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Regional

- BJP’s ads against Trinamool prima facie disparaging: SC

- Six killed, life severely affected as Cyclone Remal batters south Bengal

- Valley of death

- Israel’s late-night strike on Rafah tent camp kills 45

- Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT, says Prajwal in video

- IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

- ‘Pudhumai Penn led to 34% rise in enrolment’

- DJ shot dead at Ranchi bar, accused held in Gaya

- Conservationists raise concern over Minister’s stay at ‘illegal resort’

- 82 nursing students fall ill in Salem; food poisoning suspected

- Colonialism decimated innovation and research in India, says Governor

- SPCSS-TN wants ‘Annihilation of Caste’ included as a subject in school and college curriculum

- Over 38,500 officials to be involved in counting of votes in State on June 4

- ‘Pudhumai Penn led to 34% rise in enrolment’

- Plastic producers, recyclers told to register on portal

- Prime Minister Modi to visit Kanniyakumari

- 11 cadaveric liver transplants performed in 15 months at Rajiv Gandhi govt. hospital

- U-turn flyover near Tidel Park junction on Rajiv Gandhi Salai to be completed soon, says TNRDC

- Directorate of Public Health training field-level staff to focus on maternal and child health nutrition

- History-sheeter murdered near Villivakkam police station

- Security stepped up in airport following hoax bomb threat

- Eight held for illegal sale of tickets for the IPL finals

- Correction

- District Child Protection Unit left high and dry after the demolition of its office

- CMRL begins installation of permanent bus shelters at some locations in the city

- Tamil Nadu Archives launches reprinted gazetteers, manuals

- Meenambakkam, Nungambakkam record highest temperatures in the State on Monday

- ‘State and Centre should consider our welfare demands’

- Doctor electrocuted at hostel in Ayanavaram

- Four held for assaulting two teenagers at T.P. Chatram

- ‘Several Corporation schools lack teachers, infrastructure’

- Lok Sabha poll: Chennai prepares for vote counting

- ‘T.N. must not levy additional taxes on power purchased by industries from private firms’

- Over 80,000 applications received for teachers’ transfer in Tamil Nadu

- IIT-Madras to host Paradox ‘24 for BS students from May 30

- ‘DMK did not plan to set up medical college in T.N.’

- 89 detained in the last two weeks under Goondas Act

BJP’s ads against Trinamool

Krishnadas Rajagopal

NEW DELHI

Top court says ‘degenerating’ debates during the Lok Sabha election process will harm voters’ interests ; the BJP says the advertisements were based on facts; Bench tells it ‘your rival is not your enemy’; party to reply to the EC notice today

The Supreme Court told the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday that degenerating debates during the Lok Sabha election would only harm voters’ interests while finding advertisements published by the party against the Trinamool Congress “prima facie disparaging”.

A Vacation Bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and K.V. Viswanathan refused to interfere with an injunction issued by the Calcutta High Court against the “derogatory” and “slanderous” advertisements.

“Prima facie, these advertisements are disparaging… You [BJP] can promote yourself, you can say you are the best… We [Supreme Court] cannot lend our hand to cause acrimony,” Justice Viswanathan told BJP counsel, senior advocate P.S. Patwalia.

Justice Viswanathan said such advertisements “would not be in the interest of the voters. It will degenerate the debate”. Justice Maheshwari referred to specific page numbers in the court’s records, asking Mr. Patwalia to consider the advertisements contained in them.

‘Rival, not enemy’

“Why are you precipitating things by coming here?” Justice Maheshwari asked. Justice Viswanathan told the BJP counsel that his client should keep in mind that “your rival is not your enemy”. Mr. Patwalia submitted that the advertisements were based on facts.

The Single Judge of the High Court had passed the interim injunction order ex parte, without giving it a chance to be heard.

The Trinamool had already approached the Election Commission (EC) against the advertisements. The EC had issued a show cause notice to the BJP on May 18. The party was supposed to file its response on May 21.

Mr. Patwalia said the Trinamool had, while the EC proceedings were on, simultaneously approached the High Court on May 20. The High Court had proceeded to issue the injunction order, making it applicable till June 4.

“We want to file a reply by tomorrow to the EC notice. We will appear the day after tomorrow. Let the EC pass an appropriate order. We were not even heard by either the EC or the High Court,” the senior counsel argued.

Six killed, life severely affected as Cyclone Remal batters south Bengal

Shiv Sahay Singh

Kolkata

A boat damaged in Cyclone Remal near the Sundarbans area in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal on Monday. ANIANI

Six people were killed and life was severely affected as Cyclone Remal left behind a trail of destruction across the southern districts of West Bengal.

One person was killed in Kolkata when the roof of a structure collapsed in the Entally area and an elderly woman died on Mousuni Island at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal, when a tree fell on her house. A man and his son at Purba Bardhaman and a youth in North 24 Parganas were electrocuted. Later in the evening, a woman died from electrocution in the Metiabruz area of Kolkata.

The weather formation, which made landfall on Sunday night, gradually weakened into a cyclonic storm on Monday morning and further weakened into a deep depression by evening. The wind speed had touched 120 kmph over Sagar Island on Sunday.

A preliminary report by the State government said more than two lakh people were evacuated to safer places.

The government said that nearly 2,500 houses were destroyed and 27,000 damaged. It said 1,700 electric poles had been brought down and many trees were uprooted in North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas.

Kolkata recorded 144 mm of rainfall in the 24 hours till 8.30 a.m. on Monday, resulting in widespread waterlogging. Several trees were uprooted in the metropolis and its adjoining coastal regions. While Haldia received 110 mm, Tamluk received 70 mm and Nimpith 70 mm.

Flights resumed at Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose airport on Monday morning.

Valley of death

Ghastly incident: People gather at an area hit by landslip at Yambali in Enga Province of Papua New Guinea on Monday. An official said more than 2,000 people were believed to have been buried alive in Friday’s landslip. REUTERS (Report: page 14)MOHAMUD OMER - INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MIGRATION

Reuters

CAIRO/JERUSALEM

In penury: Palestinians search for food among burnt debris in the aftermath of an Israeli strike in Rafah on Monday. REUTERSMOHAMMED SALEM

An Israeli airstrike triggered a massive blaze killing 45 people in a tent camp in the Gaza city of Rafah, officials said on Monday.

Palestinian families rushed to hospitals to prepare their dead for burial after the strike late on Sunday night set tents and rickety metal shelters ablaze.

Israel said initial investigations showed an attack against commanders of the Hamas set off the fire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a “tragic accident”.

Survivors said families were preparing to sleep when the strike hit.

The attack took place in the Tel Al-Sultan neighbourhood, where thousands were sheltering after Israeli forces began a ground offensive in the east of Rafah over two weeks ago.

Video footage showed a fire raging in the darkness and people screaming in panic. More than half of the dead were women, children, and elderly people, health officials in Gaza said.

Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT, says Prajwal in video

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

Prajwal RevannaSTRINGER

Claiming that the sexual abuse cases over which he is now facing a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe are “lies” and part of a “conspiracy to end his political career”, Hassan MP and Janata Dal (Secular) leader Prajwal Revanna has said in a video released from an undisclosed location that he will present himself before the investigating authorities on May 31.

“I will appear before the SIT at 10 a.m. on Friday and completely cooperate with the investigation. I have faith in the judiciary, and I am confident that I will come out of this lie through the court,” said Mr. Prajwal, who left the country soon after polls were held in Hassan on April 26, in a nearly three-minute video clip that was circulated on Monday. He, however, did not disclose his whereabouts in the undated video.

This is his first response after the case made headlines.

“When the election was held on April 26, there was no case against me nor was the SIT set up. My foreign trip was pre-planned. It was about three to four days after I left that I received information, watching news channels on YouTube, and the SIT also issued notice for appearance,” the MP said.

IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

The Hindu Bureau

NEW DELHI

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has retained its outlook of an ‘above normal’ monsoon this year. In April, the agency forecast June-September rainfall to be 6% above the normal of 87 cm. India’s north-eastern States are expected to receive deficient rain.

The monsoon ‘core zone’, which encompasses most of central India and is critical for the kharif crop, and southern India are expected to see ‘above normal’ rainfall, Mrutunjay Mohapatra, Director-General, IMD, said on Monday.

The conditions for the monsoon over Kerala were “favourable” and the onset is likely in the next five days. Cyclone Remal, which made landfall in Bangladesh on Monday, had given a push to the eastern branch of the approaching monsoon system. The cyclone has nudged it closer to the Indian mainland though it was yet uncertain if the monsoon would begin in eastern India before Kerala — an extremely unusual, but not unprecedented phenomenon, said Mr. Mohapatra.

The IMD had earlier forecast the onset over Kerala on May 31, within an error window of four days.

‘

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

The enrolment of girl students in higher education has increased by 34% due to the Pudhumani Penn scheme, the Tamil Nadu government said on Monday.

About 2.73 lakh girls were benefiting from the scheme, also known as Moovalur Ramamirtham Ammaiyar Higher Education Assurance Scheme, launched by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in September 2022, an official press release said.

The scheme provides a monthly aid of ₹1,000 to girl students who had studied from Classes VI to XII in State government-run schools and were pursuing higher education.

Over 27 lakh students had benefited under the Naan Mudhalvan scheme, the government said, adding that over 1.19 lakh students had secured employment. Under the scheme, the government introduced courses for students of government-run polytechnic, engineering and arts and science colleges in collaboration with the Tamil Nadu Skill Development Corporation.

The scheme aims to provide information to college students on course and industry-specific skill offerings that would help them get trained in their chosen field.

DJ shot dead at Ranchi bar, accused held in Gaya

The Hindu Bureau

Patna

A 30-year-old disc jockey (DJ) was shot dead at a bar in Ranchi after midnight on Sunday by a man with what appeared to be a sophisticated rifle.

The police on Monday arrested the accused, identified as Abhishek Singh, from Gaya in Bihar. The victim, Sandip Pramanik, a resident of West Bengal, worked at the bar. The CCTV footage of the incident shows a man, with his face covered, shooting at the chest of the DJ with a rifle from point-blank range.

Conservationists raise concern over Minister’s stay at ‘illegal resort’

Rohan Premkumar

UDHAGAMANDALAM

Mathiventhan has been staying in ‘Jungle Hut’ for the past few days on a vacation with friends and family. It is located along a notified elephant corridor, and a committee had passed orders against it

In the spotlight: Officials from the Nilgiris administration said that a portion of the resort where Mr. Mathiventhan was staying was allowed to function by the administration. File photo R. Ragu

Tamil Nadu Forest Minister M. Mathiventhan’s vacation to the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR), where he has chosen to stay in one of the resorts located along the notified elephant corridor in Sigur, has raised concern among conservationists.

According to official sources, Mr. Mathiventhan had been staying in Jungle Hut for the past few days with friends and family. Jungle Hut was among the 12 resorts against which orders were passed by the Supreme Court-appointed Segur Plateau Elephant Corridor Inquiry Committee in 2023.

The committee had observed that the resorts — Jungle Hut, De Rock, Rolling Stones, Forest Hills Farm and Guest House, Jungle Retreat, and Gordon Jungle Properties — had a total of 74 buildings on their premises. This showed that it was “amply evident that these are not small bona fide residential buildings but big commercial constructions without all requisite approvals”, the committee had observed, in the orders passed last year directing the Nilgiris district administration to initiate “necessary action” against the owners, and calling for the illegal buildings to be demolished.

Officials from the Nilgiris administration said that a portion of the resort where Mr. Mathiventhan was staying was allowed to function by the administration. However, no further action had been initiated to demolish the buildings along the elephant corridor, raising concern among conservationists that government officials were colluding with resort owners in maintaining the status quo in the region.

K. Mohanraj, a conservationist from Tamil Nadu, said that the Forest Minister staying in a resort built in the elephant corridor raised questions of impropriety.

“There are Forest Department-run guest houses in Mudumalai. There is no need for the Minister to stay in a resort, a part of which has been deemed to have been functioning illegally,” he said.

Further, he alleged that the close association of Ministers with big businesses raised the question whether the government was serious about protecting the notified elephant corridor.

Minister’s response

When contacted, Mr. Mathiventhan, told The Hindu that he was staying in Mudumalai and in the resort “on vacation”.

He said that he and his family found it difficult to handle children while staying in the Forest Department guest houses, and hence, they chose to stay in a private property.

82 nursing students fall ill in Salem; food poisoning suspected

The Hindu Bureau

Salem

Health scare: A student being admitted to the Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital in Salem on Monday. E. Lakshmi Narayanan LAKSHMI NARAYANAN E

A total of 82 nursing students who fell ill after eating food in their college hostel were hospitalised in Salem on Monday.

The students were studying in a college at Kuppanur in Salem district. On Sunday afternoon, 20 students fell ill after eating the food provided to them in the hostel, and were admitted to a private hospital on Omalur Main Road that was run by the college administration.

After a few hours of observation, they were sent back to the hostel. News of the incident spread on social media and, on Monday, health officials rushed to the college to check on the students, and found that a few of them were suffering from dehydration.

Following this, the Health Department sent a total of 82 students to the Salem Government Mohan Kumaramangalam Medical College Hospital (GMKMCH) for treatment. Three of them who were suffering from severe dehydration and two with moderate dehydration were admitted to the emergency ward, and later, all but one were shifted to the general ward. A total of 25 students were treated as out-patients. As a precaution, all the students were kept in the ward for 24 hours of observation, health officials said. GMKMCH dean R. Mani said that all of them were stable.

Salem Collector R. Brindha Devi visited the students at the hospital.

Officials of the Food Safety Department inspected the hostel and the kitchen on Monday.

The Salem District Designated Officer for the Food Safety Department, Kathiravan, said that the college administration did not obtain permission from the department for running the hostel; the water used for cooking was not checked by the administration; and a medical check-up for the workers was also not conducted.

The kitchen was cramped and lacked hygiene. Sewage had mixed with the water used for cooking. The department took seven food samples and two water samples, which were sent to a laboratory for testing. A notice was issued to the college administration seeking an explanation for the shortcomings found during the inspection. The kitchen was temporarily closed, Dr. Kathiravan added.

Colonialism decimated innovation and research in India, says Governor

The Hindu Bureau

UDHAGAMANDALAM

1 of 2 Governor R.N. Ravi speaking at the two-day conference of Vice-Chancellors of State and private universities of Tamil Nadu at Raj Bhavan in Udhagamandalam on Monday. M. SATHYAMOORTHY

2 of 2 We have lost a lot of time because of following a system that was largely bequeathed to us by the colonialists R.N. Ravi Tamil Nadu Governor

Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi on Monday said that the education system that was a legacy of colonial rule had resulted in the “spirit of innovation and research” being decimated over a period of time.

Speaking at a conference of Vice-Chancellors of State and private universities at the Raj Bhavan in Udhagamandalam on Monday, Mr. Ravi said that a student graduating with a degree should “come out [of the education system] with a lot of confidence to live with dignity”.

Mr. Ravi, who delivered the inaugural address, said that prior to the implementation of the National Education Policy, universities in Tamil Nadu were operating without synergy and co-operation, and students passing out of the colleges were finding it difficult to get work.

The Governor blamed the colonial British government for decimating the “spirit of innovation and research” that, he said, was the hallmark of the country prior to its colonisation. “We have lost a lot of time because of following a system that was largely bequeathed to us by the colonialists,” he said.

He claimed that India was the world’s largest economy dating back 1,800 years.

“Despite the exploitation of the country’s resources by the colonial powers, by the time of Independence, India was still the sixth largest economy in the world and, in subsequent years, we slipped to the 11th largest economy. Fortunately, through a number of initiatives, we have become the fifth largest economy and, in the next few years, hope to be the third largest economy in the world,” he said.

Jagadeesh Kumar, Chairman of the University Grants Commission, delivered the keynote address as part of the two-day event.

He said that the expected increase in population to 10 billion by the year 2050, combined with the accelerating need for energy, will pose myriad challenges that will need to be addressed through a sustainable model of development and innovation.

SPCSS-TN wants ‘Annihilation of Caste’ included as a subject in school and college curriculum

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

As a subject, it must consist of four books as main texts — Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and Castes in India, Periyar’s Pen En Adimai Aanaal, and Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu General secretary, SPCSS-TN

The State Platform for Common School System – Tamil Nadu (SPCSS-TN) on Monday urged the academic bodies in the country to include ‘Annihilation of Caste’ as a subject in the school and college curriculum in a gradual manner.

It appealed to the board of studies of academic institutions to evaluate students on whether they had inculcated the values and the vision of the Constitution.

Five resolutions were adopted after the conclusion of a seminar — ‘Annihilation of Caste in Curriculum’ — at the University of Madras auditorium in Chennai on Monday.

Speaking to The Hindu, P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary, SPCSS-TN, said that the subject should include four important books that deal with issues surrounding caste.

“As a subject, it must consist of four books as main texts — Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste and Castes in India, Periyar’s PenEn Adimai Aanaal, and Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia. Apart from these, the syllabus should be taught in a graded manner from primary classes to postgraduate courses,” he said.

In lower classes, students could be taught the importance of the ‘National Pledge’, evolution, science and social science. Articles 25 and 26 – which talk about the freedom of religion and the right to form and establish religious institutions – should be taught with an emphasis on the idea that the division of caste is unscientific and unconstitutional, along with Article 17, which says that untouchability is a punishable offence. “These should be in the curriculum. The Constitution has a vision, and it expects every citizen to have some values. There is a contradiction when social values and individual values are different. When a student is evaluated, they must assess whether the students have imbibed the values of the Constitution,” he said.

Over 38,500 officials to be involved in counting of votes in State on June 4

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

1 of 2 The counting of votes would begin at 8 a.m. in the respective centres. File photo ANI

2 of 2 The counting of votes for 39 Lok Sabha constituencies would take place in 39 counting centres in 234 rooms in 43 buildings An official press release

Over 38,500 officials, including 4,500 micro-observers, would be involved in the counting of votes in counting centres across Tamil Nadu on June 4.

According to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, each table would be videographed separately during the counting process.

Meanwhile, Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo and senior officials took part in the review meeting that was virtually chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar in Delhi.

“The counting of votes for 39 Lok Sabha constituencies would take place in 39 counting centres in 234 rooms in 43 buildings,” an official press release said.

Additional tables

Usually, 14 tables are placed in a counting room, and additional tables would be set up wherever necessary with the permission of the Election Commission.

“A total of 3,300 counting tables are to be set up in all the centres,” the release said.

The counting of votes would begin at 8 a.m. While the postal votes would be counted initially, the counting of the votes recorded in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) would commence at 8.30 a.m.

‘

Empowering endeavour: Chief Minister M.K. Stalin at the launch of the scheme. File photo

The State government had also extended aid to the tune of ₹213.37 crore towards hostel and other expenses of 28,601 students who had benefited from the 7.5% reservation in professional courses for those who had studied in government-run schools, it said.

The government had extended an assistance of about ₹1,000 crore during the past three years for the benefit of 13,241 first-generation learners, it said. Under the Chief Minister’s Research Grant scheme, a total of 1,960 proposals had been received so far, it added.

Several students were benefiting from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Research Fellowship scheme, the release said. The Higher Education Department was constructing an auditorium, to be named after former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, at Presidency College in Chennai. The 2,000-seat auditorium, spread over 5,500 sq.m., is being built at a cost of ₹63 crore.

Plastic producers, recyclers told to register on portal

The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) has urged plastic producers and recyclers to register and file their annual reports on the Extended Producers Responsibility (EPR) portal by May 31. In order to streamline the implementation of EPR, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, had in 2022 notified the ‘Guidelines on Extended Producer Responsibility for Plastic Packaging’, according to which producers, importers and brand owners (PIBOs) and plastic waste processors (PWPs) should register through the online centralised portal developed by the Central Pollution Control Board (https://eprplastic.cpcb.gov.in/#/plastic/home). PWPs refer to recyclers and entities engaged in using plastic waste for energy (waste to energy), converting it into oil, industrial composting, and cement co-processing. Directing PIBOs and PWPs to register on or before May 31, TNPCB said that failure to do so will result in action.

Prime Minister Modi to visit Kanniyakumari

The Hindu Bureau

KANNIYAKUMARI

Narendra Modi -

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit Kanniyakumari on May 30 and stay there for two days to meditate at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial.

Police sources said that he will arrive on the evening of May 30 and visit the memorial on May 31 for a day-long meditation. He is expected to leave on June 1. “If the Prime Minister decides to meditate on June 1, too, he will be at the memorial for a second day, before leaving Kanniyakumari,” a police source said.

11 cadaveric liver transplants performed in 15 months at Rajiv Gandhi govt. hospital

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

Health Department is keen on enabling more government hospitals to perform liver transplants , and has been encouraging them to have tie-ups with well-established hospitals to receive training

Teams from Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital underwent training for liver transplantation at Rela Hospital. File photo B. JOTHI RAMALINGAM

In a span of 15 months, the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) has performed 11 cadaveric liver transplants. With the deceased donor liver transplantation programme steadily progressing in the State’s largest government hospital, the Health Department is keen on enabling more government hospitals to perform cadaveric liver transplants.

Health Secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi said they were encouraging hospitals such as the Government Rajaji Hospital, Madurai, to perform liver transplants. The Tirunelveli Medical College also has an initial tie-up with a private hospital for the procedure.

“We want more and more government medical college hospitals to perform liver transplants so that the poor benefit. We are asking government medical colleges, particularly the departments of surgical gastroenterology and deans, to have tie-ups with well-established hospitals so that cross-learning happens. This way, the experience can be broad-based to other parts of the State and common people will stand to benefit,” he said. It may be recalled that the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital was the first among government hospitals to start performing liver transplants in Tamil Nadu. Cadaveric liver transplants took off at the RGGGH in February 2023. In a nearly 14-hour procedure that started at 6.30 p.m. on Saturday, doctors performed its 11th liver transplantation in 15 months on a 40-year-old woman who had Wilson’s disease.

E. Theranirajan, Dean of RGGGH, said eight cadaveric liver transplants were performed last year and three so far this year. “This time, our team retrieved the liver independently from the donor. As per the memorandum of understanding signed between the State government and Rela Hospital (2022 to 2025), our team had undergone training in liver transplantation. We had put in place appropriate infrastructure to take forward liver transplantation in the institution. Our aim is to operate independently, and in the near future, start pancreatic and small intestine transplantations,” he said. RGGGH has recorded 18 donors so far this year, while 26 kidney transplants were also done.

K. Prem Kumar, Director in-charge of Institute of Hepatobiliary Sciences, RGGGH, said that training was a continuous process. “Before we started performing transplants, our doctors, staff nurses, and paramedical staff, such as those from microbiology and biochemistry departments, underwent extensive training,” he said.

Liver transplants require teamwork and coordination, and this has been put in place at the institute, C. Sugumar, Director, Institute of Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplant, RGGGH, added. “We have the required infrastructure. We have WhatsApp groups with other departments pertaining to liver transplant as well as with the Rela Hospital team. Once an alert on brain death identification comes in, we take up all required measures, including asking the priority list of patients to come in for re-evaluations,” he said.

Post-transplant, doctors meet every day to discuss the patient’s condition and treatment protocols.

U-turn flyover near Tidel Park junction on Rajiv Gandhi Salai to be completed soon, says TNRDC

Deepa H. Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI

This is the second U-turn flyover to be built on Rajiv Gandhi Salai, with the first near the Indira Nagar MRTS Station. Akhila Easwaran Akhila Easwaran

A portion of the U-shaped flyover on Rajiv Gandhi Salai near the Tidel Park junction, is nearing completion. Currently, painting work, fixing of lamp posts and electrical work are being carried out.

Sources in the Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC), which is executing the project, said that the U-turn portion of the flyover is almost ready. “We had been waiting for the rain to stop to lay the bituminous tar layer for about a length of 250 metres. This is for the approach ramps on either side,” said a source.

The arm, which lands on CSIR Road, perpendicular to the IT Corridor, will take at least three months to complete. This is because of several issues pertaining to service utilities running below the road. “There is a power substation nearby and over 40 large-sized cables of 110 KVA and 230 KVA run from there to the IT companies in the area. We had a similar problem while constructing both the approach ramps for this flyover. When we cut open the road, we found bunches and bunches of cables that had to be slowly moved aside to facilitate construction. There were atleast three major cable cuts during that time and repairs had to be carried out,” explained an engineer associated with the project.

TNRDC is also planning to dismantle and reconstruct the storm-water drains in the area to carry larger volumes of water.

This is the second U-turn flyover on the road. The earlier one is in use near the Indira Nagar MRTS Station and it allows those coming from Tidel Park junction and wanting to reach ECR, Indira Nagar, Adyar and other places to reach the Indira Nagar bridge. This reduces the waiting time at the Tidel Park junction.

Suresh Subramaniam, a resident of Thoraipakkam, said that the U-turn flyover was of great help.

“Facilities should also be created for pedestrians near the two flyovers. The traffic police should take steps to ensure smooth traffic flow at SRP Tools junction where Metro Rail work has begun and only four lanes are available for vehicular movement,” he said.

Field-level staff being trained to focus on maternal and child health nutrition

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

Weight gain and haemoglobin are among the key parameters monitored during pregnancy. Now, the Directorate of Public Health (DPH) and Preventive Medicine is focusing on enabling its field-level staff to identify issues in weight gain and haemoglobin levels in pregnant women to ensure safe motherhood and childbirth. .

In a step towards this, field staff of the directorate are being trained with specific focus on maternal and child health nutrition.

“First, there should be a minimum weight gain of nine to 10 kg from the base weight during pregnancy. Secondly, haemoglobin level of 11, 10, 11 gm/dl respectively is essential during each trimester. As this is an indicator of the baby’s growth, if there is no improvement, it shows that the woman has no sufficient nutrition for the baby to grow,” said T.S. Selvavinayagam, Director of Public Health.

As per the recommended level of maternal weight gain, a woman should have a weight gain of 2 kg and haemoglobin level of 11 gm/dl during 18 to 20 weeks of pregnancy, 3 kg and 10 gm/dl during 26 to 28 weeks of pregnancy and 4 kg and 11 gm/dl during 37 to 40 weeks of pregnancy. “In the ‘First 1,000 Days of Life’ initiative, we noticed that only 40% of pregnant women reached the minimum required level of weight gain and haemoglobin. Both aspects are simple to monitor and families can keep a close watch,” he said.

At their level, the directorate wants to build the capacity of its team members. “This should reach not only obstetricians and nurses, but also our field-level workers, including village health nurses and women health volunteers. If they pick up women who do not reach the recommended weight gain or haemoglobin level early, they can be immediately referred to primary health centres/Government Hospitals thereby preventing complications at a later stage. We want this basic knowledge of maternal and child health nutrition to percolate across all levels,” Dr. Selvavinayagam explained.

‘To use digital platform’

The DPH has roped in ECHO India (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a not-for-profit organisation. “Their digital platform will be used by our staff to access content and training,” he added.

History-sheeter murdered near Villivakkam police station

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

A 35-year-old history-sheeter was hacked to death by two men near Villivakkam police station on Sunday. The police suspect that he was murdered by a gang to avenge the killing of another history-sheeter in 2022.

The police identified the victim as Udayakumar, 35, of Ambedkar Nagar, Villivakkam, who had criminal cases for offences such as murder, attempt to murder, and assaults. The police said that on Sunday night, he joined his three friends and consumed alcohol on a vacant land on Kammavar Naidu Street behind the police station. Then, two unidentified men came on a bike and quarrelled with Udayakumar who was consuming alcohol. Suddenly, they pulled out knives and indiscriminately attacked Udayakumar while his three friends escaped. The assailants then fled the spot.

Hearing the commotion, the locals went to the spot and found the injured Udayakumar. The personnel from the Villivakkam police station reached the spot and rushed the victim to the Government Kilpauk Hospital, where he died without responding to treatment.

Investigation on

A police team, under Assistant Commissioner of Police Chidambara Murugesan, has launched an investigation into the murder. Udayakumar came out on bail recently after he was arrested in connection with a criminal case.

Moreover, he was the main suspect in the murder of history-sheeter ‘Double’ Ranjithkumar in 2022. Hence, the police suspect that Udayakumar was murdered in an act of revenge.

Security stepped up in airport following hoax bomb threat

The Chennai airport received a bomb threat via email early on Sunday, and as a result, the security was stepped up, sources said. The Airport Director received two emails stating bombs would be planted near the airport and that passengers should be deboarded from the aircraft. These emails were forwarded to the police, and after an investigation, they were found to be a hoax. The Airports Authority of India, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, airline officials, the police, and the CISF held a Bomb Threat Assessment Committee meeting and stepped up the security. “Security measures have been stepped up at the airport, and there will be additional checking before the passengers board the aircraft,” a source said.

Eight held for illegal sale of tickets for the IPL finals

The Greater Chennai Police have arrested eight persons on charges of illegally selling tickets for the finals of the Indian Premier League, which was held on Sunday. The finals between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad was held at M.A. Chidambaram Cricket Stadium at Chepauk in the city. As per the orders of Greater Chennai Police Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore, personnel carried out intensive surveillance and monitoring to arrest those selling tickets illegally. They nabbed A. Imtiaz Ahmed, 43, of Perambur, S. Jatin, 26, of Royapuram, S. Karthikeyan, 30, of Velachery, Niladri Sekhar Mondal, 22, of West Bengal, and four others. The police seized 36 tickets worth ₹1.42 lakh from them.

Correction

The headline of a report, 'Proposal for Metro Rail's takeover of MRTS by sent to Railway Board', which appeared in the May 27 edition of The Hindu, should read 'Proposal for Metro Rail's takeover of MRTS sent to Railway Board' and not as published. The error is regretted.

District Child Protection Unit left high and dry after the demolition of its office

Meghna M.

Chennai

The building was pulled down as part of a plan to replace the dilapidated structure . However, the staff say they have not been able to find any suitable alternative accommodation for the past year

Under renovation: The demolished building of the District Child Protection Unit in Royapuram. Special arrangement Special arrangement

The office building of the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) in Royapuram has been demolished. However, the staff have nowhere to go as an alternative office has not been found due to the non-availability of vacant buildings, according to the unit’s officials.

The DCPU North and DCPU South share an office, and after Cyclone Mandous, the condition of the dilapidated building worsened. An order had already been passed to build a new structure. “We have been searching for a new office to move into for the past year. However, we could not find any accommodation. We have raised the issue and requested the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) too to allot a building,” said an official from the DCPU.

At present, the 22 staff of both units are cooped up in two small buildings, of which one does not have electricity or internet. Both the buildings do not have water supply or toilets. Pointing to a half-demolished structure with only a wall standing, an official stated that it was the toilet until the water supply stopped and the walls were demolished. “This has been the case for the past two weeks since the demolition started. There was a 15-day notice period but there are no buildings to shift into,” the official added. On the lookout for a 600 sq.ft structure and with a budget of ₹30,000 for rent, the team said every landlord they approached was asking for an advance, for which they did not have the provision.

Further, the DCPU South unit has been looking for an office in the southern parts of the city since 2022. But it continues to operate from the Royapuram office and is now looking to move with the DCPU North unit. “The DCPU South unit does not have a rent allowance. We have been searching in vain for an office in south Chennai since 2022,” an official said. Though a request is pending with the GCC, the DCPU officials are unsure of their next move. “In about a week, we might not even have these buildings to house us or the files,” the official added.

“The GCC will definitely look into their request, and if an appropriate space is available with the GCC, we will support the DCPU,” said G.S. Sameeran, GCC Joint Commissioner (Works).

CMRL begins installation of permanent bus shelters at some locations in the city

Sunitha Sekar

CHENNAI

Welcome move: A permanent bus shelter that was installed by Chennai Metro Rail Limited in Mylapore.M. Srinath M. Srinath

After irate commuters complained about being forced to wait under the sun without bus shelters as they were shifted owing to Metro Rail work in various parts of the city, Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) has finally begun putting up permanent shelters in some of the locations.

For the ₹61,843-crore Phase II Project, CMRL has brought in traffic diversions in several areas across the city to construct elevated and underground stations, viaducts, and tunnels.

As a result, the bus stops were moved to different locations as a temporary arrangement till the construction is complete, but many of these spots do not have any seating area or shelters, leaving commuters high and dry. As a stopgap arrangement, CMRL had placed temporary sheeting instead of bus shelters at some locations. But this will soon be replaced with permanent shelters.

According to CMRL officials, they have begun work to install bus shelters with seating areas. At Mylapore and Luz, these have already been constructed, while the facility will be established soon at other locations as well.

“These will be brought in and fixed as soon as possible. Within 15 days, all the locations will have these permanent fixtures,” an official said. They have identified nearly 30 locations where the shelters will be put up, officials said.

Baskar Seshadri, a social activist and a resident of Mandaveli, said he was glad commuters, particularly senior citizens, in Mylapore could finally have access to comfortable bus shelters.

“After the bus stops were removed, senior citizens were waiting for buses under the searing heat. Commuters like myself stood with placards and requested CMRL to resolve the issue. While it took them a while to act, we are happy that permanent shelters are finally available at a few locations. This should be done in all the other areas too,” he added.

Tamil Nadu Archives launches reprinted gazetteers, manuals

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

Nirmala Lakshman, Chairperson, The Hindu Group Publishing Private Limited, Oliver Ballhatchet, British Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai, and R. Nanthagopal, Commissioner, State Archives and Historical Research, at the event on Monday.R. Ragu R. Ragu

Fourteen volumes of reprinted district gazetteers and historical research were on Monday, May 27, 2024 released by the Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research (TNAHR).

Releasing the volumes, Nirmala Lakshman, Chairperson, The Hindu Group Publishing Private Limited, complimented the State Archives for the wonderful work that was being carried out for many decades.

The archives, which have records from when Madras was founded by Francis Day, are very unique in India in the sense that they have been recording the events of the Madras Presidency, the British presence and the establishment of the Raj here.

“We have had so many infrastructural inputs and social reforms from the times of the Raj. There are materials from 17th Century. I hope more readers, archivists and more historians will use the archives,” she added.

Oliver Ballhatchet, British Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai, who received the copies, said that information was key. Information is also crucial to make better decisions at the local, national and international levels. One could understand how decisions were made in the past.

British legacy

In his presidential address, R. Nanthagopal, Commissioner, TNAHR, said district manuals and gazetteers were a British legacy and were prepared by District Collectors of the British India government.

The jewel in the crown among these is the Madurai Country Manual, written by J. H. Nelson in 1868.

Manuals and gazetteers are considered the primary source for writing political, social, economical, religious, cultural and demographic history of the respective districts, Mr. Nanthagopal added.

P. Vijayaraja, Assistant Commissioner, TNAHR, A. Vennila, Assistant Editor, TNAHR, and A. Tamilselvan, Editor, TNAHR, were present on the occasion.

Meenambakkam, Nungambakkam record highest temperatures in the State on Monday

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

With a weak sea breeze disappointing its residents, Chennai city experienced quite a hot day on Monday. The maximum temperature was 40.6 degrees Celsius at both Nungambakkam and Meenambakkam, which recorded the highest temperatures among all the 30 weather stations in the State.

According to data provided by the Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) here, Meenambakkam, which lies inland and away from the sea, was the hottest in the State since Friday.

Winds from dry areas, including Rayalaseema and Karnataka, are pushing the sea breeze and not letting it enter the land to cool it down.

The southern and western districts are cooler now because of the rainfall in Kerala, explained P. Senthamarai Kannan, Deputy Director General of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai.

He said that maximum temperatures in the State are expected to gradually rise by two-three degrees Celsius during the next four days. However, one or two places in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karaikal might experience light to moderate rain in the next few days.

Senior citizens want their long-pending demands met

The Federation of Senior Citizens, Tamil Nadu, has demanded that the State and Central governments focus on the long-pending demands of senior citizens. The federation submitted their views in 2022 to the State Council for Senior Citizens but there was no information about the progress report released by the social welfare and women’s empowerment department, said Federation president V. Rama Rao. The State should announce a policy on elders as leaders in social welfare, he said. The federation requested that the city bus passes be made renewable annually and issued without any restrictions. It called for building old age homes and day care centres at district headquarters that could be offered free or charged, and wanted

the Centre to restore the seniors’ rail fare concession.

Doctor electrocuted at hostel in Ayanavaram

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

A 32-year-old doctor was electrocuted while charging her laptop at a women’s hostel in Ayanavaram here.

The police identified the victim as Saranitha of Namakkal district. She had come to the city on May 1 for a month-long training programme at the Institute of Mental Health and was staying at a women’s hostel on K.H. Road. On Sunday morning, when her husband Udayakumar tried to contact her over phone, he received no response. After repeated attempts to reach her failed, he informed the hostel’s manager, who sent a woman staff to check on Saranitha. The staff found her on the floor, holding a laptop and her palm was seen charred. A 108 Ambulance was called. They examined her and declared that she was dead. The police suspected that the laptop cable, which was damaged, electrocuted her when she accidentally touched it. The police registered a case of unnatural death, and an investigation is on.

Four held for assaulting two teenagers at T.P. Chatram

The T.P. Chatram police on Monday arrested four youth for allegedly assaulting a 19-year-old college student and his teenaged friend. The police said the complainant is a 19-year old youth from T.P. Chatram studying second year in a city college. When he and his teenaged friend were walking on Gajapathy Street two days ago, four youth teased his friend and a scuffle ensued. This lead to the youth attacking them on Sunday morning. They were admitted to the Government Kilpauk Hospital for treatment. The police arrested Abbas, Janath, Sathishkumar, and Vasanth for the assault.

‘Several Corporation schools lack teachers, infrastructure’

R. Aishwaryaa

CHENNAI

While some schools do not have basic amenities such as toilets, desks and benches, others even lack sufficient teachers to take classes. Currently, 147 schools in nine zones are being upgraded: official

In shambles: Broken pavement blocks at the Chennai Corporation Middle School in Namachivayapuram, Choolaimedu. Special Arrangement Special Arrangement

While the School Education Department announced that schools would reopen from June 6 for the academic year 2024-25, many campuses of Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC)-run schools lack adequate teachers and infrastructure, including proper buildings.

Councillor of ward 109 (Choolaimedu) E. Suganya of the Congress said the Corporation middle school in Namachivayapuram, where 280 children studied in 2023-24, needed immediate attention.

‘Poses risk’

She said the toilets lacked proper roofing and walls, and are covered only by sheets. The building is likely over 25-years-old and is in a very dilapidated condition, which poses safety risks, especially during monsoons.

“The School Management Committee (SMC) has put forth these requests repeatedly. The estimate and renovation plans have been prepared, and we are awaiting fund allocation from the civic body. Regional Deputy Commissioner (Central) K.J. Praveen Kumar has been informed of the issue. Once the Model Code of Conduct is lifted, we will bring this matter up during the Corporation Council meeting,” she said.

The Corporation primary school in Sankarapuram was recently renovated for ₹28 lakh, hence has facilities, while the Corporation middle school in Thiruvalluvarpuram, where work is in progress, lacks sufficient number of teachers for the science subject, Ms. Suganya added.

Councillor of ward 84 (Ambattur) J. John of the AIADMK said the Corporation primary and high schools, located on the same campus, in Korattur lack sufficient classrooms and teachers due to which results were affected as only 70% of the students passed in 2023-24. A few classrooms even lack benches and tables, he added. “GCC Commissioner J. Radhakrishnan had assured us that the building will be improved by September 2023, but so far, no work has begun,” Mr. John said. Councillor of ward 12 (Tiruvottiyur) V. Kaviganesan said the proposal for shifting and developing the existing primary school in his area was under way. “There is a lack of certain facilities, including laboratory assistants, in the current school. But these will be addressed in the upcoming year. Land acquisition is under process. The new area, which is within the Greater Chennai Police limit, is currently filled with debris and waste. The GCC will use the area to construct the new school. The plan is to improve this primary school into a higher secondary school within two years,” he added.

Deputy Commissioner (Education) Sharanya Ari recently said the GCC was currently upgrading 147 schools in nine zones across the city.

There are 420 schools under the civic body in the 15 zones.

“Work in schools that need to be revamped in the remaining areas will be taken up, specifically those in the northern parts of Chennai, once the results of the Lok Sabha poll are announced,” she added.

Lok Sabha poll: Chennai prepares for vote counting

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner J. Radhakrishnan and Chennai District Collector Rashmi Siddharth Zagade at a meeting on Monday.SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Greater Chennai Corporation Commissioner and District Election Officer, J. Radhakrishnan, said the first phase of the randomisation process to appoint officers for vote counting began on Monday. The results of the Lok Sabha election held in seven phases will be declared on June 4.

‘Training on May 29’

“A total of 1,433 officers, including 357 micro-observers with 20% reserve, 374 counting supervisors, 380 counting assistants, and 322 office assistants, will manage the counting for Chennai’s three parliamentary constituencies. The selection of 1,111 staff was completed today, with work orders to follow soon. Training for counting officers and staff is scheduled for May 29,” he told the media.

The second phase of randomisation will be on June 3 when the officers will be informed of their respective centres, followed by the final draw on June 4, at 5 a.m.

“Security involves 1,384 police personnel and 584 surveillance cameras: 176 at QueenMary’sCollege for Chennai North Lok Sabha Constituency, 210 for Chennai South constituency at Anna University, and 198 at Loyola College for Chennai Central. Additionally, 345 surveillance cameras will be installed in the counting halls on counting day: 106 in Chennai North, 132 in Chennai South, and 107 in Chennai Central,” the Commissioner mentioned.

Chennai District Collector Rashmi Siddharth Zagade, Additional Commissioner (Health) V. Jaya Chandra Bhanu Reddy, Joint Commissioner (Works) G.S. Sameeran, Deputy Commissioner (Education) Sharanya Ari, Regional Deputy Commissioners M. P. Amit, (South), K. J. Praveen Kumar (Central) and Katta Ravi Teja (North), District Revenue Officer (Elections) S. Suresh and officers were present.

‘T.N. must not levy additional taxes on power purchased by industries from private firms’

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

Anbumani Ramadoss LAKSHMI NARAYANAN E

PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss on Monday said that Tamil Nadu government should not try to generate revenue by increasing the electricity tariff and taxes, and it must give up its plan to levy an additional tax of 34 paise/unit of electricity purchased by industries from open energy market in India and from private power companies.

‘Negative consequences’

In a statement, Dr. Anbumani criticised the steps taken by the Tangedco to apply to Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission for levying additional taxes and said that it could cause ‘negative consequences’ for the industries.

“The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board alone cannot meet the electricity needs of the spinning mills, textile mills, industrial and commercial establishments in the State. Therefore, the industries purchase power from private parties and the open market. Since they use the electricity grid owned by the Tangedco to transport electricity to their mills, a fee and tax of ₹1.94 per unit are paid. Industrialists already consider this excessive, and imposing an additional tax now is unjustifiable,” he said.

Pointing out that the electricity charges for industrial and commercial establishments were increased in 2022 and 2023, which resulted in an additional revenue of ₹31,500 crore for Tangedco, he said that excessive electricity tariff charge have led to the closure of numerous small, micro, and medium enterprises.

He added that instead of reducing the losses, due to increase in procurement costs of power and corruption, the State government shouldn not increase electricity charges and impose additional taxes on privately purchased electricity.

Over 80,000 applications received for teachers’ transfer in Tamil Nadu

The Hindu Bureau

Chennai

The School Education Department has received as many as 82,479 applications from teachers for the general transfer counselling for the current academic year.

EMIS for teachers

This was processed through the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) for teachers to apply until May 25.

According to a press release, 35,669 applications were received from teachers under the Directorate of Elementary Education, including 9,295 applications for the transfer of graduate teachers, 5,814 applications for the transfer of primary school principals, and 1,640 applications for the transfer of middle school principals. Among the teachers under the Directorate of School Education, 25,711 applications were from graduate teachers, 17,296 applications were from postgraduate teachers, and 1,186 applications were from high school principals out of the total of 46,810 applications. After the applications have been processed by the officials, a date of counselling in this regard will be announced soon with a priority list on rank basis, the press release stated.

IIT-Madras to host Paradox ‘24 for BS students from May 30

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras will host Paradox ‘24 from May 30 to June 2 on its campus for BS Data Science Programming and Electronic Systems students. Around 4,000 students are expected to participate in the annual cultural, techno-sports event. Over 27,000 students are enrolled in the BS Data science and BS Electronic systems programmes. Paradox ‘24 will include an enchanted forest themed prom night, student-run stalls, a 5 km campus run and AI agent hackathon. The hackathon will offer opportunities for students to secure placements and internships through sponsors. There will be 24 specialised workshops covering a wide range of topics.The faculty will provide insights and guidance to students in the standout session ‘Ask us anything – career choices – higher education or jobs’, Institute director V. Kamakotisaid.

‘DMK did not plan to set up medical college in T.N.’

The Hindu Bureau

CHENNAI

The AIADMK Workers’ Rights’ Retrieval Committee’s coordinator, O. Panneerselvam, on Monday faulted the DMK government for not establishing a single medical college in the State.Referring to the steps being taken by the government to identify land for six colleges, Mr. Panneerselvam said in a statement that if the government had initiated the process immediately after assuming office, it could have set up the colleges by now. It was not possible to complete the process in a few months as the time for applying to set up new colleges would lapse in November.

89 detained in the last two weeks under Goondas Act

As many as 89 persons who were arrested in various criminal cases have been detained under the Goondas Act in the last two weeks. City Police Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore has been invoking the provisions of the Act and issuing orders to detain the persons who had been already arrested. According to the police, 286 persons involved in murders and attempts to murder were detained. A total of 585 accused have been detained under this Act since January 1 this year.

National

- Crime Branch questions bar owner over bribery charge

- Net-working

- Using AI to increase student enrolment

- HC Registry to issue directive to courts on sexually explicit proof

- Investment in technology will secure boundaries: Dhankhar

- Modi’s Mysuru visit: Karnataka govt. to settle hotel expenses

- POCSO complainant against Yediyurappa dies in Bengaluru

- 3 policemen found partying at criminal’s house; 2 suspended

- Jagan attack case: verdict on bail plea of accused reserved

- BJP slams Revanth over purchase of paddy

- Bypoll for one MLC seat in Telangana sees 69% turnout

- After fracas at camp, KSU suspends two office-bearers

- Record voter turnout in J&K LS election; Assembly poll to be held soon: EC

- BJP biggest Mahayuti party, says Fadnavis as Ajit eyes more seats

- Maliwal assault case: Delhi court rejects bail petition of Kejriwal aide Bibhav Kumar

- Indore administration takes down loudspeakers from religious places

- SP MLA arrested, sent to judicial custody in 1995 case

- Boy drives car with man on bonnet, police register case

- Undertrial hurls slipper at magistrate inside courtroom

- Over dozen houses gutted, six injured in Uttarkashi fire

- Rajkot fire tragedy: no faith in State machinery, says Gujarat High Court

- Attack on former Mayor Abdul Malik sparks tension in Malegaon

- INDIA bloc leaders to meet on June 1 to assess poll performance, future plans

- Delhi hospital blaze: 27 oxygen cylinders were on premises

- ‘Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT’

- Man who shot dead DJ was involved in a scuffle at bar: police

- Career ruined, harassment continues: Nalin Yadav

- Six killed as cyclone Remal rips south Bengal

- Manjhi faces threats from Naxals over Padma award

- IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

- ‘Ads against Trinamool prima facie disparaging’

- AAP faces a critical test in the multi-cornered fight in Punjab

- In Bihar, heavyweights, hat-trick hopefuls seek comeback

- Battle for Ballia evokes memories of ex-PM Chandra Shekhar

- INDIA bloc will win all 40 LS seats in Bihar: Rahul

- PM abandoned Himachal during crisis: Priyanka

- Purvanchal will deal final blow to BJP: Akhilesh

- BJP won’t allow religion-based quota: Nadda

- Kolkata comes to a standstill after cyclone makes landfall

- 14186

- Three doctors arrested for tampering with evidence in Pune luxury car crash case

- Congress will blame EVMs for LS election defeat, says Shah

- NIA arrests five from different locations for human trafficking

- Nothing ‘corrupt’ in making promises in manifestos, says SC

- Gain Parvati’s grace

- Hemant Soren files bail plea in Jharkhand High Court

- Kejriwal seeks extension of interim bail from SC

- DRDO Chairman gets a year’s extension of service

Crime Branch questions bar owner over bribery charge

The Hindu Bureau

Thiruvananthapuram

Probe is based on Excise Minister’s complaint ; UDF accuses the government of luring bar lobby for bribes to formulate ‘permissive’ policy; State says it is a plot to undermine trust in LDF’s policies

Youth Congress workers stage a protest near the official residence of Excise Minister M.B. Rajesh on Monday.S. MAHINSHA

A Crime Branch team on Monday interrogated Animon, an office-bearer of the bar owner’s association, in Kerala. The move comes after a voice note, purportedly from Mr. Animon, surfaced, urging members to raise funds to allegedly influence the government’s liquor policy.

The United Democratic Front (UDF) has accused the government of luring the bar lobby for bribes by dangling the prospect of a “permissive liquor” policy. It also alleged that Tourism Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas had schemed the move by tasking his officials to discuss the proposal at a stakeholder meeting.

Sensing a ‘conspiracy’ to undermine public trust in the government’s policymaking process, Excise Minister M.B. Rajesh sought a police inquiry. Subsequently, the State Police Chief constituted a Crime Branch team to probe the complaint. Mr. Riyas termed the accusation as patently false.

The team questioned Mr. Animon at one of his bar hotels in Kottayam district. The bar owner reportedly echoed the association’s line that money was collected to purchase a 28-cent plot to build an office in Thiruvananthapuram. Mr. Animon had posted the voice note in a 45-member group of bar hotel owners. He reportedly told the police that he was under pressure from the association’s State leadership to raise funds for the project. He had posted the message in desperation.

Net-working

Fish eye: Two fishermen trying to catch fish in the western canal of Prakasam Barrage in Krishna river in Vijayawada on Monday. K.V.S. GIRI

Using AI to increase student enrolment

P. Sridhar

RAJANNA SIRCILLA

The AI-powered campaign is aimed at spreading awareness about advantages of studying in the State-run school; the headmaster gets the idea from her daughter, who is studying B.Tech

K. Suryanarayana. SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

In a novel campaign to boost enrolment in the Zilla Parishad High School at Vattemla in Rajanna Sircilla district of Telangana, the school headmaster K. Suryanarayana is spearheading an AI-powered campaign on social media to increase student enrolment in the State-run school in the next academic year.

The novel idea struck him when his daughter, who is studying in third year B.Tech at IIITDM-Kancheepuram, explained to him about the multifarious applications of AI during her recent visit to her native place for summer vacation.

Translating the idea into action, he claimed to have created a ‘virtual AI anchor’, a computerised avatar, to highlight the benefits of studying in the ZPHS, Vattemla.

“The ‘AI anchor’ reads out a text in Telugu highlighting the salient features of the ZPHS such as English medium instruction, well-qualified teachers, mid-day meals, free textbooks, two pairs of school uniform, digital lessons through T-Sat channel and so on,” Mr. Suryanarayana said.

He said efforts are on to increase student enrolment in the school.

The campaign is aimed at spreading awareness about the advantages of studying in the State-run school endowed with well-qualified and experienced teachers. The ZPHS, Vattemla, recorded 100% results in the SSC exams last year.

Kerala HC to advise courts to strictly follow guidelines in sex assault-related cases

The Hindu Bureau

KOCHI

The Kerala High Court Registrar (District Judiciary) on Monday informed the High Court that the Registry is in the process of issuing a directive to the subordinate courts to adhere to the guidelines regarding the safe handling of sexually explicit material in sexual assault cases.

The submission was made in a report filed in response to a directive by Justice K. Babu on a petition by the government seeking a directive to all subordinate courts to follow the High Court guidelines on such material.

Recently, the High Court had issued guidelines to the police and the courts to ensure that any such material is not accessed illegally.

Confidential items

The report said that the administrative committee of the High Court would consider whether the guidelines can be adopted with respect to handling of electronic and other records involving confidential/objectionable items and whether they need to be made applicable to the High Court as well.

The committee would also consider whether the matter needs to be referred to the Rule Committee constituted under Section 123 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, to examine the necessity of framing new rules/amendment to existing rules to implement the guidelines, the report said.

Director-General of Prosecution T.A. Shaji submitted that the State government had taken all measures to comply with the High Court guidelines issued for the police.

The court closed the petition of the government in view of the submissions by the High Court Registry and the Director-General of Police of the State.

Investment in technology will secure boundaries: Dhankhar

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday said a country that invests in technological advancement will have secure boundaries. Mr. Dhankhar, who visited National Aerospace Limited (NAL) and laid the foundation stone of the Centre for Carbon Fiber and Prepregs in Bengaluru, said, “Gone are the days of conventional warfare. I have before me men in uniform. They know the changing dynamics of warfare.”

He said how a country positions itself and how strong it will be will be determined in laboratories like NAL. “How our position will happen, how strong we will be, will be determined in laboratories like this. And the good thing is, our future is bright because you people are working with that intellect, education, which is unrivaled in the world,” he added. He said India is one of the countries that are focusing on disruptive technologies. “There are five to six countries focusing on that (disruptive technologies). Our quantum computing system that will be of extreme awareness to you all is in place,” Mr. Dhankhar said.

He also praised NAL’s contribution to the country’s aerospace sector. “In the last two years, India’s space accomplishments have come to be globally recognised.

He witnessed the flying display of the Hansa NG, the indigenous flying trainer designed and developed by NAL at the HAL airport.

Modi’s Mysuru visit: Karnataka govt. to settle hotel expenses

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

The Karnataka government decided to bear the hospitality expenses of PM Narendra Modi, incurred during his visit to Mysuru in 2023 to participate in a programme organised to mark the 50th year of Project Tiger.

Disclosing this to mediapersons on Monday, Forest Minister Eshwar B. Khandre said the State government had decided to end the row over clearing pending bills by bearing the hospitality expenses that amounted to ₹80 lakh.

He explained that normally it was a practice that the State would take care of the hospitality of dignitaries such as the President and the Prime Minister during their visit to the State. However, the State had kept itself away from the programme in 2023 as the model code of conduct was in force for the Assembly elections.

He noted that the entire programme had been organised by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). While the total expenses of the programme had touched ₹6.33 crore, the NTCA had paid only ₹3 crore to the State. Following this, it had not been possible to clear the hospitality expenses.

Woman who filed POCSO case against Yediyurappa dead

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

The woman, who had filed a complaint against former Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa, accusing him of sexually assaulting her 17-year-old daughter at his residence here, died in a private hospital in the city on Sunday.

According to police sources, the 53-year-old visited a private hospital on Sunday night after she had difficulty breathing. The sources said she died at the hospital after failing to respond to treatment. The sources, quoting the hospital, said the woman had lung cancer.

The woman was accompanied to the hospital by her daughter, who is the victim in the POCSO case. The girl had messaged one of the witnesses in the case, saying her mother was in hospital, around 9.21 p.m. She later texted saying her mother was no more.

3 policemen found partying at criminal’s house; 2 suspended

The Hindu Bureau

KOCHI

A raid conducted by the Angamaly police in Kerala at the house of a goon on Sunday under Operation AAG left the State police red-faced as a few officers were found enjoying the hospitality of the criminal.

The raiding party came across three personnel — two drivers and a civil police officer — attached to the Alappuzha police at the house. The trio gave a statement to the effect that a Crime Branch Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) had taken them to the house. It is learned that the personnel had made a stopover at the house of one Thammanam Faisal.

The Alappuzha District Police Chief suspended two of the personnel pending inquiry and the other officer, reportedly attached to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, is also likely to face similar disciplinary action shortly.

Jagan attack case: verdict on bail plea of accused reserved

A Vijayawada court on Monday reserved its judgment on the bail petition filed by Vemula Satish, prime accused in the case of the stone-throwing at Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy. The verdict will be pronounced on Tuesday. Mr. Satish had moved the bail petition on April 30 mainly on the grounds that he was falsely implicated and a confessional statement was obtained from him under duress.

BJP slams Revanth over purchase of paddy

The Hindu Bureau

HYDERABAD

The BJP has questioned the silence of Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy in the ongoing war of allegations and counter-allegations on the paddy procurement process and demanded a high-level probe either by a High Court judge or the CBI.

On Monday, former MLA N.V.S.S. Prabhakar alleged that Mr. Reddy has no say in the functioning of several departments as the Ministers seem to be working “independently” and claimed that the “collective responsibility of the Cabinet has gone for a toss”.

Bypoll for one MLC seat in Telangana sees 69% turnout

The election season in Telangana has come to an end for the time being with polling for the Khammam-Nalgonda-Warangal Graduates constituency byelection of the Telangana Legislative Council passing off peacefully on Monday. Counting of votes is scheduled for June 5. Polling was around 69% by 4 p.m. and was peaceful with no untoward incidents reported. The constituency had 4,63,839 eligible graduate voters across three joint districts.

After fracas at camp, KSU suspends two office-bearers

The Kerala Students’ Union (KSU) has suspended its State general secretary Ananthakrishnan for causing infamy to the Congress’s student organisation. It has suspended KSU Ernakulam district secretary Anjelo George Tito from primary membership. The KPCC enquired into the revelry and skirmishing at a KSU study camp at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram and recommended the disciplinary action.

Record voter turnout in J&K LS election; Assembly poll to be held soon: EC

Press Trust of India

New Delhi

CEC says active poll participation echoes faith of the people in democratic process; this will be first Assembly election since the revocation of the special status of J&K under Article 370 in August 2019

Voters waiting to cast their vote during the sixth phase polling at a booth in Anantnag district. ANI

The Election Commission on Monday said the voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir this time was the highest in any Lok Sabha election in the past 35 years, with the Kashmir Valley witnessing a “massive” 30% jump in poll participation compared to 2019.

Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said there was a 25% increase in the number of candidates contesting election this time since 2019.

“This active participation is a huge positive for the Assembly elections to be held soon so that the democratic process continues to thrive in the Union Territory,” he said. The poll panel also said the combined voter turnout at the polling stations for the entire Union Territory with five Lok Sabha seats was 58.46%.

On Saturday, Mr. Kumar said that encouraged by the voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir in this Lok Sabha poll, the Election Commission will “very soon” initiate the process of conducting the Assembly poll in the Union Territory.

‘30% jump from 2019’

The voter turnout of 50.86% from the three parliamentary constituencies in the Kashmir Valley echoes the faith of the people in the democratic process, the Election Commission said, adding the poll participation percentage witnessed a 30-point jump from the 2019 general election where it was 19.16%.

The three seats in the Valley — Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri — recorded a voter turnout of 38.49%, 59.1% and 54.84%, respectively, all of which have been the highest in the last three decades.

The other two seats in the Union Territory — Udhampur and Jammu — which fall in the Jammu region, recorded 68.27% and 72.22% voter turnout respectively, it said.

The Election Commission said that an increasing number of young people have asserted their faith and embraced democracy in a big way. Another interesting perspective is the people in the age group of 18-59 years constitute over 80% of the electorate in each of the five Lok Sabha seats of the Union Territory, it underlined.

The high poll percentage in the 2024 Lok Sabha poll is reflective of their faith in democracy, which is a positive and heartening development, the poll panel stressed.

Whenever an Assembly election is held in Jammu and Kashmir, it will be the first since the August 2019 revocation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories with the other being Ladakh, which has one Lok Sabha seat and no provision for a legislative Assembly.

Following a delimitation exercise, the number of Assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir has gone up from 83 to 90, excluding those allocated to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

In December, the Supreme Court directed the poll panel to hold Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir by September 30.

BJP biggest

Shoumojit Banerjee

Pune

Devendra Fadnavis ANI

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday underscored that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is numerically the biggest party in the 288-member State Legislative Assembly and will get the maximum share of seats within the ruling Mahayuti for the Assembly election likely to be held in October this year.

The BJP shares power with the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party.

The senior BJP leader’s remarks came after Mr. Pawar, along with senior NCP leaders Chhagan Bhujbal and Sunil Tatkare, spoke about getting a larger share of seats in the Assembly poll at a State executive meeting of the party in Mumbai earlier in the day.

Seat-sharing talks for the Lok Sabha election, which concluded in the State in the fifth phase on May 20, had witnessed a deadlock within the tripartite alliance over key seats.

Staking claim

“Elections are a test for party workers. No one should be over the top with joy following victory, nor should one be disheartened by defeat,” said Mr. Pawar, addressing his party workers at the meet. He also staked claim to the Satara Rajya Sabha seat.

Mr. Bhujbal made it clear that the NCP would have to be given a larger share of seats in the Assembly election than it had received in the general election.

“Only if we are given 80-90 seats can we hope to win 50 or 60 of them. Whatever may have happened this time [Lok Sabha seat-sharing process], in the coming election, the NCP should get its rightful share. When we entered [the Mahayuti coalition], we were told we would be given our fair share of seats,” he said.

Mr. Pawar, who split the NCP founded by his uncle Sharad Pawar in July last year, was given only four Lok Sabha seats (Baramati, Shirur, Raigad, Dharashiv) of the total 48. The BJP, with the most MPs in the State, fielded candidates in 29 seats.

Mr. Shinde, who drove a hard bargain with the BJP, managed to secure 15 seats for the Shiv Sena.

Responding to Mr. Bhujbal’s remarks, Mr. Fadnavis said the BJP will get the maximum share by virtue of being the biggest party, but assured its allies in the Mahayuti that they will be accorded due respect in the seat-sharing process for the Assembly poll.

Maliwal assault case: Delhi court rejects bail petition of Kejriwal aide Bibhav Kumar

Ishita Mishra

New Delhi

Bibhav Kumar -

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s personal assistant Bibhav Kumar was denied bail by a court here on Monday in connection with the alleged assault on Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal.

Mr. Kumar will now approach the High Court for bail, AAP said in a statement.

Mr. Kumar was arrested by the Delhi Police on May 18 after the Rajya Sabha member alleged that she had been assaulted at the CM House on May 13. According to the FIR lodged by Ms. Maliwal on May 17, the CM’s aide hit her on the chest, stomach, and pelvic area.

Ms. Maliwal, who appeared in person before the judge, broke down while opposing Mr. Kumar’s bail application and said her safety would be at risk if the accused was let out of jail.

‘Receiving threats’

She also spoke at length about the “threats” being issued to her on social media and claimed that she was being targeted by AAP leaders and the party’s social media team.

“If he is allowed to come out, my life and my family’s life would be in grave danger,” Ms. Maliwal told the court. The counsel representing Mr. Kumar countered that the Rajya Sabha member’s allegation and the FIR against his client were “concocted”.

He pointed out that Ms. Maliwal had registered the police complaint after a delay of four days.

In response, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastava said Section 308 had been invoked because the CM’s aide had “thrashed” a woman who was alone, which may have led to her death.

He added that Ms. Maliwal had not trespassed into CM House and that there was a delay in lodging the FIR as Ms. Maliwal was traumatised.

Meanwhile, the Delhi police told the court that the CCTV footage of the CM House on the day of the incident was found to be “missing”.

Indore administration takes down loudspeakers from religious places

Press Trust of India

Indore

The administration in Indore has taken down 437 loudspeakers from religious places of different communities in the last two days. A delegation of the Muslim community members objected to the move on Monday.

As per the State government’s order, 437 loudspeakers were removed from 258 religious places of different communities in the city in the last 48 hours, a police official said.

An appeal has also been made to the management of these places to not use loudspeakers in future, he said. A delegation led by Indore’s Shahar Qazi Mohammad Ishrat Ali met Collector Ashish Singh to voice its concern over the action.

Delegation’s demand

Later talking to presspersons, Mr. Ali said, “Loudspeakers have been removed from all the religious places in the city. We demand they be allowed in religious places within the permissible noise limit as per the guidelines of the Supreme Court.” People complain about DJs playing music loudly at weddings, and in such a situation, DJs should also be banned, he said. “Why are restrictions being imposed on loudspeakers only in religious places,” he asked.

Mr. Ashish Singh said loudspeakers had been removed on the State government’s instructions, and everyone must follow the directive.

SP MLA arrested, sent to judicial custody in 1995 case

The police on Monday arrested the Samajwadi Party MLA from Meerut, Rafiq Ansari, for not appearing before the Allahabad High Court despite non-bailable warrants being issued against him in a 1995 case. Mr. Ansari was arrested in Barabanki district and produced before an MP/MLA court here, which sent him to 14-day judicial custody. Superintendent of Police (City) Ayush Vikram Singh said Mr. Ansari had gone “missing” for the past few days. PTI

Boy drives car with man on bonnet, police register case

Press Trust of India

Thane

Close on the heels of the Pune car crash, a 17-year-old boy allegedly drove a luxury car without a licence on busy streets in Kalyan with a man lying on its bonnet. The police registered a case after videos of the stunt went viral.

The police have arrested the man lying on the car bonnet, identified as Subham Mithila, and booked the 17-year-old who was at the wheel and his father, a retired government official who owns the car, an official said on Monday. The boy drove the car on Saturday in the busy Shivaji Chowk area in Kalyan city in Thane district.

“The teenager was inspired by social media videos, and made his father buy the second-hand luxury car , and drove it on the street,” said senior police inspector Suresh Gund.

Undertrial hurls slipper at magistrate inside courtroom

An undertrial prisoner who was taken to a local court for hearing in a case on Monday hurled his slipper at the magistrate inside the courtroom in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan, police said. Rasik Mohammad, ASI, City Kotwali police station said Ismail, who is under judicial custody in a case of theft, was taken to the court of additional chief judicial magistrate from jail. “He suddenly took out his slipper and threw it at the magistrate,” Mr. Mohammad said, adding that the accused was sent to judicial custody again.PTI

Over dozen houses gutted, six injured in Uttarkashi fire

More than a dozen houses were gutted in a fire that broke out on Monday in Salra village of Uttarkashi district, authorities said. The fire was reportedly caused by a short circuit, an official said. Ten houses were completely gutted and four were partially damaged. Six people were injured, he said. The blaze was brought under control by the State Disaster Response Force and a fire brigade team with help from villagers, District Magistrate Meharban Singh Bisht said.

Rajkot fire tragedy: no faith in State machinery, says Gujarat High Court

Mahesh Langa

AHMEDABAD

Court asks if the Corporation had been unaware of the structure’s existence for 18 months ; State government shunts out Police Commissioner and Municipal Commissioner after court’s censure

In mourning: People take part in a candlelight vigil to pay tribute to the lives lost at the amusement park fire in Rajkot. AFP-

Hearing a suo motu petition on the fire at a gaming zone in Rajkot in which more than 30 people were killed, the Gujarat High Court on Monday rapped the State government and the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) saying the court had “no faith in them”, and asked the Municipal Commissioner why he should not be held personally responsible for the “man-made disaster”.

The court said the civic body did not bother to check even once when such a giant structure was built and became operational.

Lambasting the State government’s counsel, Justice Biren Vaishnav of the Division Bench said, “Who will take the drastic steps? Honestly speaking, we do not have faith in the State machinery now. After four years of orders passed by this court, this is the sixth incident that has happened. They only want lives to be lost, only then do they trigger the machinery.”

The Bench became furious when the State government’s counsel said that local officials were probably ‘hand-in-glove’ with the play zone operators.

The RMC’s lawyer admitted that the structure had come up without approval and told the court that the landowners had applied for regularisation of the structure on May 9 even though they had been using the area for go-karting and other activities since June 2021.

“So, you were ignorant of these structures existing in the vicinity? You were blind to it, that these big structures existed? You were unaware of it for 18 months? Was fire safety applied for it? Did you ever inspect it? We will take it that you are completely turning a blind eye to the whole issue. When did the corporation first recognise the existence of such a game zone,” the Bench asked the RMC’s lawyer.

Justice Vaishnav added, “There are media reports that your corporation commissioner went for the inauguration. For 18 months, what did the municipal body do? There was no fire NOC, no structural stability certificate and it was merrily going on, in front of the corporation’s eyes.”

Action against officials

Within hours of the court’s strong remarks, the Gujarat government swung into action and shunted out Municipal Commissioner Anand Patel and Police Commissioner Raju Bhargava. Both have been kept on wait for further posting.

D.P. Desai has been made the new municipal commissioner and Brajesh Kumar Jha has been named the Police Commissioner.

The State government has removed Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Crime) Vidhi Chaudhary and suspended seven officials. The officials have been held responsible for ‘‘gross negligence in allowing the game zone to operate without necessary approvals,” a government statement said.

Malegaon tense as ex-Mayor shot at by two persons on a motorbike

Ateeq Shaikh

Mumbai

Abdul Malik

Tensions broke out in Malegaon after Abdul Malik Mohammed Yunus Isa, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader and former Malegaon Mayor, was shot at by two unidentified motorbike-borne assailants at 1.20 a.m. on Monday.

Mr. Isa, who was attacked outside a shop in the Malegaon section of the Mumbai–Agra highway, sustained bullet wounds in the chest, right hand and left thigh. He was rushed to a nearby hospital and then shifted to a private hospital in Nashik, 100 km from Malegaon.

“The law and order situation in Malegaon has become dangerous in the past few days. In the past as well, firing incidents had taken place, but the Police Department never arrested the real culprits,” alleged the Malegaon Central MLA and AIMIM leader, Mohammed Ismail Abdul Khalique, who also went by the name Mufti Mohammed Ismail Qasmi.

“Such firing situations in Malegaon happen every two to four months and the culprits are not arrested. Are those responsible for the law and order sleeping? Is it a Jungle Raj here?” he asked.

Casting aspersions, the AIMIM leader said the attack was a political one, and if the assailants were not arrested by Tuesday morning, the party would have an internal discussion to chalk out the next steps.

“The police should have immediately arrested the accused by sealing the crucial points. Instead, the police came in big numbers to the hospital,” Mr. Khalique said.

He said the assailants attacked without any fear as they had not covered their faces at the time and fired three rounds from a close distance of only seven feet.

Immediately after the attack, a crowd gathered at the incident spot as well as the hospital, leading to a tense situation within the textile city of Malegaon. However, no untoward cases were reported.

Reacting to the attack on the party leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, MP and president of AIMIM, took to the social media platform X to say, “I spoke to his brother Dr. Khalid on phone. We stand firmly with Abdul Malik’s family. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and DGP, Maharashtra must take immediate steps. This is a conspiracy and the murderers should be arrested as soon as possible.”

The local police registered a case of attempt to murder, along with other charges, against two unidentified persons.

INDIA bloc leaders to meet on June 1 to assess poll performance, future plans

Sobhana K. Nair

New Delhi

The INDIA bloc seems to be optimistic of the poll outcome. TH

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has called a meeting of the Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) in Delhi on June 1 to assess its performance in the Lok Sabha election and chalk out a strategy ahead of the results on June 4.

The Trinamool Congress has expressed its inability to attend the meeting as the last phase of polling is on that day.

“It is an informal discussion. During the election, we have not met. We have only been coordinating over the phone. And contrary to everyone’s initial expectations, the INDIA bloc has performed very well across the country. The meeting is to assess our electoral performance and to chart the way ahead,” a top Congress leader said.

While the INDIA bloc leaders appear optimistic about the poll outcome, there is no conversation yet on formulating a common minimum programme.

The INDIA bloc was constituted in March 2023 and since then, it has suffered multiple setbacks, including losing founding members such as the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. The allies have also fought against each other in at least three States — the Congress against the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab; the Congress against the Left parties in Kerala, and the Trinamool against the Congress-Left combine in West Bengal.

The many committees and sub-committees constituted for campaigning and publicity also failed to function during the election. However, the allies believe that they have good coordination, particularly in Uttar Pradesh which sends the highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha.

Delhi hospital blaze: 27 oxygen cylinders were on premises

Alisha Dutta

NEW DELHI

Burnt oxygen cylinders at the site of the fire at the Baby Care Hospital at Vivek Vihar. PTI

Twenty-seven oxygen cylinders were found inside and outside the two-storey Baby Care New Born Child Hospital in east Delhi’s Vivek Vihar, as per the FIR registered in the case of a fire that killed seven newborn babies and injured five in the hospital. Five of the cylinders had exploded during the blaze. The FIR added that the hospital owner and its staff did not ensure the proper safety of the infants.

“With the help of fire brigades and ambulances of CATS (Centralised Accident and Trauma Services) and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Seva Dal (an NGO), 12 newborns were rescued from the back of the building and were taken to another hospital,” stated the FIR accessed by The Hindu.

Dr. Naveen Khichi, the hospital owner, and Dr. Akash, who was on duty at the time of the incident, were remanded in police custody for three days after being produced before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vidhi Gupta Anand on Monday.

The seven infants who were declared dead on arrival were shifted to the GTB Hospital mortuary for post-mortem. The bodies of five infants whose autopsies had been conducted were handed over to their parents on Monday, a senior officer said.

A delegation of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), which visited the site on Sunday and spoke to officials and family members of the victims, said in its findings that emergency exits were absent in the building, fire extinguishers were non-functional, and there was a lack of operational fire alarms and water sprinkler systems in the hospital.

Vivek Vihar Residents’ Welfare Association president Anand Goel told The Hindu that they had repeatedly complained about the threats posed by the medical facility to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the area councillor, and the police.

‘Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT’

Mr. Prajwal is speculated to be in Germany on his diplomatic passport. The State government had sought the cancellation of his diplomatic passport, following which the Centre issued a notice to the MP. A blue corner notice had also been issued against him, which means he could be detained soon after he entered the country.

Mr. Prajwal, contesting as a JD(S) candidate under the NDA fold, is facing Congress nominee Shreyas Patel in the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency that went to polls on April 26. He was suspended by the party in connection with the case.

After the pen drives, containing explicit videos and photographs allegedly involving the MP, made an appearance on April 21-22 in Hassan, the State government set up the SIT on April 27 to investigate the sexual assault on women.

‘Political conspiracy’

The Hassan MP, who did not broach the issue of the sexual assault in the video, claimed that he went into depression after the attack by the Congress. “The very next day [after seeking time to appear before the SIT], senior Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, started speaking and discussing the issue in an open platform as part of political conspiracy. After seeing this, I went into depression and isolated myself.”

“Some powers joined together in Hassan to hatch a political conspiracy to prevent my growth politically and bring me down,” he added.

The Hassan MP’s video on Monday comes after appeals from his grandfather, former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and uncle H.D. Kumaraswamy, the former Chief Minister of Karnataka, to return home and face action.

The JD(S) has taken the stand not to defend its lone MP in the Lok Sabha publicly and has constantly attempted to turn the tables on the Congress government for the lack of action against those involved in the distribution of the pen drives.

Man who shot dead DJ was involved in a scuffle at bar: police

The Hindu Bureau

Patna

The Ranchi Police on Monday said the shooting of a disc jockey (DJ) at a bar in the Jharkhand capital may have been the fallout of a scuffle that took place there. The police said the main accused in the case had been arrested from Gaya in Bihar.

Ranchi Senior Superintendent of Police Chandan Kumar Sinha said, “We arrested the accused within 15 hours of the incident. The accused’s name is Abhishek Singh alias Vicky, a resident of Ranchi...The police are also interrogating three people in the case.”

Mr. Sinha said Singh was in a drunk state when the crime was carried out. He said that prima facie it was known that there was a scuffle between the bouncers and customers, including the accused, at the bar around 10.30 p.m. on Sunday.

Around 1.18 a.m., the DJ was standing near a lift just outside the bar when Singh shot him.

“There was no one excluding the DJ at that time. It appears that after the fight with bouncers, the accused, who was in an alcoholic state, came for revenge,” he said.

Mr. Sinha said the rifle used in the crime had been recovered. “After searching his house, we recovered two arms licences issued from Assam in his name. We are verifying if they are authentic.”

The accused is a businessman.

(With PTI inputs)

Comedian jailed with Munawar continues to face harassment

Mehul Malpani

Jabalpur

Nalin Yadav, who had been jailed along with comedian Munawar Faruqui in 2021, has said that his career as a comedian ended after the case but he and his family continued to face harassment in his hometown near Indore.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, Mr. Yadav, 28, alleged that he and his 20-year-old brother, Akash Yadav, have been harassed for three years by some people “who are relatives and known affiliates of the ruling party”. He shared a video of an alleged incident from March. Mr. Yadav hailed from Pitampur in Dhar district but had left his hometown shortly after being released from jail. His brother still lived there.

“In my hometown, I have a new identity as an anti-nationalist,” he wrote in the post and said that the family are “broke financially and mentally”. He said his brother had to drop out of college where he was pursuing B.Com.

He said he did not get much support from the local police and struggled to file FIRs. “But without my knowledge, the police were filing a counter FIR against us almost every time and took our FIR as the secondary one,” he said, adding that in April he received a notice to be produced before a local court in connection with the case.

He planned to challenge the notice in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Six killed as cyclone Remal rips south Bengal

The airport services were suspended for almost 20 hours.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while acknowledging the damage caused by Remal, said that due to the actions of the State administration, the loss of life was relatively less.

“Our municipalities and panchayats have the credit for moving the poor people to 1,400 camps in safer places. For this I express my sincere thanks to all the State and local administrations,” she posted on social media.

In the Sundarbans, minor breaches of embankments were reported in several places in the coastal areas of South 24 Parganas. Locals at several places in the Sundarbans took it upon themselves to repair embankments and clear roads. The water from the sea and rivers entered agricultural fields and bheries (shallow fish ponds).

Even as the severe cyclonic storm weakened into a deep depression, the weather office has issued an orange alert and predicted heavy (7–11 cm) to very heavy rain (12-20 cm) for one or two places over North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Kolkata, Nadia and Murshidabad districts.

The IMD has predicted surface wind with speed reaching 50 to 60 kmph gusting to 70 kmph likely over North and South 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Nadia and Murshidabad; reaching 40 to 50 kmph likely over Kolkata, Howrah and Hooghly.

Padma Shri award winner Manjhi faces Naxal threat

Press Trust of India

Narayanpur

Traditional medicine practitioner Hemchand Manjhi, renowned for his stellar work from a remote village in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district, on Monday said he would return his Padma Shri award, after he received threats from Naxalites.

Dr. Manjhi, 72, popularly known as Vaidyaraj, also said he would discontinue his practice.

Naxalites on Sunday night set on fire two under-construction mobile towers in Chameli and Gaurdand villages and put up banners and dropped pamphlets there threatening Dr. Manjhi, police said.

The pamphlets also had a picture of Dr. Manjhi receiving the award.

IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

As in April, India’s strong monsoon rainfall is predicated on El Niño conditions withering away to ‘neutral’ conditions and the onset of La Niña conditions during the later part of the monsoon season. “At present, neutral Indian Ocean Dipole [IOD] conditions are prevailing over the Indian Ocean. The latest forecasts from many global climate models indicate positive IOD conditions are likely to develop during the monsoon season,” said a statement from the IMD.

El Nino, La Nina and IOD conditions refer to temperatures in the Central Pacific, and the eastern and western halves of the Indian Ocean respectively. La Nina conditions coupled with a favourable IOD spell good rains for India.

Justice Maheshwari asked whether the EC had done something till now or even after the injunction order was passed by the High Court. The elections were going on.

“It is a question of the independence of the Election Commission,” Justice Maheshwari noted.

The BJP finally chose to withdraw the petition after the court gave it the liberty to approach the High Court again for any relief in accordance with the law.

The Trinamool was represented by senior advocates A.M. Singhvi and Amit Anand Tiwari.

AAP faces a critical test in the multi-cornered fight in Punjab

Vikas Vasudeva

CHANDIGARH

The June 1 election is a prestige battle for the State’s ruling party which is taking on the Congress, its INDIA bloc partner, in all 13 Lok Sabha constituencies ; former allies BJP and SAD are contesting all seats separately, and the BSP too is going solo

As Punjab heads for the Lok Sabha election, it appears locked in a four-cornered electoral battle, even as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which came to power with a thumping majority in the State in 2022, faces a critical test in its popularity and appeal.

The AAP and the Congress, both Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners, are fighting against each other in Punjab, though they have a seat-sharing arrangement in Delhi.

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), alliance partners from 1996 to 2020, are contesting the election separately. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is for the first time contesting on its own all the seats in the State.

The Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), led by Simranjit Singh Mann, a known Sikh hardliner, has also fielded its candidates.

The 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in the State will go to the polls on June 1. In 2019, the election was largely a triangular fight among the Congress, the SAD-BJP alliance, and the AAP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress won eight seats, securing a 41% vote share, while the AAP got one (7%). The BJP (9%) and the SAD (28%) won two seats each.

The AAP is seeking votes on the performance and policies of its government in the State. The election will be a critical test to ascertain the two-and-half-year-old government’s popularity in Punjab as it is halfway through its tenure and the anti-incumbency factor cannot be ruled out. The prestige and leadership skills of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who is leading the election campaign, are at stake.

As campaigning reaches its last leg, the AAP is attempting to garner people’s sympathy over the arrest of party supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as it continues to target the BJP-led Union government, blaming it for placing democracy and the Constitution in danger. Even as it fires salvos at its opponents, the AAP is facing confrontation on the ground as farmer groups have been questioning its leaders over poll promises not fulfilled, including minimum support prices for crops.

Facing the heat

The Opposition parties have been cornering the AAP government over such unmet promises and governance failures. A monthly pension of ₹1,000 to women is one of the key promises that has not been kept, and the AAP is facing the heat for it.

The Congress, which is the principal Opposition party in Punjab, is focusing on the anti-incumbency factor against the AAP in the State and the BJP at the Centre.

The Congress’s backing of the earlier farmers’ agitation on the Delhi boundary against the now-repealed farm sector laws and the latest protests on the Punjab-Haryana boundaries is a key factor on which the party pins its hopes on.

The Congress hopes to give a tough fights based on its manifesto, which promises to waive the debt of farmers and ensure there will be a legal guarantee for minimum support prices.

The SAD, a century-old regional party, which has been going through a rough patch following the drubbing in the 2017 and 2022 Assembly elections, is making desperate efforts to return to the panthic (Sikh) agenda to regain its relevance in State politics. The party, in its manifesto, has made a panthic and “pro-Punjab” pitch.

Going solo in the battle, the BJP, which has been facing the farmers’ wrath, is attempting to make inroads into Punjab with an outreach to Sikhs and Scheduled Castes (SCs), and fresh politics of social engineering. The SCs account for around 32% of the population, the highest percentage among all States in the country.

Over the years, the BJP had been contesting the electoral battle in Punjab as a “junior partner” in its alliance with the SAD, but after the regional party quit the alliance, the saffron party has been aggressively busy with its expansion in the State.

After the alliance broke up, the BJP inducted several Sikhs into the party, including Capt. Amarinder Singh (retd.) and former Congress leader Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi, in an attempt to build its pro-Sikh image.

The BSP, which has witnessed a gradual decrease in its vote share over the years in Punjab, is focusing on Dalits as a political plank by raising the issues faced by Scheduled Castes to garner support.

In Bihar, heavyweights, hat-trick hopefuls seek comeback

Amarnath Tewary

Patna

Seeking support: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with Misa Bharti, RJD candidate from Patliputra, at a public meeting on Monday. ANI

Sitting MPs and party heavyweights will seek a referendum on their performance as eight seats in Bihar will go to the polls in the final phase of the Lok Sabha election.

The constituencies that will vote on June 1 are Nalanda, Patna Sahib, Pataliputra, Karakat, Buxar, Ara, Jehanabad and Sasaram (reserved).

The BJP has fielded five candidates while its NDA allies, the Janata Dal(U) and Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM), have fielded two and one candidates, respectively. The Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) and the CPI(ML) are contesting three seats each, while the Congress is contesting two.

Key candidates

In Nalanda, NDA candidate and three-time sitting MP Kaushalendra Kumar of the JD(U) is contesting against the CPI(ML)’s Sandeep Saurav. Mr. Kaushalendra is a close associate of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and has been winning the seat since 2009. In 2019, he defeated Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) candidate Ashok Kumar Azad by more than two lakh votes. The CPI(ML) has fielded its young MLA from Paliganj, hoping to give the JD(U) a tough fight.

In Patna Sahib, BJP leader and former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is seeking a second term. He is contesting against Congress candidate Anshul Abhijit, the son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. However, Mr. Abhijit is not a familiar face and on Monday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressed a public meeting to galvanise support for the candidate. Mr. Prasad, who comes from the upper caste Kayastha community, the dominant voter base in the constituency, is popular. In 2019, he defeated Congress candidate and Bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha by more than 2.5 lakh votes.

From Patliputra, sitting BJP MP Ram Kripal Yadav is eyeing a hat-trick. He is pitted against the RJD’s Misa Bharti, the elder daughter of RJD chief Lalu Prasad. Ms. Bharti, who lost the seat to Mr. Yadav in 2014 and 2019, has campaigned hard, hoping to wrest the seat from the BJP candidate who is known for his easy accessibility. Mr. Prasad’s family has lost the seat thrice, including in the 2009 election when the RJD chief lost by fewer than 24,000 votes to the JD(U)’s Ranjan Prasad Yadav.

From Ara, BJP candidate and Union Minister Raj Kumar Singh is seeking a third term. He is contesting against the CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad.

In 2019, Mr. Singh defeated CPI(ML) candidate Raju Yadav by 1.47 lakh votes.

The Minister is popular, especially among the upper caste Rajput voters. While the CPI(ML) has the support among the EBC and OBC voters, Mr. Singh is banking on the upper caste votes and Mr. Modi’s popularity.

In adjoining Buxar, the BJP has replaced sitting MP Ashwini Kumar Choubey, known for his hard-line Hindutva, with former Baikunthpur MLA Mithilesh Tiwari. Mr. Tiwari is pitted against RJD leader Sudhakar Singh, a former Agriculture Minister who had resigned from the Cabinet alleging corruption. Two Independent candidates, Dadan Singh Yadav and former bureaucrat Anand Mishra, are expected to cut into the vote shares of Mr. Tiwari and Mr. Sudhakar.

In Sasaram, the BJP has changed its sitting MP Chhedi Paswan by fielding Shivesh Ram. Sasaram is the only reserved (SC) constituency going to the polls in the last phase in Bihar. Mr. Ram is pitted against Congress candidate Manoj Kumar. In 2019, Mr. Manoj had contested on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket and had come third.

In Karakat, popular Bhojpuri film star Pawan Singh has thrown his hat in the ring as an Independent candidate. Mr. Pawan had hoped to contest the Lok Sabha election from Ara but the BJP fielded him from Asansol in West Bengal. Mr. Pawan withdrew from the contest citing ‘personal reasons’ and filed his nomination from Karakat instead to fulfil his ‘mother’s wishes’.

Ahead of Mr. Modi’s visit to the constituency on May 25, to campaign for NDA candidate Upendra Kushwaha (RLM), the BJP expelled Mr. Pawan from the party for ‘anti-party activities’.

Mr. Kushwaha is pitted against CPI(ML) candidate Raja Ram Singh Kushwaha. Mr. Pawan has made the Karakat election a triangular contest having organised a spirited campaign by roping in Bhojpuri film actors.

In Jehanabad, the NDA has reposed its faith in sitting MP Chandehswar Prasad Chandravanshi (JD-U) against the RJD’s Surendra Prasad Yadav and the BSP’s Arun Kumar. Jehanabad had been a stronghold of the Left before the RJD won it in 1998. Since then, the RJD or the JD(U) has been winning the seat. This time, Mr. Arun could dent the upper caste vote bank of Mr. Chandravanshi. Mr. Surendra, who lost to the JD(U) candidate in 2019 by just 1,751 votes, has been canvassing hard to bridge the slim gap.

Battle for Ballia evokes memories of ex-PM Chandra Shekhar

Mayank Kumar

Ballia

Tight contest: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath at a public meeting in support of Neeraj Shekhar, BJP's candidate from Ballia on Monday. ANI

Deciding which way to vote is a tough choice for Devendra Pandey. A resident of Bairia in Ballia of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Pandey has remained a supporter of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, but is confused about supporting his son Neeraj Shekhar, who is contesting on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) symbol.

“Last time, I voted for the Samajwadi Party (SP), but it is a difficult choice this time. I have to listen to my inner conscience,” he says.

The prestigious seat of Ballia, once synonymous with Chandra Shekhar, a socialist leader, is likely to witness a close contest between Mr. Neeraj and Sanatan Pandey of the SP with caste mobilisation playing a key role. In 2019, Mr. Pandey lost by a margin of 15,000-odd votes against Virendra Singh Mast of the BJP.

“It is difficult to predict anything. Top leaders held rallies but the SP candidate is banking on a formidable Brahmin-Muslim- Yadav social alliance, which is roughly 35-40% of the total votes,” Shaligram Chaurasia, a resident, said. Rajput candidates have won 14 of the 18 times the constituency went to the polls; they include the late Chandra Shekhar, who won on eight occasions, while Mr. Neeraj won twice.

Mr. Neeraj and the BJP leaders are making an aggressive outreach towards the Brahmin community, highlighting the nationalistic plank of the ruling dispensation and invoking Ballia’s rich legacy with freedom movement icons such as Mangal Pandey and Chitu Pandey.

“To honour the legacy of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, the BJP has fielded Neeraj Shekhar as its candidate. I pay my tribute to the great freedom fighters Mangal Pandey and Veer Chittu Pandey,” Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said, while campaigning for the BJP candidate. Mr. Shekhar has been invoking his father’s association with the other caste combines of Ballia. The BJP campaign pitch also revolves around its development initiatives.

The Bhumihar community which consists of roughly one lakh voters in Ballia will be crucial in deciding the outcome. The community has a major presence in the Mohammadabad and Zahoorabad Assembly segments in Ghazipur district. Five Assembly seats come under the Ballia Lok Sabha constituency. The remaining three are in Ballia district. The SP is considered strong in the region as it won three of the five Assembly seats in the Ballia Lok Sabha constituency in the 2022 election.

The SP nominee is focusing on local issues such as migration to bigger industrial cities, but is also invoking Ballia’s Baagi (rebel) character associated with Chandra Shekhar. He says he and the SP are the real followers of the socialist leader.

“Respected Chandra Shekharji is our collective heritage, but who he opposed ideologically all his life every person in Ballia knows, we are real inheritors of his ideas,” Mr. Pandey said.

INDIA bloc will win all 40 LS seats in Bihar: Rahul

The Hindu Bureau

Patna

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his ‘Parmatma’ remark while addressing three election rallies in Bihar.

He said Mr. Modi was not going to become the Prime Minister as a wave in favour of the INDIA bloc was blowing in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Mr. Gandhi said the INDIA bloc would win all 40 Lok Sabha seats in the State.

At a rally in Bakhtiyarpur, Mr. Gandhi said, “The Prime Minister says that he does not take decisions, but it is taken by Parmatma. He says that he is not biological but a messenger of Parmatma. You know why he has brought up the Parmatma story? Because when ED will ask him about Adani after elections, he will say that he doesn’t know anything about it, and he was asked to do so by Parmatma.”

In an interview, Mr. Modi had said that when his mother was alive, he believed he was born biologically but after she passed away, based on his experiences, he was convinced that God had sent him.

Mr. Modi had said that the energy he gets could not be from his “biological body”. but was “bestowed upon him by God”.

Apart from Bakhtiyarpur, Mr. Gandhi addressed rallies in Paliganj and Bhojpur.

PM abandoned Himachal during crisis: Priyanka

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at a meeting in Chamba on Monday. PTI

Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of abandoning Himachal Pradesh in its hour of need when disaster struck the State after heavy rain in 2023, despite his claims of considering the State “to be his home”.

Addressing meetings, Ms. Vadra said Mr. Modi had not visited the State during its time of disaster, and also failed to provide any financial aid to the affected people.

She said the Congress never compromised on public interest, and blamed the Centre’s policies for rising inflation and unemployment.

Urging voters to elect the Congress, Ms. Vadra said that while the BJP talked about a “double engine” government, the Congress would focus on “double service”.

Purvanchal will deal final blow to BJP: Akhilesh

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday in Chandauli claimed that Purvanchal or eastern Uttar Pradesh would deal the final blow to the BJP.

“The people of Purvanchal have made up their mind that they will support the INDIA alliance. Ever since the elections came to Purvanchal, the people of the BJP are in shock. These people in the past were raising the slogan of ‘400 paar‘ have forgotten this slogan ever since elections have come to Purvanchal. The region will deal the final blow to the BJP,” he said.

“The BJP government, which has been in power for the last 10 years, has been governing on the basis of loot and lies. They did not work. They wasted 10 years in the Centre and seven years in Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

BJP won’t allow religion-based quota: Nadda

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J.P. Nadda said on Monday that there will be no reservation based on religion as long as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party are in power.

He accused the Opposition of planning to give reservation based on religion. PTI

Kolkata comes to a standstill after cyclone makes landfall

Moyurie Som

KOLKATA

One person killed, three injured in the aftermath of the storm that disrupted public transport and left large parts of the city inundated, bringing back memories of Super-cyclone Amphan in 2020

Under water: Vehicles and pedestrians on a flooded street in Kolkata on Monday.DEBASISH BHADURI

Cyclone Remal battered Kolkata and adjoining areas of the metropolis on Monday, inundating large parts of the city, uprooting trees and electric poles and leaving people stranded for public transport.

The cyclone made landfall between the West Bengal and Bangladesh coasts on Sunday night, and people of Kolkata woke up to torrential rain and gales. In the 24 hours to 8.30 a.m. on Monday, the city received 144mm of rainfall.

The cyclone claimed the life of a 51-year-old man and injured three in the city. The deceased, Sheikh Sajid, was killed as a cement tile blown away by the wind fell on him on Sunday night.

People from across the city were seen wading through knee-deep water as areas such as Camac Street, Theatre Road, Amherst Street, Central Avenue, Mohammad Ali Park, and Mahatma Gandhi Road remained waterlogged.

The storm brought back memories of Super-cyclone Amphan that had wreaked havoc in Kolkata and adjoining coastal areas in May 2020.

“Low-lying areas in north Kolkata are our main problem areas. We hope to improve the waterlogging situation in these areas in the next year-and-a-half,” Mayor Firhad Hakim said on Monday. He said he was looking to raise funds for this purpose and would make an announcement soon.

“We need five hours from when the rainfall stops and the high tide sets in to clear most of the waterlogging from the city roads,” he added.

At least 68 trees were uprooted across the city, leading to road blocks and traffic disruptions.

Municipal authorities and disaster management teams from civic bodies around Kolkata deployed teams in multiple areas to restore normal traffic movement. Services of the Kolkata Metro main line were halted between certain stretches until noon, as the underground tracks were under water.

Local train services of the Sealdah suburban section were disrupted, and some long-haul trains were cancelled. There were fewer vehicles on the road and commuters had a tough time. Office-goers stranded near Camac Street said the traffic conditions and disruptions of metro and bus services have made commuting very difficult.

The airport resumed flight operations around 9 a.m. on Monday, following a 21-hour suspension since Sunday noon.

(set by Dr. X)

1 of 4

2 of 4

3 of 4

4 of 4 Scan to play

Across

1 Soft drink with essence of fruit flavour for masses (8)

5 Check boy having intestinal colic at first, giving digestive remedy shortly (6)

10 High on rum, cuddling single female in flat (7)

11 Elderly person is retd, so worried about bills essentially (7)

12 Rushes with courage to save son (5)

13 Doctor loves nurse? Not new for us, personally (9)

14 Essentially managing company in a muddled manner (12)

18 Article about old bumpy secluded road (12)

21 Strange case of colic in enteric disorder (9)

23 Metal girder in hotel yard discarded, may be defective (1-4)

24 Canadian cop leapt on time to catch thugs at centre (7)

25 Nailed criminal smuggling cocaine to European country (7)

26 Apply over back of knee joint (6)

27 Feel at home, getting century in session (8)

Down

1 Hype about new electronic drive (6)

2 Receiving religious instruction, troublesome person becomes man of God (6)

3 Checks toilet close to studio having bad stink (5,4)

4 Anxious groom romanced nervously at first? That's usual (6,2,6)

6 Saving a little cash, motivate to invest (5)

7 Move air-conditioned container secured by chain (8)

8 Panoramic train rides through pass (5-3)

9 Plan educational programme for stuntmen? (6,2,6)

15 Most raunchy actress at premiere in tight tee shirt (9)

16 Flag in ship over river (8)

17 Infer fraud with evidence implicating director (8)

19 Arrest Greek character involved in row (6)

20 In the middle of a haze after consuming a little dope (6)

22 Reviewed sample of inert inorganic compound (5)

Two doctors arrested for tampering with evidence in Pune luxury car crash case

The Hindu Bureau

PUNE

The Pune luxury car crash case took another twist on Monday as the police arrested the head of the Forensic Medicine Department at the State-run Sassoon Hospital here, another doctor and a staffer for allegedly tampering with evidence.

Alleging a “criminal conspiracy” on the part of the doctors and kin of the teenage driver of the car, Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar on Monday said the doctors had replaced the blood samples of the 17-year-old — who allegedly ran over two persons on May 19 while driving a luxury car under the influence of alcohol — with that of another person, and threw the original samples in the dustbin.

The arrested are Ajay Taware, head of the Forensic Medicine Department; Shrihari Halnor, chief medical officer of the hospital; and Atul Ghatkamble, a staff member who works under Dr. Taware.

All three were produced before a court and remanded in police custody till June 30.

The police told the court that financial transactions had taken place between the kin of the minor and the doctors to change the blood samples, and they would search the houses of the accused for evidence.

The Police Commissioner told presspersons that Sections 120 (B) (pertaining to criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery) and 201, 213, 214 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code had been added to the case, which has been registered under Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

“As part of a criminal conspiracy, the accused juvenile’s blood sample was taken by a doctor of Sassoon Hospital and thrown in the dustbin. Another person’s sample was taken and sealed and sent to the forensics laboratory. He did this on the instructions of Dr. Ajay Taware, who is the HoD of Forensic Medicine of Sassoon Hospital,” Mr. Kumar said, adding that the doctors were questioned on Sunday evening and taken into custody on Monday morning.

Congress will blame EVMs for Lok Sabha election defeat: Shah

The Hindu Bureau

Lucknow

Union Home Minister Amit Shah at a public rally in Kushinagar on Monday. ANIANI

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance would return to power with a thumping majorityon June 4,and predicted that Congress leaders would hold a press conference blaming electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the defeat of the INDIA bloc.

Addressing a rally in support of the BJP candidate for Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar Lok Sabha seat, Mr. Shah added that following theresults, responsibility for the Congress’s defeat would likely be placed on its national president, Mallikarjun Kharge, leading to his resignation.

“Congress leaders will hold a press conference and claim that they lost because of the EVMs. The blame for the loss will also fall on Kharge-ji,” the Home Minister said.

Mr. Shah also pitched Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s backward class identity, adding that Opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. “Modi-ji was born in a backward class home. He understands the problems of the underprivileged sections, while both Rahul baba and Akhilesh-ji were born with a silver spoon and do not know about the problems being faced by people of eastern Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Mr.Shahhailed Mr. Modi’s leadership, and said that the BJP had given priority to the economic and social development of the State.

“Our government under PM Modi’s leadership has always given priority to the economic and social development of eastern Uttar Pradesh, and voters have always given us their love and blessings,” he said, adding that the enthusiasm in the public meeting was evidence that all the 80 seats from the State would be won by the BJP.

NIA arrests five from different locations for human trafficking

Devesh K. Pandey

NEW DELHI

Victims of human trafficking rescued from Cambodia arrive at Visakhapatnam airport on May 24.V. RAJU

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday arrested five persons in human trafficking and cyber fraud case.

The NIA probe has revealed that the accused were part of the organised trafficking syndicate engaged in luring and sending Indian youth to foreign countries on the false promises of legal employment.

Manish Hingu from Gujarat, Pahlad Singh from Bihar, Nabialam Ray from Delhi, Balwant Kataria from Haryana, and Sartaj Singh from Chandigarh were held following searches across 15 locations in six States and two Union Territories in coordination with the local police and Central intelligence agencies.

“The youth were being forced to work in fake call centres in Laos, Golden Triangle SEZ, and Cambodia, among other places, as part of the racket, controlled and operated mainly by foreign nationals. They were coerced into undertaking illegal activities online, such as credit card fraud,” the agency said.

Nothing ‘corrupt’ in making promises in manifestos, says SC

The Hindu Bureau

NEW DELHI

The Supreme Court on Monday said that there is nothing corrupt about promises made in a political party’s manifesto working out eventually to the public’s financial benefit.

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and K.V. Viswanathan found a bit too “far-fetched” the argument of the lawyer of a petitioner that commitments which help voters get richer amount to a “corrupt practice” .

“The contention of counsel that the commitments by a political party in its manifesto, which eventually lead to direct or indirect financial help to the public at large, will also amount to corrupt practice by a candidate of that party, is too far-fetched and cannot be accepted,” the Bench observed in a short order. The order was based on an appeal assailing a Karnataka High Court decision rejecting an election petition filed by Shashanka J. Sreedhara, a voter from the Chamrajpet Assembly constituency. He had challenged the election win of B.Z. Zameer Ahmed Khan, a Congress candidate, in the Assembly election of 2023. The petitioner said the promises or guarantees in the manifesto of Mr. Khan’s party amounted to corruption. Mr. Khan countered that the guarantees were policy thresholds and projections, and not corrupt practices.

Gain Parvati’s grace

Our spiritual literature is replete with instances of good deeds resulting in great boons. One example is that of Vidyavati, said P. Swaminathan in a discourse.

Employed as a sweeper in a temple, Vidyavati went beyond her duties and served the temple deity, Parvati, with utter devotion and humility. Wont to speak with the deity, she once expressed a desire that if she were to be reborn, then the deity should be born as her child. Perceiving this as a rightful plea, Parvati granted the boon. In her next birth, Vidyavati was born as Kanchanamala and married Malayadwaja, the ruler of Madurai. The couple had no children and hence the king conducted a yagna, seeking to be blessed with a boy to carry on his legacy, However, a girl child walked out of the fire.

Soon, the young girl, named Tadadakai, becomes the famous Meenakshi, and has conquered all the kingdoms barring Kailash. Venturing there, she came across a splendorous Siva and the warrior woman turned into a blushing maiden. She sought marriage with Siva, who promised to do so after arriving in Madurai. However, when he arrived, he came clad in a tiger skin, with skulls as garlands around his neck, in order to test her. Tadadakai was shocked at this form, but was advised to see Him with the inner eye. She realised this was none other than Sundareswaran.

Hemant Soren files bail plea in Jharkhand High Court

Former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged land scam case, filed a bail petition in the Jharkhand High Court on Monday. Mr. Soren had withdrawn his petition before the Supreme Court seeking interim bail and quashing of arrest on May 22. Ranchi Special PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) court had rejected his bail petition in this case on May 13. The fresh bail petition noted that the ED did not have a single document related to the 8.5 acres of land in the centre of the land-grabbing allegation. It also mentioned that land under Jharkhand’s Chotanagpur Tenancy Act) cannot be transferred to anyone under any circumstances.

Kejriwal seeks extension of interim bail from SC

The Hindu Bureau

NEW DELHI

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has moved the Supreme Court for a seven-day extension of the interim bail granted to him in a money laundering case linked to the liquor policy scam.

The Supreme Court had granted him interim bail on May 10 to campaign for the Lok Sabha election.

He was ordered to surrender on June 2.

In an application seeking extension of time by a week, Mr. Kejriwal said he had to undergo a series of medical tests, including a PET-CT scan.

The court had made it clear that the grant of bail was not a comment on the merits of the case or on the pending appeal filed by Mr. Kejriwal against his arrest on March 21.

DRDO Chairman gets a year’s extension of service

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Monday extended the tenure of Samir V. Kamat as the Secretary of Department of Defence Research and Development and Chairman of Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) for one year, up to May 31, 2025. “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the proposal of Ministry of Defence for extension in service of Dr. Samir V. Kamat... for a period of one year from June 01, 2024 or until further orders, whichever is earlier,” a notification from the Department of Personnel and Training said. Dr. Kamat was appointed to the post in August 2022.

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Playing to the gallery can be injurious to rail safety

K. Balakesari formerly of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers, was also Member Staff, Railway Board

Believe it or not, adhering to the rules can sometimes invite disciplinary action. A few weeks ago, in one of the zonal railways, disciplinary action was sought to be taken against the pilot of a “light engine”, i.e., a locomotive without a trailing load of coaches or wagons, who was tasked with clearing a train stranded in midsection as the locomotive had failed. The case was that the pilot had not spoken to his supervisor over the phone, but it was actually for not having run at a higher speed than 15 km that was permitted in the written authorisation given to him by the station master under the rules for operation in a section that is blocked by another train. Why was he asked to do this? It was to minimise the delay to passenger trains held up due to the disruption . Apparently, punctuality took priority over safety. Fortunately, with the incident gaining media attention, the proposed disciplinary action was withdrawn .

Of late, loco pilots and assistant pilots of the Indian Railways (earlier called drivers and assistant drivers), seem to be at the receiving end of an attitude of the management that can best be described as “playing to the gallery”. Let me explain with two more examples.

The runaway train

On February 25, 2024, a train formation, consisting of two diesel locomotives, both unmanned, and 53 wagons, that were loaded with stone ballast, with no brake van, rolled out of Kathua station of the Northern Railway unmanned. Because of the continuous falling gradient of the terrain, the “pilotless train’’ in both locomotives continued its journey for over 70 kilometres before it could be finally stopped . Fortunately, by routing the runaway train through unoccupied lines along the way a major disaster was averted.

Since access to a copy of the inquiry report in this case has been denied under a restrictive clause of the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005, this writer has had to go by the version put out in the media by one of the staff organisations . According to this version, the pilots, who were beyond their normal hours of duty, had requested to be relieved. But, instead of allowing them to proceed to their base station which was nearer, orders were issued to them to stable (park) the train and proceed by a passenger train (which had already arrived at the station) to another station further away from their base station. The insufficient time available to the pilots to ensure proper securing of the stabled load on a station with a gradient seems to have been a critical factor that led to the train rolling away. Yet, the most stringent provision of the discipline and appeal rules of the Railways was invoked in this case to summarily remove the pilots along with the station master and a pointsman from service.

The third case is a serious accident, a tragedy wrapped in a mystery. On October 29, 2023, at about 7 p.m., the Visakhapatnam-Rayagada Passenger collided with the rear of the Visakhapatnam-Palasa Passenger, also travelling on the same line, between Kantakapalle and Almanda stations on the Howrah-Chennai line. The collision led to the death of 14 passengers, apart from the pilot and assistant pilot of the rear train and the guard (train manager) of the train in front. Fifty passengers were injured.

There was a statutory inquiry after the accident, conducted by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS), South Central Circle who functions under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Preliminary Report of the CRS/SC Circle, which was submitted in November 2023, a little over two weeks after the accident, had concluded that the accident was caused by “errors in train working” — essentially meaning that the station staff and the crew of the train in the rear had not followed the rules of operation on a section with automatic signalling in which some signals were also defective.

The case of ‘distractions’

Over four months after the accident, in early March 2024 and before the publication of the Final Report of the CRS, the Minister for Railways announced to the media (Eureka!) that an inquiry conducted by the Railway officials a day after the accident had revealed that the attention of the crew of one of the trains involved in the accident was distracted as they were watching a cricket match on a mobile phone. Based on this finding, the Minister added, for good measure, that the Indian Railways would now be installing systems which would be able to detect any distractions and ensure that the pilots and assistant pilots are focused on train working.

The Preliminary Report of the CRS, accessed by this writer through the RTI route, nowhere mentions that the attention of the crew was diverted due to their watching a cricket match on a mobile phone. On the contrary, the CRS has commented that during the 10 minutes preceding the collision, the loco pilot of the rear train had performed nine different operations testifying to his alertness.

The Final Report of the CRS, which was released recently, essentially reiterates the conclusion of the Preliminary Report. And now, according to a report published in this daily on May 3, 2024 , we are informed that “with no evidence forthcoming later in the mobile data usage to substantiate the allegation that the loco pilots were watching cricket’’ on mobile phone at the time of the collision, the Railways have recalled the safety circulars issued in this context. This sordid episode — which seems to be a classic case of first formulating a theory and then later looking for evidence to support it — raises a few questions.

Troubling questions

If, as it turns out now, no evidence was forthcoming from the mobile call records to substantiate the allegation that the pilots were watching a cricket match, on what basis was an announcement made four months after the CRS submitted his Preliminary Report, by the Union Minister for Railways to that effect? Was there an attempt at the lower levels to plant a red herring? After all, watching a cricket match on a mobile phone can be blamed on a reckless crew, whereas the flouting of rules of train operation in automatic signalling territory by the station staff and the loco crew partially reflects on the administration for improper training of the staff or ineffective monitoring of train working under abnormal conditions.

The episode, unfortunately, also exposes a surprising lack of professionalism in the Railways at various levels in dealing with the investigation of a serious accident. And, what is even worse, it also shows a deplorable lack of sensitivity in handling a matter involving two deceased railway employees.

Each case recounted above is vastly different from the other. Yet, there are some common threads running through all of them. All involved loco pilots. Each case was linked to rail safety. Each case showcased an over-weening eagerness at various levels of the hierarchy to punish or blame, almost expecting approbation from “the gallery’’ for a tough, no-nonsense approach. The gallery varies in each case: the immediate superior, the bosses in the Ministry, or the media and the public at large.

The cases also call for some serious introspection. With nearly 10% vacancies in the cadre of loco pilots and also ever increasing volumes of freight traffic handled each year, it is a no-brainer that such record-breaking performances are made possible only by the regular breach of the rules governing the duty hours of the running staff to a significant extent. There are also other issues such as continuous night working and inadequate rest at home stations, all of which point to the need for putting in place a mechanism to give focused attention to the major issues concerning loco pilots. Meanwhile, playing to the gallery can adversely impact rail safety.

Chabahar’s opportunities and challenges

Kabir Taneja is Fellow, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation

The recently concluded contract between India and Iran, which gives New Delhi rights to invest in and operate the Shahid-Behesti terminal at Chabahar Port for another 10 years, has created many headlines. The port remains the crown project anchoring economic relations between the two countries. The deal came at a precarious time in West Asia as the war in Gaza continues unabated, Israel-Iran tensions remain critical, and the passing of Iran’s President and Foreign Minister in a helicopter accident challenges domestic politics in Tehran.

Representative of India’s thinking

There is no denying that the Chabahar project is an important endeavour for both economic and strategic reasons. At the core of it, Chabahar, for India, represents its thinking from the perspective of an extended neighbourhood, and not necessarily as part of its West Asia outlook. The port is a fulcrum of the International North–South Transport Corridor, a project looking towards seamlessly linking India with Central Asia and Russia, bypassing Pakistan. Beyond this, Chabahar is also astutely tuned into the ‘new’ realities of Afghanistan. The Taliban-led interim government in Kabul has also thrown its weight behind the port, offering an investment of $35 million as it looks to secure alternatives and not be economically reliant on Pakistani ports such as Karachi or the China-backed Gwadar. In November 2023, Taliban leader Mullah Baradar visited Chabahar, with Shahid-Behesti visible in the background.

Bilaterally for India and Iran, Chabahar is also a symptom of challenges between the two states. While there is a lot of public championing for the project, and for good reasons, if it was not for Chabahar, India-Iran ties today would look extremely dry. The reasons are multifaceted and tied to both country’s views of their national, regional, and geopolitical interests. Instead of expanding projects and economic cooperation beyond Chabahar, many older ones, such as the gas field Farzad-B which was discovered by Indian state-owned enterprise ONGC Videsh, have now been written off. Another old bilateral platform, the IranoHind shipping company, was dissolved in 2013 because of sanctions. Chabahar, is a legacy project, which has its foundations going back to 2003. This was an era when India was opening to developing economic assets abroad. Chabahar in Iran was one, Sakhalin-I in Russia, was another.

A reflection of diplomacy

The geopolitics today that surrounds India’s play in Chabahar, and Iran’s leverages, make for an interesting study. This latest iteration of the deal was signed not too long after both Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire and came critically close to a full-scale conflict. India’s Adani Group, meanwhile, has also invested in a large port project in Israel. The company bought Israel’s Haifa port on the Mediterranean Sea for $1.2 billion. This was also made possible in part due to India’s participation in new diplomatic and economic endeavours with the United States, Israel, and Arab partners, such as the I2U2 and India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

The fact that India’s buy-in into Haifa was not a constraint for the Chabahar deal to go through is not only a testament to Indian diplomacy but also for the U.S. to also recognise that this kind of access which New Delhi has is beneficial, and not detrimental, to Washington.

Recent remarks from the U.S. over potential sanctions against Chabahar stand out as myopic. India’s relations with Iran and the continuity of Chabahar’s development, which offers access to difficult political terrain such as Central Asia, and even Afghanistan, could bring in a significant level of integration and help in building alternatives to China-backed projects. Despite public discourse, China’s heavy financial might and the 2021 strategic deal with Iran, does not automatically make Tehran subservient to Beijing. Iran is a quintessential survivalist state and plays a diverse set of cards in its playbook of geopolitics.

The Biden administration would benefit by not blindly following former U.S. President Barack Obama’s doctrine on how to deal with India-Iran ties, and Chabahar, at its centre. New Delhi burnt its fingers by giving Mr. Obama too much room when it completely stopped importing oil from Iran. This took Tehran, consistently among India’s top-two suppliers of oil for decades, out of the top 10. Even if India’s thinking was to build influence in Washington around the nuclear deal negotiations, Donald Trump as the U.S. President and the unilateral exit of the U.S. under his watch from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, recalibrated how non-partisanship and the stability of critical U.S. foreign policies were to be viewed thereafter.

The bigger picture

Finally, for Chabahar, there are two main points to consider moving forward. First, the port project cannot be the singular major play in the bilateral relationship. This concentration of interests is volatile. Second, the U.S. must move towards being accommodative on sanctions against Chabahar. Viewing the port as a collateral against problematic Iranian policies in West Asia would not be an accurate understanding of the big picture of India’s own outreach towards its extended neighbourhood which could benefit larger American aims as well.

This is important to be considered at a time when the U.S. itself maintains a channel with the Iranians not only through Swiss intermediators but, increasingly, through Oman and Qatar as well.

Making light of fire safety

The fire accidents, at Rajkot and in a children’s hospital in east Delhi, are shocking. It should be made mandatory to have a fire audit every year not only in hospitals but also in places where people congregate in large numbers. The fire service authorities should inspect and issue a certificate regarding the safety of buildings. Fire drills, the condition of fire fighting equipment and the training of staff in fire fighting must be undertaken. The fire evacuation plan must also undergo checks. Alas, most checks are hardly followed.

Dr. (Col.) Rajamahendran(retd.),

Pillayarkulam, Tamil Nadu

At Chepauk

One hoped that the IPL final match, in Chennai on Sunday, would have kept spectators on the edge of their seats. It was not to be. Nevertheless, one cannot discount the hard work put in by the KKR bowlers and batters. KKR’s mentor Gautam Gambhir deserves praise for shaping the team into a formidable unit.

S. Ramakrishnasayee,

Chennai

In sharp contrast to the last edition, IPL 2024 proved to be an utter disappointment. It was purely one-sided and disappointing to witness SRH crumble under pressure. Overall, the sportsmanship and bonhomie exhibited by all teams were truly commendable.

B. Suresh Kumar,

Coimbatore

Yet another edition of the Indian Premier League has come to an end. It was indeed a totally commanding performance by KKR, trouncing SRH in a one-sided final. For the past two months, the IPL has entertained fans with some high-scoring contests barring a few matches which include the final. We now wait for the ICC Men's T20 World Cup to begin.

S. Sankaranarayanan,

Chennai

The great cricket festival came to an end in a most disappointing final. The Impact Player Rule was not very effective and one hopes that it is removed.

Mohammed Azhar V.P.,

Tanalur, Malappuram, Kerala

The IPL cricket final turned out to be a damp squib with KKR’s bowling and batting crushing SRH like a pappad.

Devadas V.,

Talap, Kannur, Kerala

The final match waned as it progressed. However, the Kolkata team deserves credit for its disciplined bowling attack and committed fielding.

Satish Reddy Kanaganti,

Tipparthy, Nalgonda, Telangana

Cannes do

Indian films are beginning to make a splash on the international stage

The moment after Payal Kapadia scripted history by becoming the first Indian film-maker to win the Grand Prix award at the Cannes film festival for All We Imagine as Light will be etched in cinematic memory. As the 38-year-old walked to the stage, she pulled along the three main women protagonists of her film, Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam, and the four posing with the prize has become the shot of the 77th edition of the festival, definitely for Indians. Bagging the second highest honour after the Palme d’Or (which went to American director Sean Baker’s Anora) for her trilingual debut feature, an Indo-French collaboration, which shines a light on the story of two Malayali nurses and migrants working in ‘Maximum City’ Mumbai, is a big win for indie cinema. The last time an Indian film was in the competition section was 30 years ago with Shaji N. Karun’s Swaham in 1994. “Please don’t wait 30 years to have another Indian film,” Kapadia said in her acceptance speech. Eschewing the usual song-and-dance trope or larger-than-life heroes, Kapadia’s film is about a friendship between three very different women. She said friendship is a very important relationship for her, “because it can lead to greater solidarity, inclusivity and empathy towards each other. These are the values we should all be striving for”.

The other important takeaway is Kapadia’s remark that “it takes a village to make a film”. Thanking her cast and crew, Kapadia talked about the Indian film-making ecosystem — “There are interesting films being made in India, and I am only a product of that.” She also rooted for the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), with which she had a run-in in 2015, where she said she watched world cinema. She was effusive about the strong film industry presence in most States, singling out the Malayalam film industry for its support to good cinema. India clearly made a splash at Cannes this year, with Kolkata’s Anasuya Sengupta winning the Best Actress in the Un Certain Regard section for her turn in Konstantin Bojanov’s The Shameless; British-Indian film-maker Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight in the parallel Director’s Fortnight selection; FTII student Chidananda S. Naik’s short Sunflowers Were The First Ones To Know winning the top prize in the official LaCinef section, Cannes’s competition for film school students; Cannes Classics releasing a remastered Manthan, Shyam Benegal’s 1976 film, and so forth. For Kapadia, this was her third outing in Cannes — she had won the best documentary prize in 2021. With the Grand Prix prize just three years later, Kapadia will inspire young independent film-makers to tell their stories, and, hopefully, get the backing they deserve.

Maximum impact

IPL’s 17th edition added a new dimension to the way cricket is played

Sunday’s Indian Premier League final between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai might have turned anti-climactic, but it should not deflect from what was an enthralling two months of cricket. KKR thrashed SRH by eight wickets to claim its third title — its first since 2014 — but the one-sided nature of the summit clash should not stain the latter’s reputation. KKR and SRH had finished seventh and tenth, respectively, in 2023, but broke out of the rut by playing some of the boldest and most attacking cricket. Eight of the nine highest IPL totals came this season, and KKR and SRH accounted for five of those. These gargantuan scores can be attributed to the Impact Player rule, which allowed an extra batter or bowler to be drafted into the playing XI. But credit is also due to the respective teams’ think-tanks that assembled such wholesome squads. KKR’s stock was built on Shreyas Iyer’s astute captaincy, the experience of Sunil Narine — most valuable player for a record third time — Andre Russell and Mitchell Starc, and a strong Indian core of Venkatesh Iyer, Varun Chakravarthy and Vaibhav Arora. SRH brought in Pat Cummins to helm the side, and under the Aussie’s calm leadership, Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma and Heinrich Klaasen redefined T20 batting.

As much as KKR and SRH broadened the horizon of T20s, IPL-17 witnessed spirited attempts by others to keep pace. Virat Kohli had his second-best IPL (741 runs) and scored at a never-seen-before rate (154.70). The belligerent hitting of Jake Fraser-McGurk and Tristan Stubbs kept Delhi Capitals in Playoffs contention for long, while Will Jacks played a crucial role in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s fairytale entry into the final four despite having lost seven of the first eight games. The competition was also enriched by Mayank Yadav’s searing speed, fast bowler Harshit Rana’s deception and the early-career promise of batters Abishek Porel and Nitish Kumar Reddy. What also stood out in this cricketing jamboree was the timelessness of Dinesh Karthik, and to a lesser extent, of M.S. Dhoni. Perhaps, the only discordant note was the absence of T20 World Cup-bound Indian stars — despite fine performances — in the business end of the tournament. But it can potentially work in India’s favour, for a week’s rest in a jam-packed calendar is a god-send. If the likes of Kohli, Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Suryakumar Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah can carry their form into the biennial extravaganza that begins on Sunday, Rohit Sharma’s men will have a fair chance of ending their long ICC trophy drought.

India relies on China for most electronic and electrical goods

Sruthi Balaji, Aashreya C.,, & Vignesh Radhakrishnan

India sources over 50% of its mobiles, automatic data processing units, and semiconductor devices from China

In FY24, China once again became India’s top trading partner. This is the sixth time in the last 10 years that China has beaten the U.S. to emerge as India’s top partner. A country is designated as a top trading partner if the total value of India’s exports to it and imports from it exceeds that of any other country.

Notably, China’s status as India’s top trading partner is primarily due to the exceptionally high volume of imports from China, which overshadows the relatively low volume of exports to China by India. That is why India’s trade deficit with China has been widening the fastest, in absolute terms, compared with other partners. India’s trade relationship with the U.S. is the opposite, with India exporting more to the U.S. than what it imports. In fact, the gap between imports and exports, or the trade balance (trade surplus in this case), has been widening in recent years.

Chart 1 shows India’s export and import in $ billion with the U.S. and China. While imports from China have surged, exports to China have remained stagnant. On the other hand, exports to the U.S. as well as imports from the U.S. have increased, though the degree of increase in exports was greater than that of the imports.

Chart 2 shows the trade deficit/surplus of important partners of India since FY15. Among India’s partners, China and the U.S. occupy the two extreme ends. With the U.S., India has a trade surplus of $36.7 billion, while with China, India has a trade deficit of $85.1 billion in FY24. Both these figures are the highest ever trade surplus and trade deficit recorded with the respective countries.

With most major trade partners, India has a trade deficit. Interestingly, the trade deficit with Russia has skyrocketed in recent years, from just $6.6 billion in FY22 to $57.2 in FY24. A majority of this is due to the import of oil at a discounted price from Russia, after the West imposed sanctions on the country. Russia is currently the chief oil source for India.

India’s trade surplus with the Netherlands has increased; this is also connected to the sanctions on Russia. About 40-45% of the crude oil sourced from Russia is converted to petrol, diesel, and other products by Indian refineries and sold to the Netherlands. The European country is sourcing petroleum products from India and not directly from Russia due to the sanctions. It then redistributes these products among its neighbours.

A majority of the items that India imports from China can be classified as electronics and electrical items. In the FY15 to FY24 period, India imported $75 billion worth of mobiles/telephones, the biggest component in the import basket. This was followed by automatic data processing units ($37 billion), semiconductor devices and diodes ($28 billion), and electronic integrated circuits ($27 billion). Chart 3 shows the tree map of India’s top 20 imports from China in the FY15 to FY24 period. Thirteen of these 20 items were electronic or electrical items.

Not only is India buying electrical and electronic items from China in bulk, but also, China is the major source for most of these items, with very few alternatives. India sourced 54% of its mobiles/telephones from China in the FY15 to FY24 period. It also sourced close to 56% of automatic data processing units, about 70% of semiconductor devices and diodes, and 32% of electronic integrated circuits and micro assemblies from China in this period. Chart 4 shows item-wise imports from China in $ billion and India’s dependency on China for that product in percentage share.

Where animals are dying by a thousand cuts

1 of 2 Sankarshan Rastogi is an ecologist. Views are personal

2 of 2 Rekha Warrier is an ecologist. Views are personal

Elections have concluded in most constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, with unemployment, inflation, and agrarian distress likely to have been the core issues motivating the voters. With more than a million abandoned cattle decimating harvests and farm-based livelihoods, however, electoral winds may blow in strange directions in this largely agrarian and electorally pivotal State. These stray cattle, or “chutta jaanwar” as they are colloquially known, were born out of the disruptions wrought on a functioning livestock economy by state policies and state-empowered vigilantes. The transport and trade of cattle without permits has been illegal in U.P. since 1955. Cattle trade, however, thrived until recently. It was enabled by a clandestine network of traders, and the tacit acceptance of communities that the meat industry is an integral part of the livestock economy.

Impact on wildlife

While the impacts of stray cattle on farm livelihoods have been widely covered, we want to highlight their toll on wildlife populations in the biodiverse Terai areas of U.P., spanning the districts of Pilibhit, Lakhimpur Kheri, and Bahraich. The U.P. Terai landscape is renowned for its thriving sugarcane agriculture and two tiger reserves that harbour populations of endangered species such as tigers, rhinoceros, swamp deer, and Bengal florican. Here, forests, grasslands, and agriculture seamlessly blend to create a vast wilderness within which people and wildlife live cheek by jowl. Paroxysmal conflicts with tigers and chronic crop losses to herbivores have been the norm across the landscape. Some people set up simple fences to protect their farms. Others, with farms adjoining protected areas, pool resources and use their influence to have fences set up along the farm-forest boundary.

With stray cattle venturing into farmlands proximate to villages and busy roads, farmers are adopting deadlier measures such as putting up razor-wire and high-voltage electric fencing. These are designed to kill or inflict debilitating injuries on anything that crosses their path. Reports of wounded cattle dying are common. But the toll these fences are likely taking on the plethora of wildlife that use these farms remains unaccounted for. In the U.P. Terai, sugarcane farmlands serve as vital wildlife movement corridors. Being able to move unhindered between protected areas is key to ensuring the survival of wide-ranging species. Ensuring this movement, while preventing and mitigating conflicts, is a huge challenge now, which is further complicated by deadly fences intended for crop-raiding stray cattle.

The potential for large populations of unvaccinated free-ranging cattle to transmit diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and lumpy skin diseases to wild populations also remains underappreciated. Multiple cases of the latter were reported recently from various districts of U.P., including parts of the Terai. The presence of large numbers of cattle within farmlands and along forest boundaries is also creating a large prey base that potentially facilitates the residence of tigers within farmlands, which creates fertile grounds for more conflicts.

Farmers recognise stray cattle as a serious menace, even as they wrestle with their beliefs in the divinity of cows. Some of their newer convictions about the extraordinariness of cows — “the only animal that inhales and exhales oxygen” — rests uneasily alongside the recognition that in terms of utility, they are outmatched by buffaloes. The ubiquitousness of tractors, the loss of grazing commons, changing aspirations, and rising input costs have made cattle rearing an increasingly impractical activity. Communities that were once pastoral have over the decades become largely agrarian, with livestock rearing primarily supporting their household needs. High-yielding buffalo breeds, so far exempt from bans on trade and slaughter, fill this niche better than cattle do. Demand for buffaloes is dented only on account of their high purchase and rearing costs.

Building cow shelters

These dueling commitments towards one’s livelihood and ideas of cultural identity result in farmers propounding innovative ideas to solve the issue. Popular among these is the suggestion that the government needs to build cow shelters, including within protected areas, to allow cattle to enjoy the forest air and readily available fodder. These sentiments mirror those expressed towards crop-raiding wildlife species in the Terai. Like many landscapes with protected areas, communities in the Terai view the tiger reserves and wildlife as exclusive government property. It is unsurprising then that they wish to see the stray cattle, which they refer to as “Yogi-Modi ki gay (Yogi-Modi’s cows)”, be cared for within the government’s protected area where, they believe, other crop raiders owned by the government reside.

Protected areas in the U.P. Terai are small, fragmented, and their most productive grasslands are declining due to environmental change. The future of several imperiled species depends on sustaining and enhancing these grassland areas. Creating cow shelters within protected areas does not serve this end. While this has not yet been mooted as a possibility by the government, given recent trends, and the fact that the U.P. government spends more on feeding stray cattle than on pensions for widows and the elderly, it is not implausible.

Who will eventually reap electoral dividends from voters’ complicated relationship with stray cattle remains to be seen. In the interim, animals both domestic and wild are dying by a thousand cuts across the Terai.

An unfortunate debate in Karnataka

K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj

The narrative has shifted from rape to the question of who leaked the videos

The narrative around the Prajwal Revanna case seems to have shifted in Karnataka. Initially, there was outrage against the Hassan MP, who stands accused of sexual abuse and rape, as well as his father, who allegedly attempted to prevent victims from testifying against Prajwal. Now, the debate has slowly shifted to who leaked the explicit content. This narrative suggests that the entire case is a “political conspiracy.”

Prajwal, who left India in April, said on video on Monday that he will be returning on May 31 and that the people who want to “thwart” his political growth have hatched this “conspiracy”.

Former Chief Minister and Janata Dal (Secular) State president H.D. Kumaraswamy, who is Prajwal’s uncle, has been relentlessly attacking the government in the State, accusing the ruling Congress and specifically Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar of orchestrating the leak of the sexually explicit videos. While maintaining that he is not defending Prajwal and has in fact appealed to his nephew to return home and cooperate with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was formed to probe his alleged crimes, Mr. Kumaraswamy has been effectively pushing the Congress to a defensive position. He has thus shifted the focus of the debate around the issue in the public.

This attempt follows Devaraje Gowda’s allegation that Mr. Shivakumar had offered him money to leak the content. Mr. Gowda, an advocate from Hassan, was the first to claim in a letter to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership in December 2023 that he had a copy of the explicit content, with 2,976 files, and had argued against giving ticket to Prajwal. He has now been arrested in a sexual abuse case.

The bone of contention between the two Vokkaliga leaders, that is, Mr. Kumaraswamy and Mr. Shivakumar, has been the mantle of leadership of the community. Mr. Shivakumar is keen on snatching the leadership from the Gowda family. As most of the victims in the case are also Vokkaligas, Mr. Shivakumar has been accused of “misusing” the videos of these women for political gains. Posters making these accusations against him turned up at many places in Bengaluru a few weeks ago.

Alleging that the SIT was being “partisan” and not probing how the videos got leaked and distributed, Mr. Kumaraswamy, along with the BJP, has demanded that the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). However, the State government has ruled out a CBI probe.

So far, the SIT has arrested three people, all linked to the BJP; raided multiple locations in Hassan; and recovered several computer devices which were allegedly used to leak the explicit content.

Since the faces of the women were not masked in the videos, those who leaked the videos have definitely caused a lot of grief to the victims. While the alleged perpetrator fled India, the victims have had to deal with the trauma of these videos being freely circulated on messenger apps.

The line of attack by the JD(S) has gone to such an extent that recently, while speaking to journalists, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah asked, “Under which law of the Indian Penal Code is leaking videos a bigger crime than rape?” He said that while leaking the videos without hiding the faces of the victims is definitely a crime, rape is a bigger crime, and arguments about the former cannot be used to mask the latter.

With Prajwal absent and Mr. Kumaraswamy holding multiple press meets to push the narrative on the leak of videos, most of the local media coverage of the issue has also been dominated by the political slugfest rather than the sexual abuse, or the impunity of the MP, or the efforts made to bring him back.

To date, of more than 90 victims, only three have lodged complaints. This led to the filing of three rape cases against Prajwal. Despite professional counsellors being deployed to talk to all the victims, the women have not been forthcoming in lodging complaints. Fear of stigma and the fact that Prajwal belongs to the politically influential family of former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda have prevented them from lodging complaints, according to sources. Keeping the focus on the MP’s alleged crimes and providing moral support to the victims may have given the women the confidence to complain, they added.

Members of civil society are now attempting to correct this narrative and bring the focus back to the alleged multiple instances of sex abuse and misuse of power by the MP. They have announced a ‘Hassan Chalo’ protest march and a rally in the district on May 30.

Railmen call off 20-day strike

New Delhi, May 27: The 20-day-old strike by railwaymen has been called off with effect from 6 a.m. to-morrow (Tuesday) by the Action Committee of the National Co-ordination Committee for Railwaymen’s Struggle.

The Action Committee, in a resolution adopted to-day, said: “Having given deep consideration to the strike situation on all the zonal railways and in other railway establishments and aware of the economic consequences of further prolonging the action, and conscious of the responsibility thrust on it in the circumstances, the Action Committee resolves unilaterally to call off the strike with effect from 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

“The committee also calls upon all railwaymen to return to work from that hour and do everything within their power to bring normalcy to the movement of trains.”

After the President, Mr. V.V. Giri’s appeal yesterday to the railwaymen to withdraw their strike and resume work which would be a gesture to help the Government to deal with questions of victimisation, etc., in a responsive manner, Mr. Fernandes, Convener of the Action Committee, and his colleagues, who are in Tihar jail, felt that the strike should be ended forthwith. They communicated this desire to the other members of the committee but there was no immediate response.

It is learnt that the Action Committee members, who are outside the jail, wanted to have a full discussion of the subject before they accepted the advice of Mr. Fernandes.

Late last night, some of the trade union leaders met Mr. Qureshi, Deputy Minister for Railways, and sought an assurance from him that there would be no victimisation after the withdrawal of the strike. The leader claimed to-day that Mr. Qureshi assured them that the Government would consider the request favourably and sympathetically.

Latest telegrams

Ootacamund, May 27: The Hon’ble Sir Arthur Knapp, Home Member had a private discussion yesterday with the Agent and Engineer of S.I. Ry. the Collector of Malabar and a few others with regard to the question of employing Moplah prisoners in Ry. construction. It is understood that the matter is now being investigated.

Menstrual hygiene in Indian prisons

M. Sivakami

What are the various policies and schemes introduced by the Indian government with respect to menstrual hygiene management? What did a study in a Maharashtra prison reveal about women prisoners and their access to water and sanitation facilities?

iStockphotoDavizro

The story so far:

India has witnessed a promising shift in the landscape of menstrual hygiene management over the years. The fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2019-2020) revealed that about eight out of 10 young women aged 15-24 years are now using safe menstrual hygiene products. While urban areas and certain demographics have seen improved usage of menstrual hygiene products, the plight of one of the most marginalised populations — women in Indian prisons — remains overlooked. In a society where prisoners are deemed unworthy of fundamental rights, female prisoners face an even greater injustice. Society clings to an unrealistic standard of female purity, refusing to accept that women, too, can commit crimes. This bias has led to a systemic oversight and neglect of female prisoner’s basic needs, including menstrual hygiene.

What is the status of menstrual hygiene in prisons?

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there are 23,772 women in Indian prisons. Of them, 77% are in the reproductive age group (18-50 years) and are likely to be regular menstruators. However, the availability of sanitary napkins has been inconsistent across different prisons in the country. The quality of sanitary napkins has also been unsatisfactory. Despite recommendations outlined in the 2016 Model Prison Manual, many States have not implemented provisions like supplying adequate water and washroom facilities for female prisoners. Overcrowding and poor socio-economic conditions further exacerbate the struggle of incarcerated women to secure basic necessities such as water, sanitary napkins, detergent, and soap during menstruation.

A study conducted by one of the authors in a prison in Maharashtra in June 2023 revealed that water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities failed to meet the demands of women imprisoned there. This presents significant challenges for women, who need more water to maintain personal hygiene during menstruation. The lack of continuous water supply also forced women to store water, taking up valuable space in the limited number of toilets available. About 50 women were forced to share just two toilets for all their daily activities, including excreting, changing napkins, and washing clothes and utensils. Women also reported feeling discouraged from using the filthy washrooms for frequent urination, which led to a greater incidence of urinary infections.

The study also found that prison authorities depended on sanitary napkins donated by non-governmental organisations. Decisions about the type, quality, and quantity of menstrual absorbents were left to these organisations, often resulting in the supply of substandard products.

What have been policy interventions?

India has been making consistent efforts to improve access to menstrual hygiene products, especially among young women through the Menstrual Hygiene Scheme which includes the distribution of free or subsidised sanitary napkins.

In 2023, India took an important stride forward by formulating the ‘National Menstrual Hygiene Policy’, to recognise menstruation as a natural process that demands more meaningful attention. At its heart lies a crucial principle: ensuring equity in the safe and dignified management of menstrual hygiene. The draft policy states: “Prioritise equity to enable all menstruating individuals, regardless of their socioeconomic status and geographical location, to have equal opportunities to access and manage their menstruation in a safe and hygienic way. Address disparities and barriers that prevent certain groups from accessing required menstrual hygiene products, resources and information.”

Remarkably, the policy identifies prisoners as a target population with a compromised access to menstrual hygiene facilities. This inclusion reflects a positive step forward. However, the policy falls short of providing a concrete action plan to enhance menstrual hygiene management in prisons. It also overlooks the Ministry of Home Affairs as a critical stakeholder that influences menstrual hygiene management in prisons.

What needs to be done?

The Indian government must ensure that basic standards of menstrual hygiene for women in captivity are met. The uneven implementation of the Model Prison Manual 2016 across States demands urgent attention as well. As a first step, the government must ensure every State adheres to the recommendations outlined in the manual. The experience of menstruation within prisons presents unique challenges that demand attention through a public health lens, particularly as part of the fight against ‘period poverty’. The next step is to encourage collaboration between public health authorities and prison administrators to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure access to adequate menstrual hygiene products and facilities while prioritising the health and dignity of women behind bars. Third, there is a dearth of empirical evidence. Therefore, there is an urgent need to conduct research to understand the current state of menstrual hygiene within prison walls.

Himani Gupta is pursuing her masters at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. M. Sivakami is professor at TISS.

The controversy over eucalyptus planting in Kerala

The Hindu Bureau

Why did the Kerala government allow the Kerala Forest Development Corporation to plant eucalyptus trees? Why were environmentalists and social activists against the order?

The story so far:

The Kerala government issued an order allowing the Kerala Forest Development Corporation (KFDC) to plant eucalyptus trees for its financial sustenance in 2024-2025. Environmentalists soon protested the decision saying the move would adversely affect forests and heighten human-animal conflicts in future. Subsequently, the head of the Forest Force submitted a report to the State Forest Minister saying it hadn’t permitted the planting of eucalyptus trees inside forests. On May 20, the government amended its order to limit permission to only cut exotic tree species from lands in the KFDC’s control.

What are KDFC and its plantations?

The KFDC was established on January 24, 1975, as part of a dynamic production forestry enterprise. According to the KFDC website, the corporation has around 7,000 hectares (ha) of plantations. The plantation working circle includes the following species: Eucalyptus grandis, Acacia auriculiformis, Acacia mangium, Acacia crassicarpa, Acacia pycnantha (also known as wattle), Alnus nepalensis, Casuarina equisetifolia, and Pinus patula.

Eucalyptus plantations have a rotation age of nine years; Acacia auriculiformis trees, 18 years; and Acacia mangium, seven years. At the end of each cycle, plantations approved by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate change are felled.

Clear-felled plantations are planted with species listed in a management plan. Before planting, experts check for soil quality and consult with the Kerala Forest Research Institute. As of this month, the KFDC website also said plantations of exotic species, including eucalyptus, would be converted to those of indigenous species once exotic flora has been felled “so as to be more ecologically and environmentally friendly”.

What was the issue with the order?

In 2021, the State government had published an eco-restoration policy. Among other things, it sought to address what it called the “proliferation of invasive species that are not suitable for our environment” and the resulting “depletion of natural forests”. Such depletion, according to the policy, was in turn forcing wild animals to move to human-occupied land in search of food and thus increasing the prevalence of human-wildlife conflict.

For example, a recent study by the Kerala State Forest Protective Staff Organisation — an association of frontline forest officers — found replacing exotic plants in forested areas with the corresponding natural species could help ensure food for wild elephants at Chinnakanal in Munnar. The Chinnakkanal landscape is prime elephant habitat in the Munnar forest division, and is filled with eucalyptus trees. The policy also acknowledged that invasive species of plants as well as animals had rendered “serious damage to natural habitats and ecosystems” and that “eradicating such invasive species … is of high priority.” Environmental activists alleged following the State’s order — permitting the KDFC to plant eucalyptus trees — contravened the policy’s aspirations and undermined efforts to beat back invasive species and mitigate human-animal conflicts.

What is eco-restoration?

Kerala has around 27,000 ha under industrial plantations. Against the backdrop of climate change and the promise researchers have said trees offer to mitigate against its worsening, the Kerala government had decided to phase out plantations of eucalyptus, acacia, wattle, and pine by 2024 and replace them with natural forests. This process is called eco-restoration. Many of these areas are currently overwhelmed with invasive species.

For example, in 2019, in the Marayoor Sandal Division in Idukki, the forest department initiated a project supported by the UNDP, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority. Some 108 hectares of exotic species were removed to allow natural grasses to flourish. The result: water streams in the area were restored after a 30-year gap.

What are colours and how do people understand them?

Vasudevan Mukunth

Colours, and the degrees of freedom associated with them, have made their presence felt in art, the organisation of social classes, natural philosophy, trade, innovation, climate change, politics, and religion

‘The Scream of Nature’ by Edvard Munch, 1893. Public domain Public domain

Colour plays an outsized role in the human experience of modern life. It invests both natural and synthetic worlds with beauty and meaning. Colours don’t deny universalism — a red sign will make you stop anywhere on the planet — yet they also make room for human cultures to appropriate them in unique, even discordant, ways. As the human understanding of colour has improved, and continues to do so, this knowledge has also broadened our sense of our place in this world, and the other life-forms with which we share it.

What is colour?

Colour is a type of information our eyes receive and process based on electromagnetic radiation. An object by itself can’t be said to have a colour — but based on which frequencies of visible-light radiation it absorbs, reflects, and/or scatters, we can perceive the object to have a particular colour.

In the human eye, the rod and the cone cells receive information in the light that strikes the eye: the rod cells record brightness while the cone cells record the wavelengths, which the human brain interprets as colour. Human beings have three types of cone cells. Each type is sensitive to light of a different wavelength, and they work together to input colour information to the brain.

The possession of three types of cone cells is why humans are called trichromats. Many birds and reptiles, on the other hand, are tetrachromats (four types of cone cells). Similarly, while human vision is restricted to wavelengths from 400 nm to 700 nm (also known as visible light), honeybees can also ‘see’ ultraviolet light and mosquitoes and some beetles can access information in some wavelengths of infrared radiation. (Humans sense the latter has heat.)

This limitation, such as it is, is why those spectacular images captured by space telescopes of celestial wonders like nebulae need to be false-coloured: to highlight the information secreted in radio waves, X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light, etc. Seen in visible light alone, many of these images will have much less visual detail.

Is there a science of colours?

There are many ways to produce specific colours. The art of mixing colours to produce others is rooted in colour theory.

Until the late 19th century, traditional colour theory specified the different ways in which dyes, pigments, and inks could be mixed to make other colours. In this paradigm, there were three primary colours — red, yellow, and blue — that when combined in different ways could produce all the colours the human eye is capable of seeing.

But modern colour theory, more accurately colour science, rejected the idea of there being three fixed colours. Instead, according to colour science, all the colours that could be produced by combining any three colours in different ways is called the gamut of those three colours. Each colour in a gamut populates a given colour space, and all colour spaces are smaller than the full range of colours the eye can see.

How are colours rendered?

There are two broad ways to render colours: additive and subtractive colouring. In additive colouring, light of different wavelengths is ‘mixed’ to yield light of one combined colour. The colours on your smartphone screens and television sets are produced in this way.

A common colour space associated with additive colouring is the RGB space: where red, green, and blue when added to each other in varying measures produces other colours.

In subtractive colouring, a colour is rendered by passing white light through a medium that absorbs, or takes away, specific wavelengths of light, leaving the rest to render a particular colour.

The typical examples include dyes, pigments, and inks. A dye is a chemical compound that can absorb certain wavelengths of light. When, say, a cloth is dyed, the dying compound forms chemical bonds with compounds in the cloth and imbues the cloth with the corresponding (subtractive) colour. A pigment does the same thing without forming chemical bonds. An ink is a solution that contains a dye, a pigment or some other colouring substance.

What are the properties of colour?

In colour science, all colours however rendered are said to have a few appearance parameters: hue, brightness, lightness, and chromaticity.

In 2002, a technical committee of the International Commission on Illumination specified the definition of hue to be the degree to which a given (perceived) colour can be said to be “similar to or different from” perceived “red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet”. Isaac Newton defined complementary colours on the basis of hue: if two colours combine to produce a greyscale colour — that is, lacking in hue — they are complementary.

Brightness is related to an object’s luminance. The luminance is the power emitted by a source of light per unit area, weighted by wavelength; the eye’s subjective perception of this power in some direction is inferred as the source’s brightness.

Lightness refers to the extent to which a coloured object appears light compared to a white-coloured object that is well lit. The chromaticity, or chromatic intensity, has to do with the human perception of colour and depends on the colour’s quality irrespective how well it is lit.

How have people related to colour?

The place and roles of colour in human cultures are too wide-ranging and multifaceted to capture in one short article. Colours, and the degrees of freedom associated with them, have made their presence felt in art, the organisation of social classes, natural philosophy, trade, innovation, cultural symbols, climate change (‘green’ and ‘greenwashing’), politics, and religion, to name a few human endeavours.

Here are just three examples:

(i) In the famous painting ‘The Scream of Nature’ by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, the sky is rendered in shades of red and orange — a combination Munch himself famously described as “blood red”, to represent an “infinite scream passing through nature”.

Why did the sky have such a terrible colour? Some experts have said this could have been the result of the eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883. One effect of this devastating event was a tremendous amount of dust in the air for years to come, and dust scatters redder light more, giving the sky the same hues.

(ii) Scientists have dated the use of a pigment called ochre by prehistoric humans to more than 2,00,000 years ago. This is illuminating because we learn something about how much intelligence these humans had. The use of ochre suggests the ability to make it, and to make ochre, you need to mix ferric oxide, clay, and sand together in the right proportions. Archaeological records of pigment use, among others, in Africa have been used to argue against Eurocentrism in the field: manifesting as the belief that, for example, behaviours typical of the ‘modern human’ first turned up around 40,000-50,000 years ago based on excavations in Europe — whereas the African record would suggest these behaviours arose multiple millennia earlier.

(iii) Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) transformed consumer technologies and industrial and household energy consumption in the 21st century — yet the transformation had to wait for the invention of blue LEDs.

LEDs use additive colouring to produce colours. In the 1970s, scientists had found a way to make LEDs that emitted red light and green light — two of the three primary colours in the RGB colour space — but they didn’t have a way to make them emit blue light.

Yet they desperately needed a blue LED because combining the three colours would produce white light, which is the most common lighting colour in household and industrial settings, and therefore had tremendous commercial value. Scientists in Japan finally found a way to make blue LEDs by the late 1980s, for which they and others had to develop sophisticated techniques to make crystals that went on to transform other industries as well.

The ninth edition of the T20 World Cup commences on June 1 co-hosted by the U.S. and West Indies. A quiz to test your knowledge on the World Cups held so far

Soorya Prakash. N

1 of 2 Visual question: Identify the players and the feat that connects them?AFPINDRANIL MUKHERJEE

2 of 2

Question 1

Who is the only player to have won two editions as captain?

Question 2

Who are the players to have won the cup as wicket-keeper captains?

Question 3

Which country was involved in two tied matches in the 2012 edition and lost both after a one-over eliminator?

Question 4

Which country has reached the semi-finals six times — most for any country in T20 World Cup history?

Question 5

Dirk Nannes, Roelof van der Merwe, David Wiese and Mark Chapman share a similarity with respect to the T20 World Cup history. What is it?

Question 6

Who is the only bowler from a non-test playing nation to pick up five wickets in an inning?

Question 7

Who has stood as an on-field umpire in most matches?

Questions and Answers to the previous day’s daily quiz: 1. The city where Nehru was born. Ans: In Allahabad (now Prayagraj) on November 14

2. The parents of Jawaharlal Nehru. Ans: Swarup Rani Nehru and Motilal Nehru. He had two sisters Vijayalakshmi Pandit and Krishna Hutheesing

3. The country with which the ‘Panchsheel’ was formally enunciated under Nehru’s leadership. Ans: China (under Premier Zhou Enlai)

4. The interim Prime Minister for a 13-day tenure following Jawaharlal Nehru’s demise. Ans: Gulzarilal Nanda

5. The prison in which Nehru began to write his autobiography. Ans: Almora prison

6. This son of a President wrote Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography. Ans: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s son Sarvepalli Gopal

Visual: Name the ‘samadhi’ of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru. Ans: Shanti Van

Early Birds: C. Saravanan| KN Viswanathan| Meena Khanna| Atul Gaur| Saheni George

Know your English

K. Subrahmanian

1 of 2

2 of 2

“Deface, efface (A. N. Ragbavan, Madras).”

“ ‘Deface’ means ‘to spoil the appearance of, to disfigure.’ When you deface something, you spoil its external appearance.

The wall was defaced by several slogans.

‘Efface’ means ‘to rub or wipe out.’ It means the complete removal of something.

The letters on the coin have been effaced through constant use.

I cannot efface that unpleasant incident from my memory.

‘Efface oneself’ means ‘to make oneself inconspicuous or regard oneself as unimportant.

You won’t notice him in any company. He is so self-effacing.

The noun form of ‘efface’ is effacement.’ The noun form of ‘deface’ is ‘defacement.’ The stress is on the second syllable in ‘deface’ and ‘efface.’ The ‘e’ is ‘de’ and the first ‘e’ in ‘efface’ are pronounced like the ‘i’ in ‘ink.’”

“Make chalk of one and cheese of another (R. Kulkarni, Bombay)”

“ ‘Chalk’ stands for something useless and ‘cheese’ for something of value. When you make chalk of one and cheese of another, you treat two things or persons unequally. You favour one person over the other.

She makes chalk of Krishna and cheese of Raju.”

“Rest assured or be rest assured (A. S. N. Murthy, Mysore)”

It is ‘rest assured.’ ‘Rest assured’ means ‘be certain that…, feel certain.’

You may rest assured that your mother is fine here.

‘Rest assured’ is a formal expression. It is followed by ‘that.’”

“The Present Continuous or Progressive Tense”

“It was mentioned earlier that verbs like smell, taste, understand, doubt, dislike, know, love are not used in the progressive. These are verbs which refer to a state of mind or feeling. There are some contexts in which these are used in the progressive tense. ‘Have’ is not used in the progressive tense when it is a ‘state’ verb. I have a job, not I am having a job. However it is used in the progressive tense when it denotes an activity.

He was having his dinner when I went to see him. It means that dinner had started and was continuing and had not ended. When ‘think’ is used in the sense of option, it does not take the progressive. I think he is a fool, not I am thinking he is a fool. When it is used in the sense of ‘plan, consider,’ it is used in the progressive. I am thinking of attending his wedding. When we go into a garden, we smell flowers. The sensation of smelling happens to us. When you take a flower and start smelling it deliberately, you can say ‘I am smelling this flower.’ You use ‘seeing’ in certain contexts.

“Can you see this?”

“No.”

“I will bring it closer. Can you see it?”

“Yes. Now I am seeing it.”

Some more examples:

I can’t hear you. I am hearing you now. I could not hear you earlier. There is something wrong with the phone.

You are imagining things.”

Published in The Hindu on February 25, 1992.

Business

- LIC Q4 net rises 2.5%, wage arrears, benefits hit growth

- Ghana ties up with Reliance Jio arm, others for 4G, 5G infra

- TVS Supply Chain Solutions turns Q4 PAT of ₹5.4 crore

- Consumer durables to get dearer on freight, input costs

- PE-VC investments soften to $39 bn: Bain

- Telcos to pay spectrum GST along with instalments

- KAL, Maran to seek ₹1,323-cr. damages from SpiceJet, Singh

- Adani Energy Solutions to raise up to $1.5 billion

- Natco Pharma Q4 net profit surges 40% to ₹386 crore

- GokaldasExportsQ4 net dips

- NSE cuts tick size for select stocks to boost liquidity

- General insurers’ GDPI may rise 32% by FY26: ICRA

- Sai Silks Kalamandir Q4 net profit rises 42% to ₹28.73 cr.

- Healthtech start-up Meradoc eyes $20 mn for expansion, AI

LIC Q4 net rises 2.5%, wage arrears, benefits hit growth

Lalatendu Mishra

MUMBAI

For FY24, LIC reported a 11.75% rise in net profit to ₹40,676 crore from ₹36,397 crore; in Q4, the insurer set aside ₹13,750 crore for staff remuneration against ₹10,381 crore in Q4 of FY23

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) reported Q4 FY24 standalone net profit grew 2.49% to ₹13,763 crore from ₹13,428 crore in the year-earlier period. Profit growth softened due to a sharp rise in wage arrears and welfare expenses.

During the quarter, LIC earmarked ₹13,750 crore towards employee remuneration and welfare compared with ₹10,381 crore in the same period last year.

But for FY24 it allocated ₹39,584 crore towards this expense down from ₹40,094 crore in FY23.

LIC’s net premium income for the quarter rose to ₹1,52,293 crore from ₹1,31,761 crore in the year- earlier period. Income from investments in Q4 also rose to ₹84,425 crore from ₹67,847 crore in the same period in FY23.

For FY24 the firm reported a 11.75% rise in net profit of₹40,676 crore compared with ₹36,397 crore in the previous year.

Siddhartha Mohanty, Chairperson, said, “We focused on directional changes in product mix . We have more than doubled our share of non-par business. Now, we intend to maximise our market share across categories.”

Ghana ties up with Reliance Jio arm, others for 4G, 5G infra

Press Trust of India

Mumbai

Ghana has signed deals with a Reliance Jio subsidiary, Tech Mahindra and other vendors to build 4G and 5G infrastructure as the African country aims at enhancing its telecom capabilities.

Ghana’s State-backed Next-Gen Infrastructure Company (NGIC) has partnered Jio’s arm Radisys, Tech Mahindra and Nokia to build the necessary infrastructure for delivering affordable 5G mobile broadband services.

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, the West African country’s Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, told reporters here that India was a “strategic choice” due to its similar demographics and Ghana wants to replicate the Indian story on telecom penetration.

“Your (India’s) demographics are just like us, the Jio model was rolled out just a few years ago, so the learnings are still fresh,” she added.

Shared infrastructure

NGIC has been allocated 5G spectrum and local telcos will be utilising the shared infrastructure to roll out the services in the next six months. As per reports, the overall contract is over $200 million.

Ms. Ekuful said Ghana is a part of the 33-nation Smart Africa alliance, and other countries in the continent will be closely watching the rollout to see whether they can also emulate the same locally.

When pointed out that Indian vendors have not executed such deals in the past and why Ghana chose them over the Chinese suppliers, she said, “It was a strategic choice for us. We don’t want to get caught up in any of the geopolitics that is currently going on. We want what is the best for our national interest.” “Ghana wants to leverage India’s experience in the field,” she added.

TVS Supply Chain Solutions turns Q4 PAT of ₹5.4 crore

The Hindu Bureau

MUMBAI

Ravi ViswanathanBIJOY GHOSH

TVS Supply Chain Solutions Ltd. reported consolidated fourth-quarter net profit of ₹5.4 crore compared with a net loss of ₹9.4 crore in the year-earlier period. On a consolidated basis, revenue for the quarter rose 4.5% to ₹2,426.3 crore.

“The normalisation of freight rates and continuous growth in the integrated supply-chain solutions (ISCS) segment have helped achieve this topline growth,” the company said in a filing with exchanges.

For the full year, the consolidated revenue was at ₹9,200 crore which was lower from ₹9,994 crore in the previous year mainly due to global trade cycle challenges in Network solutions (NS) segment which was compensated by additional business from ISCS segment.

The company during the year suffered a net loss of ₹57.7 crore compared with a net profit of ₹47.7 crore in the previous year.

Ravi Viswanathan, MD saidthe quarterly and annual results reflect the consistent growth in the ISCS segment and strong resilience, despite major headwinds,in the NS segment.

“We have made considerable progress in cross selling and customer acquisition strategy and significantly expanded our footprint within the Fortune 500 customers’ segment. Our technology-led solutions are differentiating us in the marketplace as we embark on deploying AI at scale in our customer engagements across the U.S.A, Europe and India,” he said.

“We are continuously strengthening organisation with process and technology to capitalise on growth opportunities and remain confident of our healthy business development pipeline, which will drive further growth in FY 25.”

Consumer durables to get dearer on freight, input costs

Meenakshi Verma Ambwani

New Delhi

Consumer durable makers have been hit by a surge in raw material prices like copper; and logistics and freight costs, leading them to consider raising prices of products like air-conditioners, refrigerators, and LED TVs from June.

Kamal Nandi, Business Head & EVP, Godrej Appliances, said: “Prices of commodities such as copper have shot up 25-30% over the past three months. Aluminium prices too have surged. Global freight costs have increased by 60-70%. This has put pressure on the input costs for players.

“Raw materials are usually purchased a quarter in advance and the impact will be felt more in the July quarter. Therefore, some increase is expected in the prices of products like air-conditioners in the July quarter.”

This comes just as cooling items are witnessing rising demand as heatwaves scorch many parts of the country.

For LED TV makers, prices of open cells, a critical component, have been rising since early this year.

Avneet Singh Marwah, CEO, SPPL, Indian brand licensee for Kodak and Thomson said, “We will have to raise LED TV prices by 5% in June and may need to increase it further by 3-4% in July.”

(The writer is with The Hindu businessline)

PE-VC investments soften to $39 bn: Bain

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

Mirroring global trends, Indian private equity and venture capital (PE-VC) investment softened to $39 billion in 2023, returning to pre-COVID-19 activity levels, reported Bain & Company on Monday.

Traditional sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, energy showed resilience and gained share, with some 75% of investments in 2023 compared with 60% in 2022.

The manufacturing sector in India emerged as an attractive bet for investors with investments of $2 billion growing by 20% CAGR over the last two years (2021–23), driven by supply-chain diversification, government incentives, and numerous scale assets coming to market, as per Bain & Company’s India Private Equity Report 2024. With EV expansion in India expected to reach 40% by 2030, the past year saw OEMs drive more than 70% of deal valueandlarge investments across vehicle segments.

Telcos to pay spectrum GST along with instalments

Press Trust of India

New Delhi

Telecom companies must pay GST along with the instalments paid towards spectrum charges, a senior official said.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) will hold the next round of spectrum auction on June 6 for eight spectrum bands meant for mobile phone services. The base auction price has been set at ₹96,317 crore.

Spectrum will be assigned for 20 years and successful bidders must make payments in 20 equal annual instalments in the coming auction.

The official said Goods and Services Tax (GST) must be paid at 18% by telecom companies along with each instalment.

“The GST Council in its next meeting is likely to clarify the procedure for GST payment by firms winning the bids,” the official told PTI.

The clarification will end confusion among field formations regarding the method for collection of GST in the auction process.

All available spectrum in the 800, 900, 1,800, 2,100, 2,300, 2,500, 3,300 MHz, and 26 GHz bands are part of the auction.

The total frequencies being put under the hammer are valued at ₹96,317 crore on base price.

Moore Singhi ED Rajat Mohan said under the GST law, spectrum payment is covered under licensing services for the right to use other natural resources on which tax is levied at 18%.

KAL, Maran to seek ₹1,323-cr. damages from SpiceJet, Singh

KAL Airways and Kalanithi Maran on Monday said they will seek more than ₹1,323 crore in damages from SpiceJet and its chief Ajay Singh as well as challenge the recent Delhi High Court order in the ongoing dispute between the two sides. On May 17, a division bench of the court set aside a single judge bench order that had upheld an arbitral award asking SpiceJet and its promoter Ajay Singh to refund ₹579 crore plus interest to Mr. Maran. PTI

Adani Energy Solutions to raise up to $1.5 billion

Reuters

Bengaluru

Adani Energy Solutions said on Monday its board has approved a fundraise of up to $1.5 billion.

The power distribution firm will raise funds via share issuance or other securities by way of qualified institutional placements or through any other permissible mode, it added.

Adani Energy did not give reasons for the fundraise and the issue price of the securities.

Adani Group's flagship firm Adani Enterprises will also fundraise on Tuesday.

Adani Enterprises' shares recovered to pre-Hindenburg levels during intraday trade on Friday.

Natco Pharma Q4 net profit surges 40% to ₹386 crore

The Hindu Bureau

HYDERABAD

Natco Pharma reported consolidated net profit rose 40% to ₹386.3 crore for the quarter ended March as revenue from operations rose almost 19% on the back of higher formulations exports.

Revenue from operations rose to ₹1,068.3 crore (₹897.9 crore).

A more than 34% increase in formulations exports to ₹954.9 crore (₹709.2 crore) was the highlight even as contribution of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), domestic formulations as well as the crop health sciences segments to revenue declined.

GokaldasExportsQ4 net dips

The Hindu Bureau

Bengaluru

Gokaldas Exports Limited on Monday reported a consolidated revenue of ₹818 crore for the fourth quarter compared with ₹530.1 crore in the year-earlier period and a consolidated profit after tax of ₹44.3 crore compared with ₹47.2 crore in Q4 FY23.

VC and MD Sivaramakrishnan Ganapathi said, “Our performance on a like-to-like basis reflects a strong performance.”

NSE cuts tick size for select stocks to boost liquidity

Press Trust of India

New Delhi

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has decided to introduce one paisa tick size for all stocks priced below ₹250 from June 10, in a bid to enhance liquidity and improve price discovery by allowing for more precise price adjustments.

Presently, the tick size for these stocks is five paise, which will be reduced to one paisa.

“The tick size determined for securities in T+1 settlement will also be applicable for T+0 settlement (series T0),” NSE said in a circular on Monday.

General insurers’ GDPI may rise 32% by FY26: ICRA

The Hindu Bureau

HYDERABAD

Gross direct premium income (GDPI) of general insurers in India is expected to touch ₹3.7 trillion by 2025-26, which will be an increase of 32% from the ₹2.8 trillion registered in 2023-24, ICRA said.

In the current fiscal, the GDPI is likely to increase 15.5% on the back of continued strong growth in the health segment, it said. Health segment was also behind the robust growth of insurance in FY24.

Sai Silks Kalamandir Q4 net profit rises 42% to ₹28.73 cr.

Sai Silks Kalamandir Ltd. (SSKL) reported fourth-quarter net profit rose 42% year-on-year. to ₹28.73 crore. Total revenue climbed 11.3% to ₹359.64 crore. For FY24, profit grew 3.36% to ₹100.87 crore. Total revenue for the full year rose to ₹1,373.55 crore from ₹1,351.47 crore. Bharadwaj Rachamadugu,Senior Vice President, SSKL said,“We delivereda marginal growth in revenue and profit during the yeardespite several marketadversitiesin consumer markets.”

Healthtech start-up Meradoc eyes $20 mn for expansion, AI

Meradoc Healthtech Pvt. Ltd., a start-up and an online medical services provider, is in advanced talks with venture capitalist firms to raise up to $20 million and focus on customised Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to expand its footprint in India and offer specialised treatment to subscribers, Founder & CEO Sudhir Mathur said. As part ofthis expansion,the company plans toon-board doctors and specialists full-time to cater to healthcare needs in mental wellness.

Foreign

- World leaders ‘outraged’ by Israel’s ‘barbaric’ attack on Rafah tent camp

- Coach Xavi ends Barcelona stint with a victory against Sevilla

- China agrees on cooperation with Seoul, Tokyo but issues veiled rebuke against their U.S. ties

- U.S. officials visit Taiwan after new leader assumes office, condemn Chinese drills

- ‘More than 2,000 buried in Papua New Guinea landslip’

- West Indies completes T20I series sweep

- Boro posts win but Loura loses

- At least ten persons killed after Cyclone Remal strikes Bangladesh

- Egypt military says border guard killed in 'shooting' at Rafah border

- Protests shut streets in Armenia’s capital calling for the PM to resign

- Russia to remove Taliban from ‘terror’ list, says Foreign Minister

World leaders ‘outraged’ by Israel’s ‘barbaric’ attack on Rafah tent camp

Associated Press

TEL AVIV

Around half of the dead were women, children and older adults , says Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry; Washington asks Tel Aviv to take every precaution possible to protect civilians; France, Turkiye and Italy also condemn the strikes

Little mercy: Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians in Rafah on Sunday.REUTERSReuters

Israel faced new condemnation on Monday for strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah that local health officials said killed at least 45 Palestinians, including displaced people living in tents that were engulfed by fire.

Israel has faced surging international criticism over its war with Hamas, with even some of its closest allies, particularly the U.S., expressing outrage at civilian deaths.

Sunday night’s attack, which appeared to be one of the war’s deadliest, pushed the overall Palestinian death toll in the war above 36,000.

The Gaza Health Ministry said around half of the dead were women, children and older adults.

France, a close European ally of Israel, said it was “outraged” by the violence. “These operations must stop. There are no safe areas in Rafah for Palestinian civilians. I call for full respect for international law and an immediate ceasefire,” President Emmanuel Macron said.

Erdogan’s statement

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that his country would do “everything possible” to hold “barbaric” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account over deadly strikes in Rafah.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said that bombings like the one in Rafah will have long-standing repercussions for Israel. “Israel with this choice is spreading hatred, rooting hatred that will involve their children and grandchildren,” he said.

Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas in attempts to secure a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas, said the strikes could “complicate” talks.

U.S. remarks

Meanwhile, the United States said Israel must make every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties. “As we have been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians,” a U.S. National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement.

“We are actively engaging the IDF and partners on the ground to assess what happened,” the spokesperson added.

Coach Xavi ends Barcelona stint with a victory against Sevilla

Associated Press

Madrid

Getting better: Xavi said Barca was on the right track despite not winning any titles this season. APFermin Rodriguez

Xavi Hernandez ended his stint as Barcelona coach with a 2-1 win at Sevilla in the final round of the Spanish league on Sunday.

Robert Lewandowski and Fermin Lopez scored for Barcelona, which announced on Friday it was parting ways with the former midfielder with a year left on his contract.

“We didn’t want this to end, but these are decisions made by the club,” Xavi said. “We didn’t win titles but we were on the right track. But football is like this, the directors will make their decisions. The response by the players was wonderful.”

Barcelona players bid farewell to Xavi after the match.

“We will always wish Xavi the best,” goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen said. “He’s been a friend for many years and it’s not easy to let him go... he deserves the best.”

The results: LaLiga: Sevilla 1 (En Nesyri 31) lost to Barcelona 2 (Lewandowski 15, Lopez 59).

Serie A: Frosinone 0 lost to Udinese 1 (Davis 76); Lazio 1 (Zaccagni 60) drew with Sassuolo 1 (Viti 66); Napoli 0 drew with Lecce 0; Verona 2 (Noslin 17, Suslov 37) drew with Inter Milan 2 (Arnautovic 10, 45+1).

China agrees to revive cooperation with Seoul, Tokyo, but miffed by their U.S. ties

Associated Press

SEOUL

Relations reboot: Fumio Kishida, Yoon Suk Yeol and Li Qiang attend a business summit in Seoul on Monday.REUTERSREUTERS

China’s Premier agreed on Monday to revive three-way cooperation with South Korea and Japan in the face of shared challenges, but issued a veiled rebuke against the two countries’ expanding security cooperation with the United States.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang met South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul in the countries’ first such trilateral meeting in more than four years.

In a joint news conference, Mr. Li said China wants to cooperate with South Korea and Japan on economic issues.

Mr. Yoon said the three leaders agreed to promote people-to-people and cultural exchanges, establish safe supply chain networks and work together to tackle shared environmental, health and other issues. Mr. Kishida said the three countries share a big responsibility for regional peace and that Japan will chair the next round of the trilateral leaders’ meeting.

Signs of disapproval

Despite the amicable mood, however, Mr. Li at one point expressed Chinese uneasiness about Japan and South Korea’s moves to beef up their security partnership with the U.S., which Beijing views as an attempt to form a bloc to contain China.

U.S. officials visit Taiwan after new leader assumes office, condemn Chinese drills

Agence France-Presse

Taipei

Continued support: Michael McCaul and Lai Ching-te during a meeting at the Presidential Office in Taipei.AFPHANDOUT

A senior U.S. lawmaker affirmed on Monday Washington’s support for Taiwan against Chinese “aggression”, on the first congressional visit to the self-ruled island since it swore in a new President.

Sitting down on Monday morning with President Lai Ching-te, Representative Michael McCaul — who heads the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee — said he and his colleagues stood in “strong support of this beautiful island”.

Three days after Mr. Lai was sworn in, Chinese warships and fighter jets encircled Taiwan in drills that Beijing said were a test of its ability to seize the island.

China claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory, and says it will never renounce the use of force to bring the island under its control.

Mr. McCaul on Monday condemned those “intimidating military exercises”.

“Whether it’s Putin in Russia, the Ayatollah in Iran or Chairman Xi next door to us in China, an unholy alliance is eroding peace around the world,” he told Mr. Lai.

Mr. McCaul arrived in Taipei on Sunday accompanied by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Beijing said on Monday it “firmly opposes” the lawmakers’ visit.

‘More than 2,000 buried in Papua New Guinea landslip’

Associated Press

MELBOURNE

Taking stock: Locals gather at the site of a landslip at Mulitaka village in Papua New Guinea’s Enga Province on Sunday.AFPSTR

A Papua New Guinea government official has told the United Nations more than 2,000 people were believed to have been buried alive by Friday’s landslip and has formally asked for international help.

The government figure is roughly triple the UN estimate of 670 killed by the landslip in the South Pacific island nation’s mountainous interior. The remains of only six persons had been recovered so far.

In a letter to the UN resident coordinator dated Sunday, the acting director of the South Pacific island nation’s National Disaster Center Luseta Laso Mana said the landslide “buried more than 2,000 people alive” and caused “major destruction” at Yambali village in the Enga province.

Estimates of the casualties have varied widely since the disaster occurred.

Determining the scale of the disaster is difficult because of challenging conditions on the ground including the village’s remote location, a lack of telecommunications and tribal warfare throughout the province which means international relief workers and aid convoys require military escorts.

The government estimates Papua New Guinea’s population at around 10 million people, although a UN study, based on data including satellite photographs of rooftops, estimated in 2022 it could be as high as 17 million.

West Indies completes T20I series sweep

Agence France-Presse

Kingston

Charles.AFPPHILL MAGAKOE

West Indies completed a 3-0 sweep of its T20I series with South Africa after an eight wicket crushing of the Proteas at Sabina Park on Sunday.

Set 164 to win, the Caribbean side raced to the target with 6.1 overs to spare. Openers Brandon King and Johnson Charles put on 92 in 6.4 overs with Charles in particular punishing the tourists as he battered 69 off just 26 balls.

SA had its stand-in captain Rassie van der Dussen to credit for even setting a half-decent target.

The scores: South Africa 163/7 in 20 overs (Van der Dussen 51, Mulder 36; McCoy 3/39) lost to West Indies 165/2 in 13.5 overs (Charles 69, King 44, Mayers 36 n.o.).

Toss: SA.

West Indies won by eight wickets with 37 balls to spare to clinch the three-match series 3-0.

PoM: Charles. PoS: Motie.

Boro posts win but Loura loses

Press Trust of India

BANGKOK

Former World youth champion Ankushita Boro defeated Namuun Monkhor of Mongolia in 60kg category but Abhimanyu Loura lost against Ireland’s Kelyn Cassidy in 80kg division in the second boxing World qualifiers for Paris Olympics here on Monday.

Boro started strongly and effectively blunted Monkhor’s speedy movements by tactically shifting gears to carve out a 4-1 win after three keenly-contested rounds.

However, it was an opposite result for Loura. The National Championships bronze medallist came into the second-round clash high on confidence after beating Bulgaria’s 10-time National champion Kristiyan Nikolov in a thrilling bout. But Cassidy was well prepared for the long reach of his opponent and went on to win 5-0 despite Loura giving his all in the final round.

Nikhat Zareen (women’s 50kg), Preeti (54kg) and Lovlina Borgohain (75kg) have confirmed their Paris berths by winning bronze medals at the Hangzhou Asian Games. India has fielded seven men and three women boxers in the second World Qualifiers and five of them received opening round byes.

At least 10 persons killed after Cyclone Remal strikes Bangladesh

AFPMUNIR UZ ZAMAN

Millions of people in low-lying areas of Bangladesh on Monday surveyed the tangled wreckage left by Cyclone Remal that killed at least 10 persons. “3.75 million people have been affected... 35,483 homes were destroyed and another 1,15,992 were damaged,” Bangladesh’s State Minister for Disaster Mohibbur Rahman said. afp

Egypt military says border guard killed in shooting at Rafah crossing

REUTERSAmir Cohen

Egypt’s military said on Monday that a border guard was killed in a “shooting” in the Rafah border area with Gaza, where Israeli forces are deployed, adding that it had launched a probe. “The Egyptian armed forces are investigating,” a statement said, after Israel’s Army reported a “shooting incident” on the Egyptian border. afp

Protests shut streets in Armenia’s capital calling for the PM to resign

APHayk Baghdasaryan

Protesters demanding the resignation of Armenia’s Prime Minister on Monday blocked main streets in the capital city and other parts of the country. The police said 196 people have been detained in Yerevan. Protests have roiled the country for weeks, sparked by the government's return of four border villages to Azerbaijan. afp

Russia to remove Taliban from ‘terror’ list, says Foreign Minister

AFPYURI KOCHETKOV

Russia will remove the Taliban from a list of banned terrorist organisations, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency said on Monday. “Kazakhstan has recently taken the decision, which we are also going to take, to remove them from the list of terrorist organisations,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. afp

Sports

- Free-spirited Knight Riders ace the T20 game, develop blueprint for future

- Nadal bows out in first round; Swiatek’s title defence off to a good start

- Price tag didn’t bother me too much: Starc

- BCCI announces cash reward for IPL’s groundsmen and curators

- Russell has got a magic wand: Knight Riders skipper Shreyas

- Couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift: Knight Riders’ Narine

- First batch of Indian players reach New York ahead of T20 World Cup

- TOP RESULTS

- Cummins transformed Sunrisers’ fortunes with refreshing aggression

- Harmanpreet’s hat-trick helps India prevail over Argentina

- Sanjana finishes third in 76kg category

- Indian junior women go down to Germany

- Newgarden is first repeat Indy 500 winner in 22 years

- FMSCI Indian National Rally Sprint C’ship from June 1

- Atwal tied-17 for best finish in a senior Major; Bland wins

- England’s Buttler set to miss third T20I against Pakistan

- Subhankar loses in semifinals of Austrian Open badminton

- LiVE TELECAST

- Engagements

- Cracking the complex code called captaincy in the IPL

Free-spirited Knight Riders ace the T20 game, develop blueprint for future

N. Sudarshan

CHENNAI

Shreyas’ side, with a good mix of youthful exuberance and experience, played a brand of cricket that proved too good for the others ; Gambhir and Pandit, with their behind-the-scenes tactical acumen and man-management skills, brought out the best in the Purple and Gold brigade

Flying high: Knight Riders, who had a season to remember, were served well by the established stars as well as players like Arora who scalped Head for a duck in the final. K.R. DEEPAKDEEPAK KR

Kolkata Knight Riders has always displayed a penchant to go off the beaten track. It was among the first sides in the Indian Premier League to focus on hitting a majority of the runs through boundaries.

It has bet on mystery spinners like Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy, even punted on the former’s batting as opener, kept faith in wrist spinners like Kuldeep Yadav, unearthed gems like Suyash Sharma and turned around careers like those of Rahul Tripathi.

The side also has a reputation of backing talents for long, an unheard of quality in the fickle world of T20s. Narine and Andre Russell have been at the franchise for more than a decade, and Rinku Singh since 2018. Kuldeep stayed for five years, at a time when he was far from fully formed.

KKR’s IPL-17 campaign, which culminated on Sunday with a thumping eight-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad and a third title, was the perfect amalgamation of all these qualities. The side just lost three matches as it played free-spirited cricket, trusted its experienced stars, mixed things up by blooding in youngsters and reaped the rewards.

KKR scored 200 or more six times this IPL and Phil Salt’s 435 runs at a strike-rate of 182.01 was instrumental in this. Narine scalped 17 wickets at a splendid economy rate of 6.69, and scored 488 runs at a strike-rate of 180.74.

Making a mark

Russell, who had seemed a spent force last year, chipped in with 19 wickets, and speedsters Harshit Rana (19 wickets) and Vaibhav Arora (11) had breakout seasons. Even the 18-year-old Angkrish Raghuvanshi had his moments under the sun.

Also among KKR’s strengths was the solid Indian core. Along with Harshit and Arora, Venkatesh Iyer played a stellar role, highlighted by the two match-winning half-centuries in Qualifier 1 and the final.

Varun, with 21 wickets, was only behind Harshal Patel (24) in the top wicket-takers’ list.

The tournament also highlighted Shreyas Iyer’s astute handling of his team and his own redemption arc.

Proven leader

His captaincy skills were never in doubt, for he had led Delhi Capitals to the final in 2020. But Shreyas is not in the T20 scheme of things for India, and even lost out on a central contract amidst injury setbacks and signs of mistrust between him and the cricketing establishment.

“He is pretty level-headed,” said Mitchell Starc, the Player-of-the-Match both in Qualifier 1 and the final, about Shreyas.

“Pretty calm in most situations, more so when things haven’t gone our way.

“To be part of the group with him leading... there have been moments through the year where he has seen the game a certain way and gone with his instinct and that has paid off. He thoroughly deserves his success.”

It will be a pity that such an all-conquering group — meticulously mentored and coached by Gautam Gambhir and Chandrakant Pandit — will, in all probability, be dismantled before the mega auction that will take place ahead of IPL-18.

But KKR’s T20 blueprint is sure to stand the test of time and shape many a future outfit.

Nadal bows out in first round; Swiatek’s title defence off to a good start

Associated Press

PARIS

Tough break: Nadal’s loss to Zverev was the first time he dropped a match earlier than the fourth round at Roland Garros.REUTERSGONZALO FUENTES

Rafael Nadal lost in the first round of the French Open to Alexander Zverev 6-3, 7-6(5), 6-3 on Monday in what might turn out to be the 14-time Roland Garros champion’s last match at his favourite tournament.

It is the first time in his long and illustrious career that Nadal has been beaten in two consecutive matches on clay courts and the first time he has dropped a match earlier than the fourth round at the French Open. His career record at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament is now 112-4.

The match was played with the retractable roof shut at Court Philippe Chatrier, and the loud cheers for Nadal from most in the capacity crowd of about 15,000 echoed throughout.

Nadal, who owns 22 Major trophies in all, turns 38 on June 3 and he has been dealing with hip and abdominal injuries since January 2023, limiting him to 15 matches and an 8-7 record since the start of last year.

His infrequent play dropped his ranking to No. 275 and he was unseeded for the French Open for the first time. That is why he ended up facing the No. 4-seeded Zverev.

Nadal has indicated 2024 likely would be his last season before retirement but he said Saturday that he is not 100% sure he won’t play again at the French Open. And he reiterated that after Monday's defeat.

Iga Swiatek began her bid for a third consecutive French Open title with a straightforward 6-1, 6-2 victory over Leolia Jeanjean, stretching her winning streak to 13 matches.

Swiatek, who has been ranked No. 1 for nearly every week since April 2022, put together an overwhelming 26-2 edge in winners and had just one, brief blip at Court Philippe Chatrier in the one hour one minute match: she got broken to trail 1-0 in the second set.

But after nine unforced errors in the initial two games of that set, Swiatek made only two the rest of the way en route to a 15th consecutive win at Roland Garros. Three of her four Grand Slam trophies came in Paris — in 2020, 2022 and 2023.

Reigning Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner improved to 8-0 in Grand Slam play in 2024 by defeating Chris Eubanks 6-3, 6-3, 6-4, Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova eliminated Rebeka Masarova 6-1, 6-3 and two-time Major finalist Ons Jabeur beat Sachia Vickery of the US 6-3, 6-2.

Sumit Nagal’s late resistance was not enough as his French Open debut ended with a defeat against big-hitting Russian Karen Khachanov. Nagal lost 6-2, 6-0, 7-6(5) in the opening round.

Price tag didn’t bother me too much: Starc

S. Dipak Ragav

Chennai

Take a bow! Knight Riders’ investment in Starc reaped rich rewards.VIJAY SONEJIVIJAY SONEJI

After a slow start to the season, Mitchell Starc hit top gear in the climactic phase of the IPL, returning match-winning performances in both the Qualifier 1 and final to help Kolkata Knight Riders clinch its third title.

The 34-year-old, who has not played many T20s in the last few years, spoke about taking time to find his rhythm and delivering on the big stage.

“I haven’t played a lot of T20 cricket in the last few years. So, it was about trying to find that rhythm of the format, and staying ahead of batters,” said Starc.

Elaborating on his work with bowling coach B. Arun, someone he knew from their time at RCB, the left-arm pacer said: “It wasn’t technical. It was probably a bit more tactical; there were suggestions for trying different things. Certainly, for batters I hadn’t seen or knew much about, I was going to him [Arun] or Shreyas [Iyer] or GG [Gautam Gambhir] with that sort of thing.”

“I’m on the more experienced side. So, it’s not a technical thing. Arun might suggest things here or there Glad to have made an impact when it mattered the most,” he added.

In a year when batters have taken the game to a new level, with record-high totals, Starc spoke about how the key to success was to stay level-headed.

“I think T20 is a great leveller. You can have some good days, and two days later, you can have a shocking day,” said the Australian pace spearhead.

Returning to the IPL after nine years, Starc became the costliest buy in the league’s history at ₹24.75 crore, but the speedster said the price tag didn’t bother him.

“You don’t need extra motivation. I am here as an overseas [player], and it’s [for] nights like tonight or the last game that I have been picked. I mean, there’s been jokes throughout, and there’s been friendly banter about price tags and what not. It doesn’t bother me too much.

“I think the pressure of being an overseas player or price tag, you expect that coming to the best domestic league in the world. It’s our job to perform or set an example to younger players.”

BCCI announces cash reward for IPL’s groundsmen and curators

EMMANUAL YOGINI

BCCI secretary Jay Shah on Monday announced that groundsmen and curators of all the 10 regular IPL venues will be given ₹25 lakh. “The unsung heroes of our successful T20 season are the incredible ground staff who worked tirelessly to provide brilliant pitches, even in difficult weather conditions,” Shah posted on X.

Russell has got a magic wand: Knight Riders skipper Shreyas

K.R. DEEPAKDEEPAK KR

Skipper Shreyas Iyer said all-rounder Andre Russell has a magic wand as he has given Kolkata Knight Riders crucial breakthroughs. “He’s got that magic wand... he’s looking forward to pick wickets. When I look at him, I know he can look at me. It has been a flawless season,” Shreyas said in the post-match presentation.

Couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift: Knight Riders’ Narine

R. RAGURAGU R

Kolkata Knight Riders’ Sunil Narine, who became the first player to win the ‘Most Valuabe Player’ award thrice, said winning the IPL on his birthday was the best gift he could get. “Coming into the ground, it felt like 2012. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift. I am enjoying my cricket at the moment,” Narine said.

First batch of Indian players reach New York ahead of T20 World Cup

SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

The first batch of Indian players have reached New York to take part in the 2024 T20 World Cup. Earlier on Saturday, the cricketers including skipper Rohit Sharma, pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah, and Suryakumar Yadav had left for the United States. BCCI shared a clip of the players reaching the US.

First round:

Monday: Men: 4-Zverev (Ger) bt Nadal (Esp) 6-3, 7-6(5), 6-3;

2-Sinner (Ita) bt Eubanks (USA) 6-3, 6-3, 6-4; 9-Tsitsipas (Gre) bt Fucsovics (Hun) 7-6(7), 6-4, 6-1;

15-Shelton (USA) bt Gaston (Fra) 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4; 18-Khachanov (Rus) bt Nagal (Ind) 6-2, 6-0, 7-6(5); 21-Auger-Aliassime (Can) bt Nishioka (Jpn) 6-2, 6-4, 6-4.

Women: 1-Swiatek (Pol) bt Jeanjean (Fra) 6-1, 6-2;

5-Vondrousova (Cze) bt Rebeka Masarova (ESP) 6-1, 6-3;

17-Samsonova (Rus) bt Linette (Pol) 6-1, 6-1; 8-Jabeur (Tun) bt Vickery (USA) 6-3, 6-2; 12-Paolini (Ita) bt Saville (Aus) 6-3, 6-4;

3-Gauff (USA) bt Avdeeva (Rus) 6-1, 6-1.

Sunday: Men: 8-Hurkacz (Pol) bt Mochizuki (Jpn) 4-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0, 6-3; Bergs (Bel) bt 24-Tabilo (Chi) 3-6, 7-6(5), 6-2, 6-2.

Moutet (Fra) bt 16-Jarry (Chi) 6-2, 6-1, 3-6, 6-0; Wawrinka (Sui) bt Murray (GBr) 6-4, 6-4, 6-2;

Gasquet (Fra) bt Coric (Cro) 7-6(5), 7-6(2), 6-4.

Cummins transformed Sunrisers’ fortunes

S. Dipak Ragav

Chennai

Despite playing just two T20Is since 2022 , the Australian hit the ground running this year and took a side that finished at the bottom last season to the summit clash

Guiding force: Cummins’ astute captaincy was one of the highlights of Sunrisers’ remarkable run this season.B. JOTHI RAMALINGAMJOTHI RAMALINGAM B

Sunrisers Hyderabad left an indelible mark in the competition this year. In the years to come, the Hyderabad side’s 2024 campaign will serve as an important landmark in the evolution of T20 cricket. The team lit up the IPL with its aggressive brand of cricket, amassing record totals.

One person who played a huge role in the side’s transformation was its skipper Pat Cummins.

On Sunday, the Australian came within one win of achieving an enviable record as captain in modern-day cricket.

Stellar year

Having led his national side to triumph in the World Test Championship Final and the ODI World Cup, a title in the most competitive T20 franchise-based competition would have been icing on the cake of what has been a stellar 12 months of his career as a leader.

It is not for nothing that Sunrisers Hyderabad shelled out ₹20.50 crore for his services at the player auction last year and built a squad around him.

The 31-year-old led from the front for SRH, scalping 18 wickets, the second-highest for his side.

Even more impressive is the fact that he is not even a regular in the T20s for his country.

He has played just two T20Is since 2022 and did not play in the IPL last year. But he managed to hit the ground running this year and took the side that finished at the bottom last year to the summit clash.

“I hadn’t captained any T20 cricket before this series. So I wasn’t too sure what to expect. It’s obviously quite fast-paced, a T20 game. But I think drawing on, particularly ODI captaincy, over here last year, didn’t feel too different,” said Cummins ahead of the final.

Cummins also showed that he has a pulse for the format.

“I think there’s still a strong place for kind of gut feel and intuition. I think the way Abi (Abhishek Sharma) and Trav (Travis Head) have gone out and batted this season, data probably doesn’t tell you that that’s going to be successful, but, you know, I know as a bowler, that’s pretty scary if you’re coming up against guys who are batting like that down the other end.” The backing of the skipper despite hiccups during the season was a key reason behind the team’s splendid showing.

Challenges

Leading an IPL side comes with its own challenges, especially as an overseas professional.

Giving an insight into his captaincy, SRH assistant coach Simon Helmot said. “He is a very practical guy, humble and empathetic with his fellow-teammates and coaching staff.”

SRH’s campaign may have ended on a damp squib, but Cummins’ imprint is sure to hold the side in good stead in the years to come.

Harmanpreet’s hat-trick helps India prevail over Argentina

Press Trust of India

Antwerp

Captain fantastic: Harmanpreet led the way to overcome a stern test.X@TheHockeyIndia

Captain Harmanpreet Singh led from the front with a sensational hat-trick as the Indian men’s hockey team scored a 5-4 win over Argentina in the FIH Hockey Pro League here.

Besides Harmanpreet (29, 50 and 52), Araijeet Singh Hundal (7) and Gurjant Singh (18) also scored for India, while Federico Monja (3), Nicolas Keenan (24), Tadeo Marucci (54) and Lucas Martinez (57) were on target for Argentina on Sunday.

Argentina drew first blood when Federico found the back of the net from a close range. India equalised quickly as Araijeet scored a brilliant field goal. India also earned a penalty corner but failed to capitalise as the first quarter ended 1-1.

India started the second quarter on a high note. The fast counter-attacking aggressive approach helped India extend its lead after Gurjant scored an excellent field goal.

It was Nicolas Keenan who drove into the Indian circle, beating the defenders to strike the ball into India’s goal levelling the score at 2-2.

However, India earned a PC with a minute remaining in the quarter and Harmanpreet made it 3-2 in India’s favour.

India came out in top gear in the fourth quarter as it pushed Argentina to make errors, leading to a PC being awarded with 10 minutes remaining.

The decision was changed to a penalty stroke and Harmanpreet's low powerful shot found the back of the net as India took a 4-2 lead.

Two minutes later, India was awarded another penalty stroke, which was again successfully converted by Harmanpreet.

Argentina pulled two goals back in quick succession as Tadeo and Lucas found the back of the net.

1 of 2 Sanjana.X@Media_SAI

2 of 2 Rathika. Special Correspondent

Sanjana lifts bronze

in 76kg category

LIMA (Peru): Sanjana finished third in women’s 76kg category in the World youth weightlifting championships here on Sunday.

She lifted 90kg in snatch and 120kg in clean and jerk to total 210kg and take the bronze.

Her snatch effort fetched another bronze, while her clean and jerk resulted in a silver.

Preetismita Bhoi (40kg) and Bedabrat Bharali (73kg) were adjudged the best lifters among girls and boys respectively.

Rathika wins maiden PSA Tour crown

INDORE: Tamil Nadu’s Rathika Suthanthira Seelan won a maiden Professional Squash Association (PSA) Tour title on Sunday, defeating State-mate Pooja Arthi Raghu 11-4, 11-6, 11-3 in the women’s final of the HCL Squash Tour in Indore.

“It was my first final in the PSA Challenger Tour, and to go on to win it felt super special,” Rathika said.

Indian junior women go down to Germany

Press Trust of India

Dusseldorf (Germany)

The Indian junior women’s hockey team lost 4-6 to Germany in its fifth match of the tour of Europe here on Monday.

After conceding six goals, India rallied to score four in the second half. Sanjana Horo (two), Bhinima Dan and Kanika Siwach were on target for India.

Twin strikes

Germany scored early in the first quarter and doubled its lead soon after.

Despite trailing, the Indian defence did well to successfully defend multiple penalty corners.

In the final minutes of the first quarter, India won a penalty corner but the scoreline remained 2-0 in favour of Germany. It struck its third goal soon to put itself in a dominant position at half-time.

Germany continued to dictate in the third, scoring thrice, including a successful penalty corner conversion to take a 6-0 lead.

India fought back and scored its first goal when Sanjana sounded the board late in the quarter.

She got India’s second goal before Binima Dhan and Kanika Siwach found the opposition net to reduce the margin to 4-6.

Newgarden is first repeat Indy 500 winner in 22 years

Josef Newgarden of Team Penske warded off a late challenge from Mexican Pato O’Ward to win Indianapolis 500 on Sunday becoming the first back-to-back winner in 22 years. New Zealand’s Scott Dixon finished third in the race which had been delayed by four hours due to heavy rain and lightning in the area.

FMSCI Indian National Rally Sprint C’ship from June 1

The opening race of the six-round FMSCI Indian National Rally Sprint Championship 2024 (two-wheelers) will be held at the Madras International Circuit on June 1 and 2. The top five from each qualifier will feature in the finals, to be held on December 15 and 16 in Pune. Bengaluru (July 21-22), Chandigarh (October 5-6), Guwahati (November 23-24), and Goa (December 7-8) are the other venues. The competition will comprise 12 championship classes, with cash prizes awarded to the top three berths in each category.

Atwal tied-17 for best finish in a senior Major; Bland wins

India’s Arjun Atwal produced a four-under 67 on a weather-hit final day to sign off tied 17th, with a total of 5-under 279, at the Senior PGA golf Championship, for his best finish in a senior Major at Benton Harbour, Michigan (USA) on Sunday. Richard Bland, 51, playing his first senior event on the Champions Tour, scored a a three-shot victory over Richard Green with a 17-under 267.

England’s Buttler set to miss third T20I against Pakistan

Jos Buttler has left the England squad ahead of Tuesday’s T20I against Pakistan to be with his wife, who is about to give birth to the couple’s third child. He is now set to miss Wednesday’s third T20 in Cardiff, with Moeen Ali in line to lead England.

Subhankar loses in semifinals of Austrian Open badminton

India’s Subhankar Dey lost to Indonesia’s Prahdiska Bagas Shujiwo 17-21, 15-21 in the Austrian Open International Challenge badminton semifinals at Graz on Sunday.

Roland-Garros: Sony Sports Ten 2, 5 ) & LIV, 2.30 p.m.

England vs Pakistan: 3rd T20I, Sony Sports Ten 5 & LIV, 11 p.m.

Cricket: TNCA Champion of Champions T20 tournament, final, SKM vs. Komaleeswarar, MAC, 7.30 p.m.

Cracking the complex code called captaincy in the IPL

R. Kaushik

Shreyas balanced both leadership and captaincy well while leading Knight Riders to their third title; despite a star-studded support staff, Cummins and Ruturaj displayed individual traits while Hardik had a tough time at Mumbai Indians

1 of 3 Contrasting journeys: While Ruturaj’s Super Kings blew hot and cold, Shreyas’ Knight Riders were remarkably consistent. Cummins’ Sunrisers redefined T20 batting while Mumbai Indians’ Hardik had a season to forget. AFP & AP

2 of 3

3 of 3

Cricket is the only major team sport where the captain doesn’t sport an armband. It’s also the only sport where having (capt) against one’s name entails greater responsibility than merely turning up for the spin of coin and deciding whether to attack or receive, and which is the favoured end at the start of a contest.

Then again, there is captaincy, and there is leadership. Captaincy loosely translates to being on top of the game cricket-wise, in terms of understanding the conditions and the opposition, working out strategies, zeroing in on field placements, making bowling changes, sometimes revisiting the batting order to address the demands of the situation. Leadership is more far-arching, encompassing various non-sporting elements including but not limited to calmness under pressure, the propensity to lift the spirits of when things go south, and motivational and man-management skills which recognise that there is no one size that fits all.

Captaincy and leadership can’t, and shouldn’t, be mutually exclusive, but not all captains make good leaders. There are plenty of ‘fair-weather’ skippers whose outlook is bright and sunny when everything pans out according to plan, but who slip into lackadaisical indifference when plans come unstuck for one reason or the other. To be on top of one’s leadership game when doing the front-running is natural and uncomplicated; it’s adversity that tests the true mettle of a leader because it’s in a crisis that the rest look up to you for inspiration and encouragement.

Perfect amalgam

Before IPL 2024, few had pigeon-holed Shreyas Iyer as the perfect amalgam of captaincy nous and leadership skills and yet here he is now, only the eighth skipper in the tournament’s 17-year existence to lift the trophy. Shreyas ran an excellent campaign; there will be whispers that he was only doing the bidding of the team mentor (Gautam Gambhir) and the head coach (Chandrakant Pandit) and there will be an element of truth to that. After all, especially in T20 cricket, the coach becomes cricket’s equivalent of a footballing manager whose lot it is to draw up game-plans and alternative game-plans. The fast pace at which the action unfolds sometimes calls for a dispassionate, outsider view and that’s what the back-room staff sitting on the sidelines often provides, but no matter what, the buck stops with the captain.

Some coaches, like Ashish Nehra, are firm believers in sending out explicit instructions, which not even a first-time skipper like Shubman Gill would have enjoyed. We are talking about international players, not 15- or 17-year-old kids who might require hand-holding in the nascent stages of their captaincy journey. There is something to be said for constant outside interference and suggestions/tips/orders that might be in direct conflict with the designated captain’s thinking, but that’s the direction in which T20 cricket, especially, might head going forward, what with data and analytics becoming as integral a tool in preparation as range-hitting and adding variations to one’s bowling repertoire.

Shreyas impressed with his composure and his poise under pressure, though truth to tell, Kolkata Knight Riders was seldom put under serious sustained pressure during most of IPL 2024. KKR lost just three of 14 matches – two of their fixtures were abandoned without a ball being bowled – and were an extraordinary force in the final week of the competition when they schooled Sunrisers Hyderabad twice in six nights. It might be tempting to point out that, given the resources at his disposal, Shreyas didn’t have the most challenging of tasks. After all, he had a gun opening combine in the blazing duo of Phil Salt and Sunil Narine, a charged-up No. 3 in Venkatesh Iyer, and a versatile, skilled, balanced bowling group with Mitchell Starc and Varun Chakravarthy at the forefront. But how often have we not seen a team packed to the gills with proven performers come unstuck in the heat of battle? How can captaincy not be a factor when a team runs as dominant a campaign as KKR did, brushing aside all-comers with the confidence and assurance of an outfit that knows that when it is purring along, it is well-nigh invincible?

Shreyas and Pat Cummins, a first-time IPL captain with Sunrisers Hyderabad, caught the eye the most and not necessarily because their teams finished 1-2. But unlike his KKR counterpart, Cummins is no stranger to captaincy, or leadership, having led Australia to the World Test Championship and 50-over World Cup titles in the last 12 months. That being said, leading a franchise brings vastly magnified and varied challenges compared to captaining a national side. By his own admission, Cummins didn’t know anything at the start of the tournament about many of the players that comprised the SRH family. It is to his great credit that he walked the extra mile to not just get to know their names and put faces to those names, but also to get to know them in the real sense in the limited time available, thereby nurturing a climate of trust and faith that manifested itself in exciting, exhilarating cricket.

Magnificent accomplishment

SRH had finished bottom of the pile last season, to finish runners-up 12 months on is a magnificent accomplishment that Cummins can, and must, be justifiably proud of. Daniel Vettori, the head coach, complemented rather than competed with him, the perfect recipe for success.

Of the other first-time skippers, Ruturaj Gaikwad stood out for his individualism and for not being fazed at stepping into the giant shoes vacated by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. If he was intimidated by Dhoni’s presence, Ruturaj did a great job of concealing it. He did seek out the legend for suggestions and ideas, obviously, but he didn’t crave for his approval or approbation. He sometimes had the ‘temerity’ to overlook Dhoni’s tips, but not out of spite or because he wanted to prove a point. Ruturaj might not have succeeded in steering his team to the playoffs, but there is every indication that he will get better with time. Crucially, the responsibility of leadership didn’t weigh him down when it came to his primary skillset, batting. The right-handed opener finished with 583 runs, the second highest in the tournament after Virat Kohli and nearly 200 runs ahead of Shivam Dube, Chennai Super Kings’ second-best batsman numerically.

Ruturaj avoided the banana skin that had tripped up Ravindra Jadeja’s flirtation with CSK’s captaincy a couple of seasons back with Dhoni preparing for life for the franchise after him. Where Jadeja seemed flustered and out of his depth, hurtling from one disaster to another, Ruturaj negotiated the potential pitfalls with dexterous nimbleness, portents of a long, strong alliance.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room, aka Mumbai Indians and Hardik Pandya. The latter wasn’t a first-time captain in the real sense, having led Gujarat Titans to the title and to a final in their two years of existence. But it was his first taste of captaincy at a franchise where he cut his teeth as a cricketer, and by no accounts was this a happy homecoming.

Contentious, controversial

The transfer of captaincy from the popular and universally liked Rohit Sharma to Hardik was both contentious and controversial, perhaps not helped by the manner in which the leadership succession was handled by the franchise. Hardik was well within his rights to seek MI’s captaincy when he was traded from GT; with an eye on the short- and long-term future, MI had every reason to effect a change at the top, even though Rohit had marshalled five glorious winning campaigns. The whys of the decision were anything but questionable, but the hows most certainly have been.

Without verbalising his misgivings, Rohit made it amply clear that he wasn’t amused at being deposed as captain. That the change was effected not long after he led India to the final of the 50-over World Cup, and thrilled millions of fans with his wondrously attacking batting, incensed the followers of the franchise, who turned their ire on Hardik, perhaps unfairly. The ace all-rounder was roundly booed at most venues, not least at MI’s home, the iconic Wankhede Stadium. The belief that these emotional boos would settle as the season unspooled proved ill-founded; as MI stumbled from one loss to another, Hardik was catapulted to villain No. 1, and it reflected in his returns as both batter and bowler.

It perhaps didn’t help that Hardik had to run a house divided. At various times, it appeared as if all the players were not on the same page, even though they were united by the common goal of victory. Having been on top of his game in every sense at GT, Hardik looked lost and bereft of ideas, often cutting a solitary, lonely figure with Rohit banished to the boundaries he hasn’t manned for a long time. He wouldn’t be human if that didn’t play on his mind; for all his breezy exterior, Hardik must have felt the world was unfairly picking on him, which might explain modest dividends of 216 runs and 11 wickets in 14 matches.

The dynamics will change next week in New York when Hardik lines up as Rohit’s deputy at the T20 World Cup. Rohit is far too seasoned to let the bitterness of the past cloud the immediate task at hand; after all, his brand of leadership needs no elaborate detailing, though he won’t be alone in feeling that a global title will complete his legacy.

Science

- At extremely high strain rate, copper surprises with the strength of steel

- The DAILY QUIZ

- Caterpillars may sense threats using electric fields

At extremely high strain rate, copper surprises with the strength of steel

Vasudevan Mukunth

The hotter a metal gets, the softer it becomes; it has been found that this rule also holds when the metal is subject to very low to very high strain rate; but researchers have discovered an unusual exception to this rule: at ultra-high strain rate and high temperature, copper responds more like steel

1 of 2 A worker monitors a process at a smelter of Europe’s largest copper producer Norddeutche Affinerie, in Bulgaria. File photo Oleg Popov/Reuters

2 of 2 The findings could give rise to new strategies for designing devices to use in extreme conditions like high-speed manufacturing or aerospace engineering, where high temperatures and strain rates are common Nature

The discovery of steel transformed the course of human civilisation. The stone age ended with the invention and widespread use of copper smelting and alloying copper with other elements, thus introducing metalworking, new and more durable agricultural implements, the development of culture, trade, and governments, and new weapons of war. When heated, copper turns to liquid, after which it can be moulded into a desired shape. When the mould is cooled, the metal returns to its original solid state, this time in the mould’s shape.

Iron replaced copper and tin in the iron age, but it also did something neither metal could: dissolve carbon. If iron is heated and cooled repeatedly, such that the dissolved carbon is removed until a small amount remains, the powerful iron-carbon alloy known as steel is born. Unlike copper or tin, or even iron, steel is hard — and this made all the difference.

As the economist Yanis Varoufakis wrote in his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism: “The swords of their ironclad enemies sliced through their bronze shields, their ploughs failed to cultivate the less fertile soils, the metal braces holding together their dams and temples were too weak to fulfil the ambitions of forward-thinking architects. In contrast, communities that mustered the techne, the art, of ‘steeling’ iron thrived in the fields, on the battlefields, at sea, in commerce, in the arts.”

If only the people of the bronze age had kept heating copper while straining it greatly, they’d have come across a form of the metal that could rival steel.

Deformation and strain rate

A pair of researchers, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, both in the U.S., has reported in a study that when pure copper is heated and also subjected to an extreme strain rate, it behaves like a much harder material would. They attribute this counterintuitive behaviour to new “strengthening mechanisms” that are activated in the material by the higher strain rate. The study was published in the journal Nature on May 22.

“The findings could give rise to new strategies for designing devices to use in extreme conditions like high-speed manufacturing or aerospace engineering, where high temperatures and strain rates are common,” according to a video released by Nature to accompany the paper.

Scientists have already subjected many materials to high strain rates and studied their properties in detail. In the new study, the researchers breached new ground by imparting an even greater strain rate using cutting-edge material-testing technologies.

Strain is how much a material deforms when stress is applied. Say you have a cuboidal ingot of iron and you try to push on one of its sides to change its shape into a solid parallelogram. The extent of deformation — i.e. how slanted the parallelogram is — for a given amount of force will be the strain the ingot is experiencing. A steel ingot is stronger and will require a lot more stress to achieve the same amount of strain. Those of copper or iron will require less.

Strain rate measures the rate at which strain changes. Its unit is (metres per second) per metre, effectively per second. Materials scientists know that when a pure metal is heated, it becomes softer, and they know this to be true when the material is strained anywhere between 0.000001/s and 10,000/s.

Sources of strength

In their study, the researchers — Ian Dowding and Christopher Schuh — accelerated aluminium oxide microparticles using lasers and shot them at a copper substrate at around 860 km/hr.

The use of such small stressors prevented the formation of shockwaves, which would have disrupted the material’s structures too much for the changes to be measurable.

They tracked the particles’ path using high-speed cameras and, after each impact, measured the minuscule crater that formed. And they repeated these tests at three temperatures: 20, 100, and 177 degrees C.

In their paper, they reported that “as the temperature is increased, the impact crater depth and width decrease”, meaning the copper was behaving at the impact spot like a harder material. Note that the hardness is restricted to the neighbourhood of the impact even if the whole material is maintained at that temperature.

As an alumina bullet strikes the metal at a high velocity, it rapidly deforms the metal at the site of impact, inducing an ultra-high strain of around 10 million/s.

This brutal imposition forces the material to respond — and how it responds is controlled by how the material’s strength is organised.

The copper in the researchers’ test had three sources of strength: drag-strengthening, thermal, and athermal. The purpose of each source is to prevent a particular dislocation from propagating through the material. Drag-strengthening refers to interactions between parts of the material dislocated by a stress and vibrational energy in the atomic lattice.

Thermal strength refers to the kinetic energy of the atoms in the lattice and their ability to suppress the effects of certain defects in the material.

Athermal strength refers to barriers to dislocation other than the atoms’ kinetic energy, such as the interface between two crystal structures (if different parts of the copper object have differently oriented crystal structures).

The strength inventory changes

According to the researchers, when the temperature of the copper object was increased while the strain rate was 10 million/s, the contributions of thermal and athermal strength dropped — but the contribution of drag-strengthening increased so much that the overall strength of the material (at the site) also increased. At strain rates lower than 1 million/s, the thermal and athermal sources of strength dominated, so as the temperature was increased, the copper became softer.

The result, to quote from the paper: “although pure copper is a soft metal at low strain rates and would normally be expected to soften at high temperatures, the strength of copper measured here at 10,000,000/s and 177 degrees C is more than 300MPa; this is comparable with the conventional strength of 304 steel at this temperature.” (SAE 304 steel is the most common form of stainless steel today.)

The researchers also reported similar effects with pure titanium and gold.

Since the bronze age, metals have penetrated almost all walks of life — from cookware to spaceflight, from office stationery to weapons of mass destruction. In many of these applications, they need to withstand sudden, intense impacts (either from other components from the system they’re part of or external stressors). Materials scientists thus engineer these metals in order to achieve a specific ‘strength inventory’: i.e. to have sources of strength that will resist different kinds of deformation in different operating conditions.

The new study throws a spanner in this thinking by revealing a change in the material’s strength response above a strain rate of around 1 million/s. Even at room temperature (20 degrees C), for example, the study found that the copper substrate had four-times more dynamic strength under a strain rate of 1 million/s than without any strain.

(The author is a mechanical engineer by training)

The unusual life of promethium

Vasudevan Mukunth

1 of 2 VISUAL QUESTION: X (from Q1) corresponded regularly with this man, a Russian chemist famous for discovering that groups of chemical elements had the same number of regions around their atomic nuclei in which electrons could be present, and that they could be grouped in this way to reveal other similar properties. Name him. PUBLIC DOMAIN

2 of 2

Question 1

Scientists first synthesised the element promethium in 1945 even though the Czech chemist X had predicted its existence 43 years earlier. X was in fact renowned for his study of rare-earth elements. Name X.

Question 2

In the earth's environment, promethium is produced in two ways: when europium-151, an already very rare isotope, breaks down by a rare alpha decay to promethium-147, or when uranium undergoes ___________ _______. Fill in the blanks with the name of a process that heavy radioactive nuclei commonly undergo.

Question 3

Promethium is unusual in many ways. For example, the radii of the atoms of elements 57 to 70 (by atomic number in the periodic table) shrink rather than increase as the atomic number increases. This phenomenon is called Y. Promethium, with atomic number 61, is a notable exception to this trend. Name Y.

Question 4

Promethium is also unusual because it is one of only two elements — the other being Z — in the first 82 elements of the periodic table (by atomic number) that doesn't have a stable isotope and is the element with the lowest stability of the first 84. Name Z.

Question 5

On May 22, researchers the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S. reported that they had managed to produce the first known lanthanide complex involving promethium by combining promethium ions with a ligand called ______________ _____________. Fill in the blanks.

Answers to May 23 quiz:

1. Pigments that impart yellow colour to pumpkins, canaries, etc. – Ans: Carotenoids

2. Complementary colour of yellow in the RGB colour scheme – Ans: Blue

3. Acid whose salts are primary components of Indian yellow – Ans: Euxanthic acid

4. Compound responsible for yellow-red hues of saffron dye – Ans: Crocin

5. Principal component of chrome yellow discovered in crocoite – Ans: Lead chromate

Visual: Gamboge (from Cambodia)

First contact: Ishita Sharma | Poonam Uikey | Lekshmy Harikumar | Ravita Wadhwa | Jagrati Shukla

Caterpillars may sense threats using electric fields

Karthik Vinod

A cinnabar moth caterpillar. File photo Quartl (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Caterpillars have a sixth sense that most land-based animals do not. They can sense electric fields around them with small bristles called setae on its body — a feat called electroreception. British researchers have discovered this in laboratory experiments and their findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They studied four species of caterpillars: cinnabar moth, scarce vapourer moth, European peacock butterfly, and common wasp.

Researchers have long known that aquatic and amphibious animals use electroreception to detect both predators and prey. Since 2013, scientists have also found electroreception in arthropods like bumblebees, hoverflies, and spiders. However, none of these land-based creatures use the ability to defend against predators. Caterpillars, which are also arthropods, may break this mould, using electroreception to sense predatory insects nearby.

“It works exactly the same way as [brushing a] rubber balloon on your hair,” said first author Sam England. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and was at the University of Bristol before.

Static charges accumulate on both the balloon and the hair, leading to a mutual electrostatic attraction. The balloon can then move the hair without needing contact. As an insect’s wings flap through the air, static charges build up on them. When it nears the caterpillar, the setae sense these charges by building up charges of its own. This mutual interaction gives rise to an oscillating electric field.

In the study, researchers stimulated caterpillars with a live electrode carrying a voltage oscillating at 180 Hz, to mimic an approaching wasp. In response, the caterpillars flailed and coiled, a sign that they were stressed. Caterpillars around an electrode without the voltage didn’t behave this way. The caterpillars’ setae responded to frequencies of 50-350 Hz, possibly to help distinguish between threats and non-threats, Dr. England said. The setae vibrated the most when the field frequency was 220.3 Hz — close to the rate at which many predator insects flap their wings. He suspected the caterpillars could have evolved to tune to their predator’s wingbeats. “These animals have had a lot of evolutionary pressure upon them to evolve defences because so many animals like to eat them.”

That said, scientists also “already know” that caterpillars don’t rely on electroreception alone to sense predators, Dr. England added. It supplements the other five senses. He also said that “sensory pollution” could damp the caterpillars’ electroreception. The setae are sensitive to voltage frequencies also present in overhead power cables, around 50-60 Hz. This ‘exposure’ could desensitise the setae and diminish the caterpillars’ ability to spot predators with them.

(Karthik Vinod is an intern with The Hindu)

Table of Contents

The Hindu May 28, 2024

Regional

BJP’s ads against Trinamool prima facie disparaging: SC

Six killed, life severely affected as Cyclone Remal batters south Bengal

Valley of death

Israel’s late-night strike on Rafah tent camp kills 45

Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT, says Prajwal in video

IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

‘Pudhumai Penn led to 34% rise in enrolment’

DJ shot dead at Ranchi bar, accused held in Gaya

Conservationists raise concern over Minister’s stay at ‘illegal resort’

82 nursing students fall ill in Salem; food poisoning suspected

Colonialism decimated innovation and research in India, says Governor

SPCSS-TN wants ‘Annihilation of Caste’ included as a subject in school and college curriculum

Over 38,500 officials to be involved in counting of votes in State on June 4

‘Pudhumai Penn led to 34% rise in enrolment’

Plastic producers, recyclers told to register on portal

Prime Minister Modi to visit Kanniyakumari

11 cadaveric liver transplants performed in 15 months at Rajiv Gandhi govt. hospital

U-turn flyover near Tidel Park junction on Rajiv Gandhi Salai to be completed soon, says TNRDC

Directorate of Public Health training field-level staff to focus on maternal and child health nutrition

History-sheeter murdered near Villivakkam police station

Security stepped up in airport following hoax bomb threat

Eight held for illegal sale of tickets for the IPL finals

Correction

District Child Protection Unit left high and dry after the demolition of its office

CMRL begins installation of permanent bus shelters at some locations in the city

Tamil Nadu Archives launches reprinted gazetteers, manuals

Meenambakkam, Nungambakkam record highest temperatures in the State on Monday

‘State and Centre should consider our welfare demands’

Doctor electrocuted at hostel in Ayanavaram

Four held for assaulting two teenagers at T.P. Chatram

‘Several Corporation schools lack teachers, infrastructure’

Lok Sabha poll: Chennai prepares for vote counting

‘T.N. must not levy additional taxes on power purchased by industries from private firms’

Over 80,000 applications received for teachers’ transfer in Tamil Nadu

IIT-Madras to host Paradox ‘24 for BS students from May 30

‘DMK did not plan to set up medical college in T.N.’

89 detained in the last two weeks under Goondas Act

National

Crime Branch questions bar owner over bribery charge

Net-working

Using AI to increase student enrolment

HC Registry to issue directive to courts on sexually explicit proof

Investment in technology will secure boundaries: Dhankhar

Modi’s Mysuru visit: Karnataka govt. to settle hotel expenses

POCSO complainant against Yediyurappa dies in Bengaluru

3 policemen found partying at criminal’s house; 2 suspended

Jagan attack case: verdict on bail plea of accused reserved

BJP slams Revanth over purchase of paddy

Bypoll for one MLC seat in Telangana sees 69% turnout

After fracas at camp, KSU suspends two office-bearers

Record voter turnout in J&K LS election; Assembly poll to be held soon: EC

BJP biggest Mahayuti party, says Fadnavis as Ajit eyes more seats

Maliwal assault case: Delhi court rejects bail petition of Kejriwal aide Bibhav Kumar

Indore administration takes down loudspeakers from religious places

SP MLA arrested, sent to judicial custody in 1995 case

Boy drives car with man on bonnet, police register case

Undertrial hurls slipper at magistrate inside courtroom

Over dozen houses gutted, six injured in Uttarkashi fire

Rajkot fire tragedy: no faith in State machinery, says Gujarat High Court

Attack on former Mayor Abdul Malik sparks tension in Malegaon

INDIA bloc leaders to meet on June 1 to assess poll performance, future plans

Delhi hospital blaze: 27 oxygen cylinders were on premises

‘Will return on May 31 to appear before SIT’

Man who shot dead DJ was involved in a scuffle at bar: police

Career ruined, harassment continues: Nalin Yadav

Six killed as cyclone Remal rips south Bengal

Manjhi faces threats from Naxals over Padma award

IMD forecasts ‘above normal’ monsoon

‘Ads against Trinamool prima facie disparaging’

AAP faces a critical test in the multi-cornered fight in Punjab

In Bihar, heavyweights, hat-trick hopefuls seek comeback

Battle for Ballia evokes memories of ex-PM Chandra Shekhar

INDIA bloc will win all 40 LS seats in Bihar: Rahul

PM abandoned Himachal during crisis: Priyanka

Purvanchal will deal final blow to BJP: Akhilesh

BJP won’t allow religion-based quota: Nadda

Kolkata comes to a standstill after cyclone makes landfall

14186

Three doctors arrested for tampering with evidence in Pune luxury car crash case

Congress will blame EVMs for LS election defeat, says Shah

NIA arrests five from different locations for human trafficking

Nothing ‘corrupt’ in making promises in manifestos, says SC

Gain Parvati’s grace

Hemant Soren files bail plea in Jharkhand High Court

Kejriwal seeks extension of interim bail from SC

DRDO Chairman gets a year’s extension of service

Edit

Playing to the gallery can be injurious to rail safety

Chabahar’s opportunities and challenges

letters to the editor

Cannes do

Maximum impact

India relies on China for most electronic and electrical goods

Where animals are dying by a thousand cuts

An unfortunate debate in Karnataka

Railmen call off 20-day strike

Latest telegrams

Menstrual hygiene in Indian prisons

The controversy over eucalyptus planting in Kerala controversial in Kerala?

What are colours and how do people understand them?

The ninth edition of the T20 World Cup commences on June 1 co-hosted by the U.S. and West Indies. A quiz to test your knowledge on the World Cups held so far

Know your English

Business

LIC Q4 net rises 2.5%, wage arrears, benefits hit growth

Ghana ties up with Reliance Jio arm, others for 4G, 5G infra

TVS Supply Chain Solutions turns Q4 PAT of ₹5.4 crore

Consumer durables to get dearer on freight, input costs

PE-VC investments soften to $39 bn: Bain

Telcos to pay spectrum GST along with instalments

KAL, Maran to seek ₹1,323-cr. damages from SpiceJet, Singh

Adani Energy Solutions to raise up to $1.5 billion

Natco Pharma Q4 net profit surges 40% to ₹386 crore

GokaldasExportsQ4 net dips

NSE cuts tick size for select stocks to boost liquidity

General insurers’ GDPI may rise 32% by FY26: ICRA

Sai Silks Kalamandir Q4 net profit rises 42% to ₹28.73 cr.

Healthtech start-up Meradoc eyes $20 mn for expansion, AI

Foreign

World leaders ‘outraged’ by Israel’s ‘barbaric’ attack on Rafah tent camp

Coach Xavi ends Barcelona stint with a victory against Sevilla

China agrees on cooperation with Seoul, Tokyo but issues veiled rebuke against their U.S. ties

U.S. officials visit Taiwan after new leader assumes office, condemn Chinese drills

‘More than 2,000 buried in Papua New Guinea landslip’

West Indies completes T20I series sweep

Boro posts win but Loura loses

At least ten persons killed after Cyclone Remal strikes Bangladesh

Egypt military says border guard killed in 'shooting' at Rafah border

Protests shut streets in Armenia’s capital calling for the PM to resign

Russia to remove Taliban from ‘terror’ list, says Foreign Minister

Sports

Free-spirited Knight Riders ace the T20 game, develop blueprint for future

Nadal bows out in first round; Swiatek’s title defence off to a good start

Price tag didn’t bother me too much: Starc

BCCI announces cash reward for IPL’s groundsmen and curators

Russell has got a magic wand: Knight Riders skipper Shreyas

Couldn’t have asked for a better birthday gift: Knight Riders’ Narine

First batch of Indian players reach New York ahead of T20 World Cup

TOP RESULTS

Cummins transformed Sunrisers’ fortunes with refreshing aggression

Harmanpreet’s hat-trick helps India prevail over Argentina

Sanjana finishes third in 76kg category

Indian junior women go down to Germany

Newgarden is first repeat Indy 500 winner in 22 years

FMSCI Indian National Rally Sprint C’ship from June 1

Atwal tied-17 for best finish in a senior Major; Bland wins

England’s Buttler set to miss third T20I against Pakistan

Subhankar loses in semifinals of Austrian Open badminton

LiVE TELECAST

Engagements

Cracking the complex code called captaincy in the IPL

Science

At extremely high strain rate, copper surprises with the strength of steel

The DAILY QUIZ

Caterpillars may sense threats using electric fields