DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES The Communist, pragmatist — and a Comrade to all CPI(M) gen secy spanned politics — a leading face of anti-Cong front to key Opposition coalition-builder `5.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 PROTESTS OVER RAPE-AND-MURDER OF JUNIOR DOCTOR IapologisetopeopleofBengal, readytoquitforthem:Mamata Junior doctors refuse to join talks: Livestream it, if SC can, why can't state govt NSA AJIT DOVAL MEETS CHINA’S WANG YI Jaishankar: 75% of disengagement problems with China sorted out RAVIK BHATTACHARYA & ATRI MITRA KOLKATA, SEPTEMBER 12 1952 - 2024 MANOJ C G NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 12 THE DIVIDE between pragmatism versus dogmatism, realonmanyoccasions,imaginedandsometimesexaggerated,perhapscapturesthelast two decades of the CPI(M)’s journey.AndSitaramYechury, the affable, soft-spoken and popular Communist leader who passed away Thursday afterbriefhospitalisation,representedonevitalpoleinthat battle. He was 72. He is survived by his wife Seema Chishti, editor of The Wire; his daughter Akhila and son Daanish. A Marxist theoretician, Yechurywasabelieverwhen it came to the Communist ideologybutshowedtherare willingnesstotestthelimitations of its hard boundaries for the imperatives of democractic — and practical — politics. Yechury’s political life, however,cannotbelimitedto the last two decades. Neither can he be framed only as a pragmatic Communist. The CPI(M) general secretary meant much more than that – from the time he emerged asabrightyoungsparkinthe party’s firmament in the 1970s, to the last nearly a decade that he headed the frontline Left party. A firebrand student leader who fought against the Emergency in the 1970s, he joined the CPI(M) when he was a university student, and wasjust32when hewas made a Central Committee CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 As Hooda curveball delays Congress list, rebels enter poll fray CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY The Congress released the namesof fourcandidatesaround 2 am, about a couple of hours afNEW DELHI, CHANDIGARH, ter it announced candidates for SEPTEMBER 12 40 seats; named the nominees for two seats later in the ASTHEnominationwinmorning; and fielded dow for the Haryana one more candidate by Assemblyelectionsdrew afternoon. The conto a close on Thursday, stituencyof Bhiwaniwas the Congress rushed to allocated for the CPI(M). field candidates for the Congress insiders DECISION said the reason for this nine seats that were un2024 decidedtillthenightbeHARYANA delay in finalising the fore, giving one conparty’s line-up for the stituency to the CPI(M). Assembly polls was forSeveralpartyleaderswholostout merChief MinisterandLeaderof on tickets entered the fray as the Opposition Bhupinder Singh Independent candidates. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MANOJ C G & VARINDER BHATIA SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 12 CM Mamata Banerjee said she waited to hold talks for ‘over two hours’ on Thursday. PTI Governor slams CM: Lady Macbeth of Bengal, will socially boycott her SWEETY KUMARI KOLKATA, SEPTEMBER 12 STATING THAT the state government has “failed in its duty” and not understood “the sentiments of the people and society”, West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose said Thursday that he would “socially boycott” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who he even called “Lady Macbeth of Bengal”. He also said “many State govt failed in its duty, says Governor Bose things are rotten in the State of Bengal”. In a statement, Bose said he was committed to the people protestingtheincidentatRGKar Hospital in Kolkata where a jun- ior doctor was raped and murdered on August 9. “Thereisviolenceinthestate, violence at home, violence on campus, violence in hospital, violence in the city… The silent majority is part of democracy, not silence to the majority. Remember, silence is violence… In solidarity with Bengal’s society, I will socially boycott the Chief Minister. I will not be sharing any public platform with the CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Gujarat edu dept, BJP order probe over party’s ‘membership drive’ in school RITU SHARMA AHMEDABAD, SEPTEMBER 12 GUJARAT GOVT ANNOUNCES FLOOD RELIEF PACKAGE P 3 Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda at a roadshow in Kurukshetra, Haryana, on Thursday. ANI External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visits the replica of the East Gate of Sanchi Stupa in Berlin. PTI FOLLOWING REPORTS and allegations of school students being made Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in an ongoing primary membership campaign in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district, the state's ruling party as well as the education department have launched an investigation into the matter. A notice has been issued to the school management by the education department. According to some reports and purported screenshots of a WhatsApp group of the KU M R Gardi Vidyalaya, a higher secondary grant-in-aid school in Anindra village of Surendranagar’s Wadhwan taluka,studentsfromClass9and upwards have been enrolled as BJP members with their “membership cards” also generated and shared in the group. Surendranagar BJP district presidentHitendrasinhChauhan called the exercise an action to defame the party. “Legal action will be taken against everyone behind this. I am investigating who is in- volved... As per primary investigationthatwehaveconducted,it was revealed that no party member, taluka president, village sarpanch, or worker had gone to the school for the membershipdrive,”ChauhantoldThe Indian Express. The minimum age for becomingaBJPmemberis18years and party functionaries claimed that the system does not accept entrybelowthatageandthusno OTP is generated. Pointing out that there are over 700 villages and 1,000 schools in the district, Chauhan CONTINUEDONPAGE2 TWO WEEKS after Indian and Chinese diplomats signalled some progressin negotiations to resolve the military standoff betweenIndianandChinesetroops along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh, External AffairsMinisterSJaishankar said Thursday that about 75 per cent of the “disengagement problems” with China have been sorted out but the bigger issue has been the increasing CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 E E X P L A I NE D SITARAM YECHURY THE OVER a month-long standoff between junior doctors and the West Bengal government worsened on Thursday as the protesters refused to join talks, following which Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that they wanted her “chair” not justice as she offered to resign “for the sake of the people”. “Ora chair chaite esheche, justicena.Amimanushersharthepadatyag korte raji achi. Ami mukkhomantritto chaina (They are here for the chair, not justice. For the sake of the people, I am ready to resign. I don't want the chief ministership),” Banerjee saidatapressconference.“IapologisetothepeopleofBengalwho expectedthattheissuewouldbe resolved today,” she said. Banerjee made the remarks after a delegation of protesting junior doctors reached Nabanna (state secretariat) but refused to join talks, insisting on their demand for live-streaming of proceedings, even as the CM waited inside for “over two hours”. “We haveno problemin livestreaming,butthematterissubjudice... We said all discussions will be documented and recorded. We kept three video cameras also. If the Supreme Court gives permission, we will share the recording with them also. When a case is sub-judice, ● Series of meetings JAISHANKAR’S REMARKS came the day NSA Doval was meeting China’s Wang Yi. Civil Aviation Minister Naidu also discussed early resumption of direct flights with his Chinese counterpart. PM Modi and President Xi are likely to meet at the BRICS Summit next month. Naidu: Discussed early resumption of direct flights with the Chinese SUKALP SHARMA NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 12 RESUMPTION OF direct passenger flights between India and Chinawasdiscussedinameeting betweenCivilAviationMinisterK Rammohan Naidu and Song Zhiyong,AdministratoroftheCivil AviationAdministrationofChina. This was disclosed by Naidu Thursday morning in a post on X which was deleted later. “As the Chairman for the 2nd Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Civil Aviation, I have been utilising the platform to engage in sideline meetings with foreign delegations. This morning,alongsideSecretaryShri Vumlunmang Vualnam and other senior officials from my ministry, I had courtesy meeting with Chinese delegation led by GOVT & POLITICS DOVAL IN RUSSIA, PUTIN PROPOSES BILATERAL WITH PM DURINGBRICS PAGE 12 Mr Song Zhiyong to exchange viewsregardingfurtherstrengthening civil aviation cooperation betweenthetwocountries,especially promoting early resumption of scheduled passenger flightsbetweenus,”Naidusaidin the post. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Behind rare Shimla communal flare-up, 3 HELD FOR ATTACK ON ARMY OFFICERS, FRIENDS NEAR MHOW local incident that pushed city to edge ‘Shoot accused or shoot me’: Rape victim in shock, statement not in SAURABH PARASHAR SHIMLA, SEPTEMBER 12 BEHIND THE communal tensions that have gripped Shimla – the first such flare-up in the statecapital in recent history – is a squabble at a barber shop, a mosquebuiltin1960,apprehensions of “outsiders” pouring into the state, and some political wrangling inside the Himachal Pradesh Assembly. Amid calls to demolish the four-storey mosque in Sanjauli district, a Muslim welfare committee that runs the religious ANAND MOHAN J INDORE, SEPTEMBER 12 Traders called a bandh in Shimla on Thursday. ANI structure Thursday submitted a memorandum to Shimla’s municipal corporation commis- sioner, urging him to seal unauthorised portions. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 THE MEN who allegedly assaultedtwoyoung Armyofficers and raped one of their two women friends near Mhow in Madhya Pradesh in the early hours of Wednesday would roam the area on motorcycles looking for people they could rob, officers investigating the case have told The Indian Express. The men had also threatened to kill the victims if theydidnotpaythemRs10lakh, investigators said. Police said they are facing a conundrum as the woman who was allegedly raped has refused to record her statement. The FIR has been filed based on a complaint by one of the Army officers, who stated, “They misbehaved with the woman, and I suspect something wrong was done to her.” “Sheonlykeepstellingusone thing – shoot the accused or shoot me. We understand she is in shock. We are trying our best to arrest the men who did this,” said a senior officer who tried multiple times to convince the woman to record her statement. Indore Rural Superintendent of Police Hitika Vasal told The Indian Express, "She is not comfortable registering her statement. We will wait until she recovers. We have arrested three persons – Anil, Pawan and Ritesh. Ritesh was acquitted in a murder case in 2019. The remaining three accused will be arrested soon.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 A herd from Nilgiris takes over NY, throws spotlight on a jumbo problem PAGE 1 ANCHOR DIPANITA NATH PUNE, SEPTEMBER 12 AT THE elegant Meatpacking district of New York, where shopfronts have names such as Rolex, Gucci and Hermes, a different kind of display is attracting the crowds — a herd of 100 wild elephants that has made its way from Gudalur in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiri hills to the US. In the parade are kind-eyed matriarchs, playful calves, bulls with outstretched trunks and grand tuskers. These elephants are made of Lantana, one of the 10 worst invasive plant species in the world, that is making food scarce for these giants in forests and driving them out. The statues of the pachyderms make up The Great Elephant Migration, a public art installation that has been to Kochi, London and Bengaluru before trumpeting into New York, where it is one of the biggest such works on display. The installation, which highlightstheimportanceof humanwildlife coexistence and the need to protect Asian elephants, is the brainchild of a UK-based conservation group, Elephant Family USA. The statues have been conceptualised by Gudalur-based The Real Elephant Collective (TREC) and sculpted from boiled Lantana by 200 tribal artisans from the Nilgiris, who make up the Coexistence Collective. “The scene in New York is hard to describe. It is amazing to see hundreds and hundreds of people, all so moved by the elephants. People who live nearby keep comingbackandvolunteeringto look after the elephants,” says Tarsh Thekaekara, a researcher and conservationist who works The Great Elephant Migration, a public art installation, in New York. Mark Warner on human-animal inclusive models of nature conservation. Tarsh, who co-founded TREC with Subhash Gautham, Subhra Nayar, and Tariq Thekaekara, says, “The logistics of travelling withtheelephantsisnotdifficult. The challenging part is to push the message of coexistence. Traditional conservation assumes that we need to protect onlythepocketsof forestsandignoretherest.Thatisnotworking. Animalsarecomingoutofforests everywhere in the world.” And who would know about human-animal conflict better than the tribals? Gudalur lies in themiddleof theWesternGhats, located between Karnataka, TamilNaduandKerala,andclose to four forest reserves, Mudumalai,Wayanad,Bandipur and Mukurthi. Locals here have grown up seeing elephants and leopards around their houses, but fatal elephant attacks have risen over the past few years. Ramesh Madan, who is in his 30s and belongs to the Betta Kurumbatribe,says,“WhenIwas achild,anelephantortwowould come (to our houses) in the jackfruit season. I have never known so many elephants to come near our houses, as has been happeninginthelastfewyears.Whenwe gointotheforesttocollectthings, I can see that Lantana has taken over large parts. It is the reason whyelephantsarecomingoutof the forest.” Aweedthatsportsclustersof small,colourfulflowers,Lantana camara was brought to India by the British as an ornamental plant in the 1800s. According to a study in the Journal of Applied Ecology in October 2023, Lantana has penetrated over 5,74,186 sq km of India, including 50 per cent of the country’s natural areas. In a takeover by Lantana, which is fast-growing and toxic, a forest gets completely matted, not allowing for CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad