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Journalism of Courage
Big Story
With just days to go before the Gujarat Assembly elections, the campaign trail is heating up with the Congress and BJP launching scathing attacks against each other on Monday. Here’s what happened:
🔴 Addressing a public rally in Surendranagar, PM Narendra Modi slammed the Congress for calling him names, including the promise to show him his “aukat” (status or position), instead of focussing on development issues. He pointed to Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar joining Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Maharashtra, asked voters to “punish” the “Narmada protesters”.
🔴 Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi chose the tribal-dominated Mahuva reserved constituency to hit the Gujarat campaign trail. Here, he said that his party stood for the rights of the Adivasis and treated them as the “first owners of the country” while the BJP called them Vanvasis and “snatched their land to give them to industrialists”.
Only in the Express
In our opinion section today, Shyam Saran writes on the recently-held COP27 climate summit: “The focus on the loss and damage issue was used to deflect attention from critical issues, including the repeated failure of the developed countries to own up to their historical responsibility for climate change.”
From the Front Page
July 7 was no ordinary day for the residents of Mod Kuba, which marks the tail-end of the 357-km-long Kutch Branch Canal (KBC) of the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) on the Narmada river, among the centrepieces of the BJP’s campaign narrative in poll-bound Gujarat. Water started flowing through the Narmada canal around midnight. But their joy was short-lived, with a section of the canal near the village developing a breach within 24 hours.
On August 5 this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed a monetary penalty of Rs 32 lakh on a public sector bank for non-compliance with certain provisions of Reserve Bank of India (Fraud classification and reporting by commercial banks and select FIs) Directions 2016. However, it did not provide details of the non-compliance or violations by the bank.
Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) Labour Commissioner R L Rishi, wanted in connection with the gangrape of a 21-year-old woman, and absconding for over a month, was arrested by the A&N Police. Sources said Rishi arrived at Port Blair airport from Chennai following which he was arrested.
Must Read
As work continues for the completion of the 13.3-km-long ‘missing link’ project that’s expected to decongest the six-lane Mumbai-Pune Expressway, we take a look at the construction of the twin tunnels, which, at 24 metres each, are set to be Asia’s widest.
A lot is at stake for the BJP this time in the Nandod constituency of Gujarat, which covers both the Statue of Unity and the Sardar Sarovar Dam, two of the Modi government’s pet projects. We break down the politics of Nandod.
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had given environmental clearance for the ambitious Rs 72,000 crore development project on the strategically important Great Nicobar Island. We explain the proposal, purpose and concerns it raises.
And Finally
As Iran’s national anthem rang out inside the Khalifa Stadium before the team’s opening World Cup match against England, the players stood together in silence expressing solidarity with the protests led by women back home against the ruling regime. We report from Qatar on how the game was more than a football match for Iran.
Delhi confidential: Ahead of MCD polls, BJP national vice-president Baijayant Panda’s warm ties with many BJP chief ministers seemed to have helped the party put up an impressive show of strength on Sunday.
🎧 In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we take a look at the murder of an ex-navy man by his son, Indian volunteers and vendors at the FIFA world cup, and journalist Gauatam Navlakha’s arrest in Elgaar Parishad case.
Until tomorrow,
Aneesa PA and Rahel Philipose
