Daily briefing: Latest on wrestlers’ protest; Amit Shah’s visit to Manipur; RBI’s ‘lightweight’ payment system; and more

🔴 In our Opinion section, Mrinal Pande writes: “The gesture of immersing some of the world’s most prestigious medals in the Ganga, one of India’s most sacred rivers, sad though it is, also sanctifies the resolve of women standing up to demand justice against their abusers.”

⚡Only in the Express

For many parents in Jharkhand, English medium education is a dream out of reach and means. On Tuesday, thousands waited eagerly as 37,309 students sat for entrance tests to get enrolled in one of the 80 government schools, which have been converted into English-medium CBSE model schools, and will teach students free of cost.

📰 From the Front Page

👉🏽 As tensions in Manipur continue to simmer, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has asked tribal leaders to ensure peace for at least a fortnight so that normalcy could return and the talks could be taken forward. He assured them that their demands, which include the imposition of President’s Rule in the state and creation of a separate administration for tribals, would be considered.

👉🏽 Manish Sisodia, arrested by the CBI over three months ago in connection with the Delhi excise policy case, has been denied bail by the High Court, which said that the probe agency’s “apprehension” that he “might adversely influence witnesses cannot be ignored”.

👉🏽 In Class XI-XII, most students in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka opt for Science stream. In three of these states, less than 2 per cent students opt for Arts, a Union Government study showed. In contrast, students in Gujarat, West Bengal and Punjab had the most number of students opting for Arts.

👩🏽‍💻 Must Read

“We have been coming here for many years now, but we were never scared…now, we are..”

There is a sense of fear amongst a private circus group in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag, after suspected militants killed their 26-year-old co-worker on Monday night. Deepak Kumar, whose wife is eight months pregnant, had been working with a private circus troupe for nearly seven years and was the breadwinner of his family.

With France announcing a ban on all short-haul domestic flights to curd global warming, Amitabh Sinha explains how Aviation is a relatively small contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, and how attempts to curtail these have not yielded any results as yet.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced that it is working on a lightweight, portable payment and settlements system which can be used for critical transactions during catastrophic events such as natural calamities or war. Called the “bunker” equivalent of digital payments, we explain the idea behind the payments system and when it is likely to be launched.

⏱️ And Finally…

Condoms and birth control pills were found in make-up kits gifted to 200 brides during a mass marriage programme under a government scheme in Jhabua district. Here’s a look at the latest political row in Madhya Pradesh.

🤫The Smart Cities Missions project, the deadline of which has been extended to June 2024, is one of the topics of scrutiny by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on House and Urban Affairs. Now, there is a renewed focus on cities that are lagging behind in terms of the completion rate. Read in today’s Delhi confidential!

🔊 In today’s episode of 3 Things, we talk about the tensions between the Meitei and Kuki communities in Manipur and Amit Shah’s visit, and the Shahbad Dairy murder case where a 20-year-old man stabbed his minor girlfriend to death. We also discuss how a government official from Chhattisgarh drained a reservoir after his phone fell into it while clicking a selfie.

Until tomorrow, 

Sonal Gupta and Varsha Sriram