Daily Briefing: BJP suspends Nupur Sharma over hate remarks; Black Money Act order against Anil Ambani shows offshore assets worth Rs 800 crore

From BJP cracking down against its spokespersons to the Black Money Act order against Anil Ambani – here are today’s top stories.

The Big Story

Simmering for weeks now, the outrage over two BJP spokespersons’ derogatory remarks against Prophet Muhammad and the Muslim community spread to the Gulf countries as calls emerged on social media for a boycott of Indian products. The ruling BJP suspended its national spokesperson Nupur Sharma and expelled its Delhi media head Naveen Kumar Jindal over their comments while Qatar, Kuwait and Iran summoned India’s ambassadors to their countries.

Only in the Express

In part-3 of The Indian Express series on tracking class 5A students of the Delhi government’s Veer Savarkar Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, we found that as the children navigated coursework in the classroom, the challenges outside were equally daunting. Especially when the pandemic has been particularly harsh on children from economically weaker sections and working-class families.

In this edition of the Idea Exchange, the country’s latest pace sensation Umran Malik talks about his first full IPL season with Sunrisers Hyderabad, his family, his early years in Jammu & Kashmir, and his love for fast bowling.

From the Front Page

Alleging detection of undeclared offshore assets and investments adding up to over Rs 800 crore, the Mumbai unit of the Income Tax Investigation Wing passed a final order in March 2022 against Anil Ambani, Chairman of the Reliance (ADA) Group, under the 2015 Black Money Act (BMA). In February 2020, Ambani had declared to a UK court that he was “bankrupt” and his net worth was “zero.”

Must Read

With five days left for the June 10 Rajya Sabha election, the six Congress MLAs, including a minister, who had kept away from the Taj Aravali resort in Udaipur joined the rest of the legislators sequestered at the resort two days after the party “deadline”. The MLAs were flown to Udaipur in a private aircraft following a meeting with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. They were chaperoned by Gehlot himself and reached around 1 pm.

In an interview with The Indian Express, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha, who is also the Tripura BJP chief, talks about his biggest challenge yet: the June 23 by-elections in four constituencies in the state. He also talks about the challenges before him in the government, the Assembly elections early next year, and the ties with ally Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura.

Internal documents shared by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang with The Indian Express showed that the company’s team in India did not take down an alleged network of fake accounts that were engaged in inflating posts shared by Vinod Sonkar, BJP MP from Kaushambi, after it realised that the lawmaker’s own account might have been part of coordinating the network.

And Finally…

In just under an hour and a half, Rafael Nadal produced a clay-court masterclass to defeat debutant finalist Casper Ruud in straight sets to lift his record-extending 22nd Grand Slam and 14th French Open title. The Spaniard’s dominant display was yet another showing of his trademark mixture of smart tactics and ruthless shot-making.

Delhi confidential: The Congress’s stock response to questions regarding the return of Rahul Gandhi as party president has been that the media should wait as the internal election process of the party is underway. But the internal election process does not stop state units from demanding that Rahul be made the party chief.

Last week, the Delhi police arrested 10 people in connection with a kidney transplantation racket. The racket, which ran across three states, targeted young, poor, and houseless men. In this episode of ‘3 Things’, we talk about how the gang operated, the reason why such rackets are prevalent in the country, and what can be done to stop them.

Until tomorrow,
Leela Prasad G

Business As Usual by EP Unny