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Journalism of Courage
Good morning,
It’s polling day in Bihar! As many as 121 seats are voting in the first phase of the Assembly elections today. RJD leader and the Opposition’s CM face, Tejashwi Yadav, is in the fray, aiming for a hat-trick in Raghopur. Other key contests include: Independent candidate and Tejashwi’s estranged brother, Tej Pratap Yadav (Mahua); Deputy CM and BJP leader Samrat Chaudhary (Tarapur); BJP’s cultural pick, folk singer Maithili Thakur (Alinagar). Follow live updates.
In the last Assembly polls, RJD led with 42 seats, followed by BJP with 32. But the 2024 Lok Sabha elections flipped the trend — NDA allies (BJP, JD(U), LJP-RV) outperformed RJD.
A new challenger, Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, is hoping to shake things up. Once a strategist, Kishor is now in the arena himself, tapping into voter ‘anger’ over issues like youth migration. But will this translate into votes for the debutant? Read Vandita Mishra’s ground report.
On that note, let’s get to the rest of the edition👇
In a stunning upset, Zohran Mamdani became New York City’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor. The win caps Mamdani’s meteoric rise, propelled by his savvy social media presence and a campaign that struck a chord among NYC’s disgruntled youth and immigrants.
‘Mamdani Mubarak’: South Asians celebrated the victory with this greeting, writes Surbhi Gupta, the New York-based South Asia Editor at New Lines Magazine. According to her in-depth analysis, Mamdani not only changed how political campaigning is done in the US, but also reshaped South Asian American politics, bringing together a host of different nationalities, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, and religions. Moreover, in a world where immigrant politics has divided most countries, his win resonated across the world.
Dhoom Machale finale: In his fiery victory speech, directly addressing US President Donald Trump, Mamdani refused to apologise for his identity — an immigrant, a Muslim, a socialist — while promising hope and change to a packed City Hall. He walked off the stage with Sunidhi Chauhan’s ‘Dhoom Machale’ playing in the background. But Mamdani’s choice of a Bollywood song — as non-serious as it gets — for a moment so significant comes as no surprise. Right from his days as ‘Young Cardamom’, when he was rapping about chapati and ‘Chhoti Bahu’, Mamdani has always woven politics into his music.
Zoom out: Besides the NYC mayoral polls, the Democrats won several other contests, including the big-ticket gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia. This comes a year after Democrats faced a crushing defeat in the general elections. These victories may signal growing dissatisfaction with Trump’s presidency, but the lack of unity among Democrats may spoil their chance to build upon this triumph. Read our takeaways.
Also read: Mamdani’s win reminds us that identity is no substitute for strategy by Sayu Bhojwani
Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi doubled down on his “vote chori” offensive against the Election Commission and the BJP on Wednesday. Calling them the ‘H files’, Gandhi alleged that the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections were “stolen” and that 25 lakh fake votes were cast in the state. Gandhi said five methods were used to “steal” votes: fake photographs, voters affiliated to the BJP in UP voting in Haryana, blurred photographs, deleted voters, and house number zero shown on the address. Read his allegations in detail here.
Spot check: Among the places he mentioned were Hodal, where two houses had 66 and 501 voters, respectively, and Rai, where the photograph of a Brazilian national was used to cast multiple votes. The Indian Express visited both places to verify the claims. In Hodal, our reporters found the two addresses to be of large plots with multiple homes, and in Rai, they tracked down four of the women whose photographs were of the Brazilian national. Read our ground report.
Meanwhile, Gandhi’s duplicate voters allegation has put the spotlight on a key Election Commission tool that has quietly gone unused for two years: the deduplication software designed to identify similar entries in the electoral rolls.
Corruption cloud: Glaring irregularities have been found in the execution of the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), the flagship training programme of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE). The complaints include absentee students, fake documentation and non-existent Training Partners (TPs) and Training Centres (TCs). As many as 178 TPs and TCs have been blacklisted, and the Ministry has begun recovering payments given to them.
Big dawgs: When cheetahs were brought to Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno and Gandhi Sagar, apex predators like lions and tigers were absent, leopards were moved out, and herbivores were brought in. But as the government prepares a third home for the cheetahs in the state’s largest wildlife sanctuary in Nauradehi, the fastest big cats on the planet will, for the first time, have to compete with an apex predator: tigers.
‘Reverse job work’: As steep tariffs make Indian exports uncompetitive in the US and hurt production, the government is stepping in to help exporters. The Indian Express has learnt that a government panel is mulling new Special Economic Zone (SEZ) norms, which will boost manufacturing and help exporters access the domestic market.
Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March against the British salt monopoly is considered one of the most powerful protests in history. Many, however, are unaware of how the British extracted tax on salt. They did so by drawing an inland customs line, or the ‘Great Hedge of India’, to control movement. Today, a British entrepreneur hopes to “rewrite the narrative” by acknowledging the truth of her ancestors. She’s running 100 marathons in 100 days, tracing the Great Hedge of India, the 4,200 km route that winds through nine Indian states.
That’s all for today, folks! Until tomorrow,
Sonal Gupta
