Daily Briefing: Delhi sees record rainfall; India to take on South Africa in T20 World Cup final; and more

For the first time after 1936, Delhi received its highest single-day rainfall on Friday. As a fresh record was set in 88 years, the canopy at Terminal 1 of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport collapsed, killing a taxi driver. We take a deep dive into how Delhi came to a standstill following incessant rains.

The impact of the heavy spell across the Capital could be felt hours later beyond waterlogged areas, traffic jams and power outages. Even as drains continued to overflow highlighting the UT’s glaring waterlogging crisis, Lieutenant-General V K Saxena and the AAP government got a new flashpoint to spar over.

🏏 2024 ICC T20 World Cup Final

India and South Africa – who have waited for the Cup to come home for far too long – are historically disinclined towards winning big games, packed with players carrying painful so-near-yet-so-far memories. In today’s Sports Column, Sandeep Dwivedi writes that the unimaginative and the insensitive are calling the 2024 ICC T20 World final on Saturday a Chokers Derby with redemption as the reward.

📰 Express Explained

An extraordinary 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 witnessed the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi use special provisions in the Constitution imposing suspension of civil liberties, mass arrests, the cancellation of elections, and rule by decree. On June 25 this year, India entered the 50th year of the imposition of the Emergency which had sweeping executive and legislative consequences on the country. Vikas Pathak explains the story of the Emergency.

👩‍💻 Express Opinion

‘Shockingly, Modi and his BJP-RSS friends are “enlightening” the next generation about a period in which they played a dubious role.’

In today’s Opinion piece, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav with his biographer Nalin Verma comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders invoking the Emergency period in Parliament as the newly-elected 18th Lok Sabha met. “Instead of letting Parliament function as a forum to discuss pressing issues, the BJP is back to misusing the House to misinterpret the history of Emergency,” he argues.

⚡ Big Picture

Four years after fleeing a juvenile home and accumulating over 20 cases, Himanshu is a gang leader on the radar of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) currently running his network virtually from Portugal. At merely 21, he hit headlines again after the June 18 shooting inside a burger franchise in Delhi’s Rajouri Garden — that left a man dead — padded the police dossier against him in Jhajjar, Rohtak and Delhi.

🎥 Movie Review

Kalki 2898 AD, the Telugu language sci-fi film which released this week may have Prabhas as the headliner, but it is Amitabh Bachchan all the way, writes The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta. She also says she can’t remember a recent film of this staggering size and scale, mounted with such ambition, being such a plod to begin with. Read the review to find out why.

Until next time,
Vibha B Madhava

Business As Usual by E P Unny