Good morning,
In today’s edition: Rajnath Singh’s swift retort to Pakistan; Indian passport data; Tejaswin Shankar breaks down decathlon; and more.
🚨Big Story
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden’s recent joint statement during the Indian PM’s recent visit to the United States has stirred up quite the storm. Pakistan accused India of using allegations of extremism against Islamabad to deflect from the situation in Kashmir and the treatment of minorities. To which, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh retorted that Pakistan should focus on its own problems. “We do not need to work much to take back PoK as the demand for uniting with India will start from there only,” he added.
⚡Only in the Express
An Express RTI Application | Between 2011 and 2022, close to 70,000 Indians surrendered their passports at regional passport offices (RPOs) across the country, with eight states accounting for over 90 per cent of the surrendered documents. A majority of these passports were surrendered in Goa, data show. Want to know more? Read the full story.
📰 From the Front Page
In a high-level meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Modi, the Centre decided to ensure distribution of essential resources including petrol and cooking gas in violence-hit Manipur.
Jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi is learnt to have told investigators that politicians and businessmen pay him a fee in return for a threat call — so that they could ask police for a security detail.
Maharashtra Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar has directed police to ensure that ‘gau rakshaks’ are not booked on false charges, and that FIRs be lodged and probed if they are threatened or attacked.
👩🏽💻 Must Read
A twirled moustache, riding a horse, playing DJ music – anything can potentially trigger a caste clash. In Mota village, in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, where a youngster was assaulted allegedly for “wearing sunglasses and good clothes”, villagers sense a change, a silent pushback. We visited the village to understand what it means to be young and Dalit.
In our opinion section today, Rajshree Chandra responds to a recent opinion by J Sai Deepak on majoritarianism: “His definition of majoritarianism — “as that form of legitimate political authority which expresses the will of the majority” — conflates a principle with its perverted form. The bottom line of a democracy is that it represents the majority will.”
✈️With Go First grounded and hopes of Jet Airways’s revival all but extinguished, India’s domestic aviation market structure, for all practical purposes, has seemingly turned into a duopoly of market leader IndiGo and Tata group airlines – Air India, Vistara, and AIX Connect (Air Asia India) – for the foreseeable future. We explain what that means for consumers.
⏱️ And Finally
‘You question your career choices’: Asian Games-bound decathlete Tejaswin Shankar explains the planning and challenges of each event, the exhaustive pre-race checklist and an even more tiring recovery process.
🤐 Delhi Confidential: Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariats have provided MPs with a copy of the original, calligraphic Constitution book, in a bid to ensure that they are well-versed with its provisions. While some have already taken the copy, others are learnt to have said that they require assistance to carry the heavy copy home.
🎧 In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we take a look at the highlights of the Opposition meet in Patna, the India-US space collaborations, and a request for IVF in prison.
Until tomorrow,
Rahel Philipose