Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated the Bundelkhand expressway and said that attempts were being made by “some people to collect votes by distributing free revdis (sweets)” and warned that this “revdi culture” could be dangerous for the development of the country. He also said that the “double-engine government is not taking this shortcut” and that it is “living up to the expectations of people by building roads and new rail routes.” Hours later, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal slammed the Prime Minister for his remarks. The chief minister said giving free and quality services to the public was not free revdi, adding that free revdi included giving undue benefits to certain corporates and ministers. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today said it will support Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha for the Presidential elections scheduled on July 18. The decision was taken in the PAC meeting chaired by Kejriwal. The AAP’s pledge to support Sinha would ensure he gets over 4 lakh votes, even as NDA’s candidate Droupadi Murmu is comfortably poised to sail through the election by expectedly garnering at least 6.60 lakh votes. On AAP’s decision to support Sinha, a senior party leader told The Indian Express: “The AAP will contest the Assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh this year, where the BJP is in power and the Congress is the principal Opposition. It made no sense for the party to give a handle to the Congress to whip up the narrative that AAP is BJP’s B-team.” Refuting the charges levelled against the late Congress leader Ahmed Patel by the Gujarat Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing charges of fabrication of evidence and conspiracy linked to the 2002 riots, the Congress today said that the “SIT is dancing to the tune of its political master and will sit wherever it is told to”. The party stated that the “mischievous charges” manufactured against Patel is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “systematic strategy to absolve himself of any responsibility for the communal carnage unleashed when he was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002”. Political Pulse Housing Navjot Singh Sidhu and Bikram Singh Majithia already, the Patiala Central Jail has acquired another VVIP inmate. This week, Punjabi singing star Daler Singh Mehndi landed in jail after his petition on immigration fraud charges was dismissed. Apart from Sidhu, Majithia and Mehndi, the jail also houses Chief Minister Beant Singh’s assassin Balwant Singh Rajoana and IAS officer Sanjay Popli. Overcrowded like most jails – housing 2,450 against the sanctioned capacity of 1,801 – the prison has been trying to meet the demands of its special inmates. Navjeevan Gopal brings to you stories from the Punjab’s VIP prison. The year-long farmer agitation against the Centre’s three now-repealed agriculture laws during 2020-21 has boosted the morale of farmer groups in Haryana, who now regularly hold protests on various issues concerning their rights or interests. Some recent examples include farmers’ over two-month-long dharna for compensation for their damaged crops and their campaign against the central government’s Agnipath scheme. The Bharatiya Kisan Union’s leader Rakesh Bains says: “The victory of farmers against three farm laws has given them hopes that they can win if they are ready to struggle for long.” The farmer groups in the state are now gearing up to launch an agitation against the process of restoration of “illegally-sold shamlat deh (common land)” to the gram panchayats. Sukhbir Siwach reports. Express Explained Eleven districts of Bengal reported at least 65 cases of black fever or ‘Kala-Azar disease in the last couple of weeks, a senior official of the health department said, based on state-administered surveillance. What is kala-azar or black fever disease? What are its symptoms? What does the treatment include? Read here. At a time when paintings of western masters are fetching astronomical amounts, x-ray studies have revealed two artworks underneath canvases by Vincent van Gogh and Amedeo Modigliani this week. While Dutch master Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman in the collection of National Galleries of Scotland has a hidden self-portrait, curators at Israel’s Hecht Museum have identified three previously unknown sketches by Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani beneath his 1908 canvas Nude with a Hat. How x-rays are used to study art? How was the Van Gogh self-portrait discovered? We explain. Weekend Reads How many kinds of palm have you met? 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