A growing pattern of selective reporting and ideological bias has raised sharp criticism against The Indian Express, as nationalist media watchdogs accuse the mainstream daily of running biased narratives that intentionally downplay or completely omit the identity of Islamist accused in major crime and communal conflict stories. Critics point out that while the publication routinely highlights the identity of Hindu accused to frame broader narratives around majority communalism, it frequently shields minority perpetrators behind sanitised phrasing, generalised terms, or deliberate silence.
Media analysts argue that by selectively withholding facts, minimising the religious identity of suspects in sensitive cases, and crafting a one-sided commentary on law-enforcement drives, the outlet compromises objective journalism in favour of a left-leaning appeasement narrative that distorts public perception and undermines fair reporting.
This report examines twelve incidents involving The Indian Express, highlighting a pattern of misleading narratives, selective facts, and deliberate omissions. Through these examples, the findings demonstrate how the newspaper’s framing and headlines consistently diverged from the established evidence.
ECI Internal Dispute: Framing administrative deliberation as institutional collapse
The Indian Express sought to manufacture a crisis within Bharat’s constitutional machinery by dramatically framing routine internal checks as an “unprecedented rupture” under CEC Gyanesh Kumar. Author Ritika Chopra presented 14 technical notes exchanged between Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi as proof of a breakdown, conveniently ignoring Section 18 of the 2023 ECI Act, which explicitly mandates majority decision-making when consensus varies.
While the daily relied on alarming, sensationalised vocabulary like “institutional collapse” to fuel opposition demands for the CEC’s resignation, the Election Commission through the Press Information Bureau confirmed that robust technical observations and written queries are standard deliberative practices, and all final policy decisions-including the nationwide Special Intensive Revision were passed with full unanimity.
Form 6 Electoral Roll: Sensationalising routine administrative checks
Continuing its anti-institution narrative, The Indian Express alleged that an “illegal and unauthorised” field was inserted into the online Form 6 to query new voters about their family’s historic roll entries. The paper selectively amplified internal technical queries raised by Commissioner Joshi to claim a statutory breach, completely discounting the fact that internal administrative queries are routinely refined during draft stages before full approval. The ECI clarified that all final operational decisions carry complete legal sanction and were passed unanimously by the full commission, exposing the daily’s eager attempt to label standard procedure as “illegal” without waiting for official legal findings or factual confirmation.
ECINet Software: Constructing centralisation bogeys against digital governance
The Indian Express attempted to discredit the Election Commission’s technological modernisation by framing the ECINet portal as a centralizing threat designed to strip Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) of their statutory powers. To build this alarmist narrative, the newspaper ignored actual field realities where ground-level EROs explicitly confirmed that their statutory decision-making authority over voter additions, deletions, and modifications remains entirely intact without requiring Delhi’s approval. The daily deliberately conflated basic cybersecurity protocols and central auditing safeguards with an imaginary administrative takeover, weaponising routine IT upgrades into a politically charged, anti-establishment conspiracy theory.
Goa Electoral Roll: Misrepresenting routine re-enrolment as systemic disfranchisement
In a blatant attempt to portray digital voter platforms as tools of exclusion, The Indian Express claimed that 97 eligible voters in Goa were permanently left out of the final electoral roll due to software constraints controlled from Delhi. This misleading report was promptly dismantled when Goa Chief Electoral Officer Dr. Sanjay Goel clarified that the electors were never permanently excluded but were actively being re-enrolled through standard Form 6 processing and door-to-door verification by Block Level Officers following logical discrepancy reviews. The daily ignored these standard administrative recovery mechanisms, preferring to weaponise a brief procedural pause to construct a false narrative of centralised voter suppression.
VHP Navaratri Debate: Mainstream media normalises “Hindu Taliban” and Islamist “Fatwa” attacks
Demonstrating its systemic hostility toward Hindu cultural traditions, The Indian Express hosted an interview where journalists Girish Kuber and Shubhangi Khapre launched a scathing attack on the Vishva Hindu Parishad for seeking to protect the devotional sanctity of Navaratri and Garba celebrations. During the broadcast, Kuber disgustingly equated the VHP to the “Hindu Taliban,” while Khapre weaponised the Islamist term “fatwa” to vilify security guidelines meant to prevent non-believers from converting sacred religious fasts and dances into commercialised entertainment hubs. The media house aggressively advanced leftist-Islamist talking points by demanding that Hindu festivals relinquish their religious identity, ignoring that traditional celebrations like Garba are fundamentally rooted in the veneration of the Goddess and carry deep spiritual boundaries that merit protection.
Kanwar Yatra: Denigrating cultural heritage as a “patronising state”
The Indian Express exposed its anti-Hindu double standards by publishing a hostile opinion piece on August 11, 2026, attacking state governments for facilitating the ancient Kanwar Yatra and labelling transparent shopkeeper identification rules as a “dog whistle against minority businesses.” The publication outrageously condemned administrative respect-such as showering flower petals on Hindu pilgrims-as backward state patronisation, while remaining completely silent on identical state facilitation provided to Haj pilgrims. By framing basic consumer transparency and route hygiene as “food segregation,” the daily attempted to criminalise traditional Hindu religious practices while shielding lawbreakers who disrupted sacred pilgrimage routes.
Ayodhya Land Deals: Fabricating real estate scandals around the Ram Mandir
To tarnish the historic consecration of the Ram Mandir, The Indian Express published a sensationalised story on December 24, 2021, falsely claiming that public officials and politicians illegally acquired land within a 5-kilometer radius of the temple site. Ground-level verification thoroughly exposed this hit job, proving that out of all the properties listed, only five were within 5 km, while the rest were located 7 to 15 kilometres away-some even outside Ayodhya district entirely. Former Ayodhya DM Anuj Jha publicly slammed the newspaper for running baseless, defamatory fabrications against his family, forcing the outlet’s narrative of illegal land grabbing and conflict of interest to collapse under basic geographical scrutiny.
Nashik TCS Case: Promoting accused family claims as fact to shield Islamist network
On April 16, 2026, The Indian Express actively aided a whitewashing campaign by giving prominent platform to the wife of an accused in the Nashik TCS scandal, framing her self-serving claims of a “failed relationship” as a major “twist” in the case. The newspaper elevated the defensive statements of an accused family member while downplaying nine official FIRs that detailed horrific sexual abuse, religious conversion attempts, blackmail, and sectarian slurs backed by magistrate-recorded victim testimonies. By presenting standard defense tactics as credible investigative developments, the paper handed ammo to the Islamist ecosystem and sympathizers like Rajdeep Sardesai to cast doubt on serious criminal charges filed by female victims.
UP Self-Immolation Case: Sanitising Islamist rape accused and concealing Hindu identity
The Indian Express demonstrated its habitual suppression of sensitive facts on October 13, 2020, when reporting the tragic self-immolation of a Hindu woman named Anjana Tiwari (Aisha), who set herself on fire after suffering horrific abuse by her Muslim husband Asif and his family. The newspaper ran the headline “UP woman who set herself afire dies, Dalit Cong leader held for abetment: Police,” where it eagerly highlighted the Dalit caste identity of an arrested Congress politician while deliberately omitting the victim’s Hindu background, her forced conversion to Islam, and her formal complaints of rape and desertion against her Muslim husband. By whitewashing the Islamist exploitation at the heart of the tragedy, the daily proved its eagerness to selectively report identities to protect specific community narratives.
Somaiya School Row: Defending oro-Hamas Islamist sympathiser as a “free speech” victim
The Indian Express crossed all journalistic boundaries on May 3, 2024, by publishing an editorial defending Mumbai school principal Parveen Shaikh after her social media posts celebrating terror group Hamas came to light. The daily went to the extreme length of glorifying brutal Hamas terrorists as mere “fighters” and dismissed open support for an Islamist terror organization as a harmless, “unpopular political opinion” that the school management should have tolerated. By scolding the school for safeguarding its students from extreme radicalisation, the editorial revealed the newspaper’s willingness to shield Islamist sympathisers under the guise of intellectual freedom.
Tax Break Misinformation: Manufacturing anti-government outrage with recycled quotes
In a desperate attempt to fabricate public anger ahead of Union Budget 2025-26, The Indian Express published a Page 13 story on December 31, 2025, claiming Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman expressed “limitations” regarding middle-class tax relief. The report was an outright fabrication, as the daily dishonestly recycled an old interview from July 2024 and passed it off as current budget commentary to frame the government as anti-taxpayer. When exposed, the newspaper issued a tiny, buried correction on Page 2 acknowledging that “the error is regretted,” proving its strategy of spreading prominent front-page fake news while hiding retractions in the fine print.
Saradha Chit Fund Case: Spreading defamatory claims against Himanta Biswa Sarma
The Indian Express faced severe legal action after publishing a fake, politically motivated report claiming that Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma faced CBI action in the Saradha chit fund case and that investigations stalled after he joined the BJP. CM Sarma slapped a legal notice on the daily, proving that the official CBI chargesheet filed in April 2015 named him explicitly as a witness rather than an accused, and that he joined the BJP months later in August 2015. The paper was exposed for inventing facts and misrepresenting the Louis Berger case to cast malicious political aspersions on a prominent nationalist leader.
Dhandhuka Murder Case: Erasing Islamist blasphemy motive in Kishan Bharwad’s killing
The Indian Express blatantly sanitized a brutal hate crime on January 25, 2022, when 27-year-old Hindu youth Kishan Bharwad was shot dead in Dhandhuka, Gujarat, by Islamist radicals over an alleged social media post. Reporting on the incident, the daily ran a watered-down headline-“Communal tension after 27-year-old’s death: VHP bandh uneventful in Dhandhuka; two murder suspects held”-deliberately omitting Kishan’s name, the identity of the radical Islamist suspects (Shabbir, Imtiaz, and Maulvi Ayyub), and the explicit blasphemy motive behind the execution. By reducing an organized religious killing to generic “tension” and replacing explicit references to radical Islamist perpetrators with sanitised phrases like “people of another religion,” the paper actively hid minority religious extremism from the public.
Darjeeling Heritage Railway: Exaggerating misleading headlines to target Indian Railways
The Indian Express was publicly called out by UNESCO after running an sensationalised headline claiming that the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway’s World Heritage status was “under threat” due to a reactive monitoring mission. UNESCO issued an official clarification slamming the newspaper’s misleading headline, confirming that no such threat to the World Heritage status had been established and that the monitoring mission was a routine, collaborative effort to assist Indian Railways with conservation. The episode exposed the daily’s eager pattern of sensationalising administrative updates into fake national embarrassments to attack government institutions.
Ultimately, the recurring pattern of reporting observed across The Indian Express highlights a deeply ingrained ideological bias that prioritizes partisan narratives over objective truth. By consistently selectively framing facts, downplaying critical context involving minority communities, and sensationalising routine administrative processes into institutional crises, the publication compromises core journalistic ethics to advance a left-leaning appeasement narrative. Rather than providing balanced and transparent coverage, The Indian Express frequently operates as a narrative-driven platform that undermines public trust, vilifies cultural and constitutional institutions, and distorts the socio-political reality of a developing Bharat.
