The Supreme Court upheld the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, saying that the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative” of free and fair polls. The Election Commission has constitutional powers to conduct the exercise, the bench said.However, the court noted that the Election Commission’s inquiries for the purpose of including a person in the voter list do not mean that it can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.It directed the poll panel to forward to the Union government within a week the names of the persons who had been deleted from Bihar’s electoral rolls on account of doubtful citizenship, so that their citizenship could be adjudicated upon. Read on.The Assam Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code bill seeking to ban polygamy and make the registration of live-in relationships compulsory. The draft legislation was passed even as the Opposition demanded that it should be sent to a select committee for scrutiny.It paves the way for Assam to become the third state, after Uttarakhand and Gujarat, to introduce such a code after independence.Chief Minister Himanta Sarma said that the state’s tribal population would be kept outside the purview of the code. Read on.The Enforcement Directorate carried out searches at former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s residences in Kannur and Thiruvananthapuram as part of a money laundering investigation. The central agency is investigating whether Cochin Minerals and Rutile, a private company, paid about Rs 1.7 crore to a now-defunct information technology firm run by Vijayan’s daughter T Veena between 2017 and 2021.The mining company, in which the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation has 13.4% stake, had allegedly made the payments to Veena’s firm with no evidence of any services rendered in return.The Communist Party of India (Marxist) condemned the searches, describing them as “a targeted attack on a top Opposition leader by the Bharatiya Janata Party government”.A team of ED officials that carried out the searches in Thiruvananthapuram were attacked and their vehicles vandalised allegedly by CPI(M) workers. Read on.A Singapore court sentenced Byju Raveendran, the founder of education technology company Byju’s, to six months in jail for contempt. The court said that he had disobeyed several orders related to his assets dating back to April 2024.Raveendran has been directed to surrender, pay costs of 90,000 Singaporean dollars, or Rs 67 lakh, and provide documents proving his legal ownership of Beeaar Investco Pte, a corporate entity that held shares in a related company.The proceedings in Singapore were initiated by a subsidiary of sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority, which had invested in Byju’s as it was cutting jobs and laying off staff. Read on.The Rajasthan High Court acquitted religious leader Asumal Harpalani, also known as Asaram Bapu, of charges related to the gangrape of a minor. However, it upheld his conviction for rape in the case, which carries the punishment of life imprisonment.While rejecting Asaram’s petition to set aside the life sentence, the bench held that the charges of rape under the Indian Penal Code, sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and offences under the Juvenile Justice Act had been proven. However, the evidence on record was not sufficient to sustain the charges related to gangrape and criminal conspiracy, the judges said.Asaram had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a sessions court in Jodhpur in 2018 after which he had approached the High Court. Read on.If you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.