Daily Briefing: On jobs, N-energy and insurance laws

On that note, let’s get to the rest of the edition👇

🏛️ In Parliament

A host of reforms is under discussion or on the table this Winter Session of Parliament. We bring you the latest from the House:

On rural jobs: Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan introduced the Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Grameen) Bill, 2025, or the VB-G RAM G, in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, which seeks to repeal the rural employment guarantee scheme, MGNREGA. The move sparked considerable uproar as the Opposition protested over the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name and the increased financial burden on states.

👉 Some in the BJP and NDA have also expressed apprehension over the political ramifications of the G RAM G Bill. An NDA leader claimed that the BJP had assured its allies that the Bill would be sent to a parliamentary panel for further discussion.

👉 The Bill makes a provision to pause the jobs scheme during peak agricultural season to ensure the availability of agricultural labour. But did MGNREGS lead to a shortage of farm labour in the first place? Evidence is rather weak, Harish Damodaran explains.

On nuclear energy: The government is keen to push through another Bill introduced in Parliament on Monday: Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Bill, 2025 (SHANTI). The Bill will repeal the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and the Civil Liability Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, as India aims to replace coal energy with cleaner nuclear energy. Crucially, the Bill addresses investor concerns and could open the doors to foreign funding.

On insurance: The Lok Sabha passed the Sabko Bima Sabko Raksha (Amendment of Insurance Laws) Bill, 2025, that introduces changes to India’s insurance policy laws. Among other things, these provisions strengthen the enforcement and supervisory powers of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI). It empowers the IRDAI chairperson to order searches, seizures and inspections of insurance-related entities in case of irregularities.

⚡Only in Express

Night rider: What makes commercial aviation so dependent on just one airline? IndiGo’s domination of the night sky. The new crew-rest-and-duty rules limit the number of flights a pilot can operate between midnight and 6 am. IndiGo’s domestic flights in this six-hour window outpace other airlines by a huge margin. Sukalp Sharma brings you a detailed picture of IndiGo’s size and scale, what caused the crisis, and what’s next for the airline.

📰 From the Front Page

The links: One of the shooters involved in the mass shooting in Australia’s Bondi Beach, Sajid Akram, is from Hyderabad, India. Sajid was killed during the attack, and the other shooter, his son Naveed, is in critical condition. The Telangana DGP has said that Sajid migrated to Australia in November 1998, and that his “radicalistaion” appears to have “no connection with India”. When The Indian Express reached his house in Hyderabad, here’s what we found.

🎧 For more on the Bondi Beach attack, tune in to today’s ‘3 Things’ podcast episode.

Relief? A Delhi court has dismissed the Enforcement Directorate prosecution complaint (equivalent to a chargesheet) against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case. The court said that the ED’s case was based on a private complaint by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy and not a predicate offence by another agency. The ED plans to challenge the court order in the High Court and file a fresh complaint in the case.

📌 Must Read

Uncounted: Draft electoral rolls for five states/UTs were published on Tuesday under the Special Intensive Revision exercise, removing over 1 crore names from the voters’ list. In West Bengal alone, 58 lakh names were struck off for reasons ranging from death and migration to duplication and unsubmitted enumeration forms. Data shows that most deletions were in Assembly seats with sizeable Hindi-speaking populations.

In harmony: The Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence in Jammu has been operational for the past one-and-a-half months, despite protests from right-wing Hindu organisations seeking to scrap the admissions of the first batch. Their contention? A majority of the students belong to the Muslim community. But inside, with bhajans playing in the common rooms, there’s little pushback from the students themselves over eating norms or uniform requirements.

The struggle: Once, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was a formidable force in Indian politics. Today, as it marked its 100th anniversary, incidentally the same year as the RSS, there was little, if any, fanfare. Columnist C Raja Mohan reflects on the CPI’s reversal of fortunes — and why it’s too early to write its obituary.

⏳ And Finally…

The 2026 IPL mini auction in Abu Dhabi was a spectacle as always, with franchises shelling out crores for their star picks. The evening belonged to the knights and the kings. Kolkata Knight Riders forked out a whopping Rs 25.30 crore for Cameron Green and another Rs 18 crore for Matheesha Pathirana, while Chennai Super Kings took up Kartik Sharma and Prashant Veer for Rs 14.20 crore, each, marking the top four buys. Among these names, two are uncapped Indian players i.e. they haven’t played any games for the national team in any format before. Jammu and Kashmir pacer Auqib Nabi, another uncapped Indian, fetched Rs 8.4 crore from the Delhi Capitals. We speak to the players and their families about hitting the jackpot.

That’s all for today, folks! Until tomorrow,
Sonal Gupta

Business As Usual by EP Unny