eye THE SUNDAY EXPRESS MAGAZINE The Urban Tribe While dating sites have lost their sheen, meetup platforms are the new convergence grounds JAIPUR,LATECITY FOUR-PAGE PULLOUT FEBRUARY9,2025 14+4PAGES,`6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA DELHI ASSEMBLY 70 36 12 Total Seats VERDICT 2025 Majority mark PARTY-WISE VOTE SHARE IN ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS Muslimdominatedseats (Total:7) BJP 1 AAP BJP 22 48 BJP 2025 43.57% 6.34% INC 53.57% 4.26% 3.66% 32.19% 54.34% 9.65% 2025 2020 6 SCseats (Total12) AAP BJP 4.53% 38.51% 2015 (▲▼) Change in seats from 2020 TotalSC Seats 45.56% 2020 (▼40) (▲ 40) AAP AAP ■ BJP ■ AAP Others 3.82% 4 8 Source:ECdata AAP OUSTED, CONG STUCK AT ZERO, VOTERS HAND OVER CAPITAL’S KEYS TO BJP AFTER 27 YEARS Aam aadmi verdict: BJP for Delhi ‘WILL RETURN LOVE WITH VIKAS’ 5-fold jump in BJP seats: PM promises to build modern city BJP workers celebrate in New Delhi on Saturday. Praveen Khanna MALLICA JOSHI, JATIN ANAND, GAYATHRI MANI & SAMAN HUSAIN NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 8 ENDING ITS 27-year exile from power in the national Capital and handing the ruling AAP a stunning defeat, the BJP swept the Delhi Assembly elections Saturday, bagging 48 of the 70 seats in the House. The remaining 22 seats went to AAP while the Congress drew a blank for the third time in a row. AAP leader and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia were among the prominent leaders who lost. Of the AAP tally of 22 – down from 67 and 62 seats in 2015 and 2020 respectively – most came from the reserved constituencies (8 out of 12) and Muslimmajority seats (6 out of 7). Thankingthe peopleof Delhi for reposing faith in the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a gathering at the partyheadquartershoursafter the verdict, said, “Delhi has liberated itself from a decade of AAPda (calamity)... Delhi’s voters have shown the truth to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president J P Nadda celebrate the victory in the Delhi Assembly elections, at the party headquarters in the Capital on Saturday. Praveen Khanna BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 8 OPTIONS: MP, NEW MLA, SURPRISE PICK Who will be Delhi CM? VERDICT With high stakes, BJP weighs in many factors 2025 DELHI JATIN ANAND & GAYATHRI MANI NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 8 BALANCING GENDER, caste and community with experience, its vision of a “Delhi befitting the status of India's capital city” and consolidating, for the future, a political mandate that has eluded it for close to three decades — these are the factors that are likely to guide the BJP's decision while picking its Delhi Chief Minister, according to party sources. According to sources, discussions on a potential CM began soon after the announcement of CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 In 13 seats, Congress tally more than AAP’s margin of loss ANJISHNU DAS & LALMANI VERMA CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 theparty'sfinallistof candidates in January, coinciding with the beginning of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public meetings in the city later that month. So far, the discussions are learnt to have revolved around possibilities ranging from picking one of its seven Lok Sabha MPsfromthe Capital—sixof the seven are first-time Parliamentarians — to choosing one of its new legislators with the highest victory margin, especially a woman leader, for the post. In addition, sources said, the selection of “more than one deputy chief minister” was also a possibility. INCLUDES ARVIND KEJRIWAL, MANISH SISODIA SEATS ● Behind BJP’s Capital comeback after 27 years ● Tracing AAP map, where it is still standing ● Cong sees silver lining in AAP loss PAGES 5,7, 8, 9 SEVERAL AAP stalwarts, including Arvind Kejriwal, lost by margins smaller than the votes secured by the Congress in their seats. In all, there were 13 such seats out of 70. Incidentally, the Congress failedtoopenitsaccountinDelhi Kejriwal’s New Delhi seat was one of 13 where the AAP defeat margin was less than votes for Congress . ANI for the third time in a row. If Kejriwal lost from New Delhi, Manish Sisodia was defeated from Jangpura, Saurabh BharadwajfromGreaterKailash, Somnath Bharti from Malviya Nagar and Durgesh Pathak from Rajinder Nagar, all seats where theCongressgotmorevotesthan the defeat margin of the AAP. BJP’sParveshVermadefeated Kejriwal—theAAPchiefhadwon AAP TALLY FALLS FROM 62 TO 22 SEATS The deserted AAP office in New Delhi on Saturday. Tashi Tobgyal Kejriwall crumbled: BATTLELINES BLUR City falling apart, graft Delhi L-G vs CM: Now ‘double cloud, blame game... CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 engine’ on parallel tracks? APURVA VISHWANATH NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 8 ONE REFRAIN in the BJP’s election campaign instates has been its rhetoric around the benefits of a “double engine” — the party in power in the state working with the NDA-ruled Centre. In Delhi, this rhetoric rings closer home to reality. Indeed, the BJP’s electoral victory Saturday sets the stage for easing of the prolonged legal tussle over the state’s “unique constitutional status” between the Centre and theformerAamAadmiParty-led government. As it stands now, Article 239AAof theConstitution,keeps services, land, police and public order out of the control of the elected government. While the pre-eminence of the Lieutenant Governor (LG) was accepted in land, police and public order, theissueof servicescontinuedtobeakeyareaof conflict between the Centre and the state. Two Constitution benches of the Supreme Court had twice, in 2017andagainin2023,accepted the Delhi government’s position CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MALLICA JOSHI & JATIN ANAND NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 8 IN APRIL 2024, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, his former deputy Manish Sisodia, former health minister Satyendar Jain, communicationsin-chargeVijayNair and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh were in jail. The party’s toughestelectoralbattlewasjust 10 months away. Saturday’s results indicate the missing leadership had a more significant impact on the party than it let on. While Jain was arrested in an alleged money laundering case, the rest were behind bars in the excise policy case being probed by the ED and CBI. All of them were released on bail between August and October. Seniorpartyleaderssaidthat the stints in jail, so close to the elections, was among the key reasonsfortheAAPbeingunable CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Region where Chandrayaan-3 landed on Moon 3.7 billion years old: ISRO PAGE 1 ANCHOR ANJALI MARAR BENGALURU, FEBRUARY 8 A NEW study by ISRO scientists has estimated the age of the region where Chandrayaan-3 landedontheMoontobe3.7billion years, coinciding with the period when primitive, microbial life first emerged on Earth. A team of scientists from ISRO’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, has for the first time performed morphological and topographic analysis of the Chandrayaan-3 landing site, now popular as the Shiv Shakti point. India,onAugust23,2023,became the first country to successfully make a soft landing on the Moon's south pole. With the help of data generated by the Pragyan rover that was housed inside the Vikram lander onboard Chandrayaan-3, Indian scientists have been churning out new interpretations and insightsintotheMoon'sevolution. PRLscientistsdeployedhighendimaging techniques, like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) wide angle camera and terrain camera to gather crater and rock distribution data from the lunar surface near Shiv Shakti. They noted that the Pragyanrover hadunusually encountered several rock fragments (of over 1 cm in size) at thelandingsiteof Chandrayaan3 mission. The chains of secondary craters and crater ejecta rays were used to infer the potential source of materials within the landing area. Manzinus Schomberger ejecta and secondaries Landing site Schomberger Boguslawsky The landing site is surrounded by craters. PRL Numerous craterswiththree distinct types of terrain types werestudied:high-relief rugged terrain,high-relief smoothplains and low-relief smooth plains. “For the low-relief smooth plains, the area that hosts the landing site, the best-fit age is about3.7Ga(billionyears),done using 25 craters (diameter 5001,150 metres),” the researchers said. Further, the age estimates from another 23 craters (measuring500-1,250metresindiameter) having rugged terrains and additional 5 craters (measuring Jaipur 600 - 1,150 metres in diameter) having high-relief and smooth plains established the age of the region to be 3.7 billion years. The lunar surface often suffers a combined influence and impactof micro-meteoritebombardmentsandextremethermal excursions. As a result, the exposed rock fragments in this geologicallyoldterrainwouldhave fragmented into regolith over thepastseveralhundredsof million years, the PRL team explained. Based on the morphological interpretations, the ISRO scien- tists have concluded that the local area around the landing area wasmainlyformedbytheejecta of secondarycraters—Manzinus and Boguslawsky. The latest study published in the Advances in Space Research describestheregionalgeography aroundtheShivShaktipoint.The Chandrayaan-3landingsiteisenclosed between multiple large impact craters — Manzinus (diameter-about96km,age-about 3.9 bn years) to the north, Boguslawsky (diameter - about 95kmandage-about4bnyears) CONTINUED ON PAGE 2