Indian Youth Congress files police complaint alleging 'rain theft' after Delhi's cloud-seeding trial
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress' youth wing filed a police complaint here on Wednesday, alleging "theft of rain" and claimed that the Delhi government's Rs 1.25-crore cloud-seeding experiment failed to produce showers over the city.
However, Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa claimed the cloud-seeding trials were successful and slammed the opposition, saying they are "jealous" of the success of the BJP-led government.
Delhi conducted cloud seeding trials on Tuesday, after a gap of 53 years, to induce artificial rain in the national capital amid surging pollution levels, even as the weather department did not record any traces of rainfall in the city.
The Delhi government, in collaboration with IIT-Kanpur, conducted the trials in parts of Delhi, including Burari, North Karol Bagh, Mayur Vihar, and Badli. The government's report stated that two precipitation events were recorded -- Noida at 4 pm (0.1mm of rain) and Greater Noida at 4 pm (0.2 mm).
According to an official statement of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), its Delhi unit president, Akshay Lakra, submitted a complaint at the Parliament Street Police Station, demanding an FIR and investigation into what he described as "rain theft" following the cloud-seeding trial.
"Planes took off from Kanpur to Delhi in the name of cloud seeding, and the BJP government put out big advertisements promising rain within 15 to 20 minutes to provide relief from pollution. However, no such rain was seen anywhere in Delhi, so we have come to file a complaint against this rain theft," Lakra said.
The complaint calls for an inquiry into whether "unknown persons intercepted or diverted" rain, and seeks accountability for the public funds spent on the operation.
It also urges the police to coordinate with the meteorological department and IIT-Kanpur to trace the cause of the "missing rainfall".
Officials involved in the cloud-seeding project, however, maintained that the process was carried out as per scientific protocol and the results depend on atmospheric conditions, which cannot always guarantee immediate rainfall.
They said the operation was aimed at testing the feasibility and gathering data for future interventions.
Lakra urged Chief Minister Rekha Gupta to "refrain from misleading residents" and focus on effective measures to curb pollution. "The people of Delhi deserve answers and at least a few drops of the rain they were promised," he said.
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Bengaluru: ISRO receives 1.5 lakh satellite collision alerts from US
Bengaluru: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) received over 1.5 lakh space debris and collision alerts for its Earth-orbiting satellites from the United States-led Combined Space Operations Centre, according to the Indian Space Situational Awareness Report for 2025 (ISSAR-2025), as reported by The New Indian Express.
The report was released by ISRO on Thursday for the public to assess. It was announced on April 8 during the international conference on spacecraft mission operations-2026, in Bengaluru.
According to ISRO, a total of four collision avoidance manoeuvres (CAM) were carried out for Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, while 14 CAMs, including one for the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), were performed for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.
ISRO said that, wherever possible, collision avoidance requirements were being met by adjusting orbit maintenance manoeuvres to avoid exclusive CAMs. All manoeuvre plans were subjected to close approach risk analysis to prevent potential collisions with nearby space objects.
They accounted revising 82 manoeuvre plans to avoid post-manoeuvre close approaches with other space objects for LEO satellites, while two manoeuvre plans were modified for GEO satellites for the same reason.
Conjunction assessment and collision risk mitigation were also being followed for deep-space missions. Citing the case of Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, ISRO scientists said 16 orbital manoeuvres were carried out in the lunar orbit and on two occasions (January 1 and July 24, 2025), the orbits were readjusted to avoid collisions with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
ISRO said the first such coordinated collision avoidance effort with NASA dates back to October 18, 2021. Since then, technological interventions have been strengthened for early detection of objects in orbit. ISRO scientists added that for spaceflight security, they have also been coordinating with many agencies, particularly for Chandrayaan-2 with Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines and iSpace.
The ISSAR-2025 report also detailed how the IRNSS-1D, the fourth of the seven Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System satellites, was raised to a graveyard orbit nearly 600 km above the geostationary belt and made inactive. ISRO said this was the first-ever disposal of an Indian satellite operating in an inclined geosynchronous orbit.
Similarly, the Cartosat-2A satellite, launched in 2008, was moved to a graveyard orbit after becoming non-operational in 2025.
Following the objective for a debris-free space environment, the Technology Experiment Satellite and POEM-4 re-entered Earth’s atmosphere through natural decay. Additionally, two upper stages of the SSLV-D3 mission, the Velocity Trimming Module (VTM) and the solid stage (SS3), also re-entered the atmosphere.
ISRO reported that eight debris objects from the PSLV-C3 mission re-entered the atmosphere in 2025, while 33 remained in orbit as of 31 December 2025. The total number of Indian objects re-entering the atmosphere in 2025 was 12.
