2025
December 2025 – 2026 institutional Documented record
A series of Comptroller and Auditor General reports tabled from December 2025 documented systemic leakage across flagship programmes: ₹21,695 crore in GST compliance deviations and input-tax-credit mismatches, direct benefit transfers paid without adequate verification, and fake beneficiary data and unverifiable placements in the skill-development scheme PMKVY. The findings are the constitutional auditor's own; action-taken responses are pending.
27 September 2025 negligence Under investigation
A crowd crush at actor-politician Vijay's TVK rally at Velusamypuram, Karur, on 27 September 2025 killed 41 people and injured over 60, after an hours-delayed arrival left a massive crowd packed in heat without adequate water, exits or policing. Responsibility is contested between the organisers and the state. The Supreme Court set aside the state's SIT and handed the probe to the CBI under a monitoring committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge.
9 July 2025 negligence Documented record
A span of the 1985-built Gambhira bridge between Vadodara and Anand collapsed during morning traffic on 9 July 2025, plunging vehicles into the Mahi river and killing around 20 people. Residents had long flagged the bridge's visible deterioration. Four engineers were suspended, and a statewide inspection that followed closed 20 bridges entirely and restricted 113 more — a measure of how widespread the neglect was.
June – November 2025 electoral Under investigation
Months before the Bihar assembly election, the Election Commission ordered a Special Intensive Revision requiring all ~7.9 crore electors to re-establish their entries; the draft roll excluded about 65 lakh names. Petitioners told the Supreme Court the exercise was arbitrary and risked mass disenfranchisement; the EC says deletions covered the dead, migrated and duplicates. The court ordered booth-wise publication of deleted names with reasons and wider acceptance of ID documents. Challenges remain pending.
4 June 2025 negligence Documented record
Eleven people died and over 50 were injured in a crowd crush outside Bengaluru's Chinnaswamy Stadium on 4 June 2025, when two to three lakh fans gathered for Royal Challengers Bengaluru's IPL victory celebration — an event promoted despite police having denied permission. The Justice D'Cunha judicial commission found the tragedy preventable: no risk assessment, no coordination, and a fraction of the needed police deployment.
January – February 2025 negligence Documented record
A pre-dawn crowd crush at the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj on 29 January 2025 killed 37 people by the official count; a BBC Hindi investigation documented at least 82 deaths and found families paid in cash to attribute deaths to illness. Weeks later, 18 people died in a crush at New Delhi railway station as Kumbh-bound crowds overwhelmed the platforms. No inquiry findings from either disaster have been made public.
2021
July 2021 (SC committee report August 2022) civil liberties Alleged
The Pegasus Project reported in July 2021 that hundreds of Indian phone numbers — journalists, opposition politicians, ministers, activists — appeared on a leaked list of potential targets of NSO Group's military-grade spyware, sold only to governments. Forensics confirmed infections on several phones. The government refused to confirm or deny purchase. A Supreme Court-appointed committee found malware on 5 of 29 phones examined, could not conclusively identify Pegasus, and recorded that the government "did not cooperate".
April – June 2021 negligence Documented record
During the Delta-variant wave of April–May 2021, reported cases crossed 400,000 a day; hospitals ran out of beds and medical oxygen, and crematoria were overwhelmed. Mass election rallies and the Kumbh Mela proceeded as the wave built. The government later told Parliament that states reported no deaths specifically from oxygen shortage. The WHO estimated 4.7 million excess deaths in India in 2020–21 — roughly ten times the official toll at the time — an estimate the government rejects.
2020
September 2020 – November 2021 policy failure Documented record
Three farm laws were pushed through Parliament in September 2020 — cleared in the Rajya Sabha by voice vote amid opposition demands for a recorded division. A year-long protest encampment of farmers at Delhi's borders followed; farm unions attribute over 700 protester deaths to the agitation. The Supreme Court stayed the laws in January 2021, and in November 2021 the Prime Minister apologised and repealed all three.
March – June 2020 policy failure Documented record
A nationwide COVID-19 lockdown was announced at 8 p.m. on 24 March 2020, effective from midnight — four hours' notice for 1.4 billion people. With transport suspended and wages gone, millions of migrant workers were stranded in cities; vast numbers walked hundreds of kilometres home. Independent tallies recorded hundreds of deaths from exhaustion, starvation and accidents. The government later told Parliament it had no data on migrant worker deaths.
2019
August 2019 – February 2021 civil liberties Documented record
Alongside the abrogation of Article 370 on 5 August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir was placed under a communications blackout — internet, mobile and landlines cut — and thousands were detained, including three former chief ministers. 4G mobile internet returned only in February 2021, after 550 days of full or partial shutdown, the longest in any democracy. The Supreme Court held that indefinite internet shutdowns are impermissible.
2016
8 November 2016 policy failure Documented record
On 8 November 2016, ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes — about 86% of currency in circulation by value — were invalidated with four hours' notice, stated aims being to extinguish black money and counterfeit currency. The RBI later reported that 99.3% of the voided notes returned to banks. The cash crunch caused prolonged queues, deaths reported at bank lines, and measurable damage to the informal economy.
Nothing in the record matches these filters — yet.