected. A month on, the focus has now shifted to rehabilitation, rebuilding and long-term recovery.
✍️ @kunalshankar, Nivedita Varadarajan
thehindu.com/news/internatio…
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
Former, CVC chief, CAG chief, Bank chiefs, PSU chiefs, even Supreme Court judge joined Reliance, the company that they should have dealt with in some capacity as Regulators, after retirement. Shouldn’t there be a ban on such post retirement jobs which create conflicts of interest while in position?
Kunal Shankar ; He/Him retweeted
What should we call this? Sycophancy personified? The heights to which Indian media has risen? #IndianMedia
