Daily Briefing: SC on ‘timeframe’ to grant statehood to J&K; Chandrayaan-3’s rover detects sulphur on Moon; and more

🚨 Big Story

The Supreme Court has asked the Centre if it has a time frame and roadmap to grant statehood to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir which was bifurcated into two Union Territories – J&K and Ladakh in 2019.

As the apex court has been hearing arguments by the petitioners against the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution which guaranteed special status to Jammu and Kashmir, let’s have a look at the key grounds of challenge.

⚡ Only in Express

Express Adda | The 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be Modi vs. Modi with no one from the Opposition able to stand up against him (Prime Minister Narendra Modi), said Ruchir Sharma, Chairman, Rockefeller International, and Founder of Breakout Capital at the Express Adda on Monday. 

🏏 Past a period of uncertainty, India and Pakistan, cricket’s El Clasico, gears up for a summer of familiarity, beginning with the Asia Cup to the World Cup. Don’t miss our daily updates from Venkata Krishna B, who’s at Pallekele to cover the Asia Cup 2023!

📰 From the Front Page

As China released the 2023 edition of its so-called “standard map” incorporating disputed areas and including its claims over Arunachal Pradesh and the Aksai Chin region, India lodged a “strong protest” through diplomatic channels and said that such steps only “complicate the resolution of the boundary question”.

Ahead of Assembly polls in five states later this year and the Lok Sabha elections next year, the Centre has reduced the price of domestic cooking gas by Rs 200 per cylinder. According to the BJP insiders, ground reports and surveys had revealed that price rise was contributing to dissatisfaction among women voters which the party’s strategists wanted the government to address.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is set to revive the process of procuring six mid-air refuellers after failing to make any headway during two earlier attempts over the last two decades.

👩‍💻 Must read

⚖️ In our Opinion section today, Fali S Nariman elaborates on why we need the Basic Structure of the Constitution: “By the Constitution 44th Amendment Act 1978, Parliament declared that Articles 20 and 21 could never be suspended, even during the proclamation of an Emergency — simply because what is provided for in the said articles is a basic feature of the Constitution.”

🌒 After releasing data from an instrument studying the temperature profile of the lunar surface, the ISRO on Tuesday said another instrument on Chandrayaan-3 had detected the presence of several elements on the Moon– most notably Sulphur, whose direct evidence was not available yet. Read our report for more

Cocaine sourced from South American countries, hidden inside shipping containers; LSD paper concealed in books; and a village in Maharashtra used by drug traffickers to receive consignments– these are just some of the ways drugs are making their way to Goa. The Indian Express takes a look

⌛ And finally

♟️ Out of the 83 Grandmasters India has produced, 29 are from Tamil Nadu and 15 began their journey at one school: Chennai’s Velammal Vidyalaya. We take a deep dive into India’s ‘chess factory’, which is home to nearly one in five Grandmasters. 

🤫 The Karnataka election heat, it appears, is still not over — even 100 days after Siddaramaiah took oath as the Chief Minister, with a new verbal duel on social media between two Karnataka leaders over “misinformation”. Don’t miss today’s Delhi Confidential for more!

🎧 In the latest episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we discuss Neeraj Chopra’s Gold win at the World Athletic Championships, the ‘premature’ release of a former UP minister and wife convicted of murder, and the recent suicides at Kota.

Until next time,

Anamni Gupta and Arushi Bhaskar