We recommend that you start your day by reading these five special Express stories.
1. J&K govt formation
In three days since the fractured verdict — the PDP has 28 seats, the BJP 25 in a House of 87 — the debate within the PDP centred on whether or not to ally with the BJP. There was serious disagreement within the party on the issue.
READ: Shift in PDP stance on BJP, J&K Governor Vohra to meet both for govt formation talks
2. Mumbai attacks
It now emerges — The Indian Express has obtained and authenticated 4,396 phone calls made to the PCR, running into 89 hours of conversations — that control room operators failed to relay to personnel on the ground specific information about people hiding in different parts of the two hotels.
READ: Taj, Oberoi guests and staff made SOS calls, PCR didn’t relay whereabouts
3. Uttarakhand floods
For the last seven years, Shahi has been shuttling between Uttarakhand and his native Batisha village in Nepal, where his wife and three children live. He spends nine months in Uttarakhand working as a porter for Char Dham yatra pilgrims or NIM students and as supervisor of Nepali labourers working on road projects. Following the June 2013 Uttarakhand flash floods, he and his team of labourers were engaged in building a new trekking route in Kedarnath. Shahi.
READ: The men rebuilding Kedarnath
4. The Bharat Ratna debate
Madan Mohan Malviya has got the Bharat Ratna almost 69 years after his death. Did he get India’s prestigious postcolonial civilian honour for being a proponent of the Hindu Mahasabha, a political organisation founded in 1915 to espouse the Hindu political cause, or did he get it for building an educational institution called the Banaras Hindu University (BHU)?
READ: On the Bharat Ratna, a question
5. India tour of Australia
It was a day where the queues around the coffee shops in and around the MCG seemed longer than those at the beer stations. It was a day suited for settling down in a cosy jumper and holding a warm cuppa.
READ: Freezing cold, coffee queue, beer drunks … it all happened at ‘G’