Hidden in plain sight, the Patanjali business empire is functioning as a dubious real-estate agency buying and selling forested lands in the fragile Aravalli mountain range through a web of shell companies.

This investigative series exposes how the Modi government favoured commercial interests over forest conservation and indigenous rights while abandoning the long-delayed National Forest Policy. Just after taking office, it aimed to open forests for private plantations, culminating in the 2023 amendments to the Forest (Conservation) Act. These changes prioritize profit over biodiversity, granting private businesses access to India's forests. The amendment limits protection to recognized forests, endangering large swathes of potential unofficial forestland. These investigations reveal a troubling pattern of forest exploitation, corporate interests, and indigenous rights neglect.

Union government asks two prominent nonprofits to quit seeking donations in areas where the government runs schemes.

Internal files of the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Climate Change reveal it had been planning to weaken tribal rights over forests since 2019. Modi government’s new Forest Conservation Rules made it easier for industries to grab their traditional homelands.

Vedanta’s pig iron industry in Goa got clearance to expand despite being caught emitting dangerous substance for more than a decade. It went to great lengths to dodge environmental laws and avoid paying for pollution mitigation efforts.

The move could stop millions of poor children without Aadhaar from having healthy meal, and violates a Supreme Court order that no subsidy or service may be denied to children for want of Aadhaar

The Union government used a flawed set of data to mask the gloomier death count calculated by the UN body, and ignored a robust number thrown up by another of its own survey. The data was so unreliable that 20 of the 36 states and Union territories saw more registered deaths than what the government claims died.

Former J&K BJP legislator Vikram Randhawa accused BJP's Union minister Jitendra Singh of profiting from corruption in Jammu's mining department after being being slapped with Rs 96 lakh penalty for illegal river mining. The accusations were withdrawn and guns holstered. But penalty documents and inquiry committee reports reveal how Jammu's mining department abandoned penalties worth Rs 6.68 crore on stone crushers operating illegally around Tawi and how miners had it easy.

Through death register data obtained from across the country, The Reporters’ Collective estimates that in the pandemic 3,59,496 more people died than in a normal year in just 3 states where officially only 28,609 died of Covid. Experts fear relatives of thousands of Covid-19 victims will be excluded from compensation due to lack of medical records, poor testing and red-tape despite the Centre initiating compensation procedure on the instructions of the Supreme Court.

Data from thousands of pages of death registers maintained by municipalities in Gujarat show an excess death count of 16,892 for just 6% of the state's population during the pandemic. When projected across the state, the figure zooms to a staggering 281,000.

Under its commercial coal mining auctions, the Modi govt has sold off at least two coal blocks for rates cheaper than their 2015 prices. As a result Chhattisgarh will end up losing Rs 900 crore every year and over Rs 24,000 crore over decades.

हरियाणा सरकार ने अरावली की वनभूमि के संरक्षण के कई कानूनी रास्ते बंद किए। इससे पतंजलि की शेल कंपनियों को इनकी खरीद-फरोख्त करके भारी मुनाफा कमाने का अवसर मिला।

पतंजलि समूह ने संदिग्ध फर्जी कंपनियों का एक जाल बिछाया, जिसके ज़रिए पैसे का हेर-फेर करके अरावली में वनभूमि खरीद कर फिर उसे रियल एस्टेट के रूप में बेचा गया।

Haryana govt blocked multiple legal routes to protect Aravalli's forest lands. This allowed Patanjali's shell companies to earn super-profits by trading in them

Patanjali Group employed a web of dubious shell companies that funnelled money to buy Aravalli forestland and sell it as real estate.

1996 में SC ने केंद्र और राज्यों से कहा कि भारत की सभी वनों की पहचान कर उन्हें संरक्षित किया जाए। 27 साल गुजरने के बावजूद उन्होंने यह काम पूरा नहीं किया। अब, केंद्र के नए वन कानून ने उन वनों के संरक्षण को खत्म कर दिया है जिन्हें कागजों पर मान्यता प्राप्त नहीं है।

In 1996, the Supreme Court asked the Union government and states to identify and protect all of India’s forests. For 27 years, they did not complete the job. Now, the Centre’s new forest law has removed protection for forests not recognised on paper.

दस्तावेज़ों से पता चलता है कि मोदी सरकार ने जंगलों को व्यावसायिक पौधारोपण के लिए खोलने की योजना पर काम कार्यभार संभालने के तुरंत बाद ही शुरू कर दिया था। हालाँकि इसे आदिवासी अधिकारों और जंगलों को नुकसान पहुँचाने के लिए विरोध का सामना करना पड़ा, लेकिन हाल ही में वन (संरक्षण) अधिनियम संशोधन के माध्यम से यह योजना सफल हुई।

Modi govt's dogged pursuit of a plan to open forests for commercial plantation began shortly after taking office, documents show. Though it faced pushback for hurting tribal rights and forests, the plan reached a fruition through the recent Forest (Conservation)Act amendment.

केंद्र सरकार ने नई वन नीति लाने का अपना वादा नहीं निभाया। यह वादा निभाने की बजाए वन संरक्षण कानूनों में ऐसा बदलाव किया जैसा वह चाहती थी।

Centre abandoned promise of a new forest policy. Instead chose to cut the laws on conservation down to the size it desired.

Before the onset of monsoon, Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami personally lobbied with the Centre to keep mining four rivers. The Centre, ruled by his fellow partymen, fulfilled his demand in breach of critical environmental safeguards.

Will India allow industries to sell carbon credits in the international market at a cost to the country? The upcoming national carbon market postpones answering this fundamental question.

Police and Administration dismiss threats asking Muslims of Purola town to leave as media hype, but The Collective finds in plain sight leaders targeting Muslims, and maps rising hate crimes that are turning the state into a communal tinderbox