The Editorial Page: US mid-terms could be bellwether for next three years of Trump 2.0 10 TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2026 JOURNALISM of COURAgE MUMBAI, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES ₹5.00 l www.indianexpress.com DA I LY F R O M : A H M E DA B A D , C H A N D I GA R H , D E L H I , J A I P U R , KO L K ATA , L U C K N O W , M U M B A I , N AG P U R , PAT N A , P U N E , VA D O DA R A REG.NO. MCS/067/2018 - 20 RNI REGN. NO. 1543/57 AL NAHYAN’S vISIT TO dELHI COMES IN BACKdROP OF GAzA BOARd OF PEACE PM meets UAE President: Defence, LNG, $200-bn trade target on table DAE’s nuclear pivot: Light water push to tap global markets, retain heavy water edge Selective targeting on E. tariffs, says Jaishankar, Deeply touched by MBZ gesture of visiting Delhi, says Modi Anil Sasi New Delhi, January 19 flags Poland minister’s outreach to Pakistan Shubhajit Roy New Delhi, January 19 AMID RENEWED churn in West Asia, with US President DonaldTrumpinvitingIndiato join the Board of Peace in Gaza and tensions brewing between Saudi Arabia and UAE over competing interests in Yemen, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met visiting UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at his residence Monday and agreed on a range of bilateral agreements and outcomes—fromdefencetospace and LNG. Aftertheirthree-and-a-halfhour meeting at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, Modi posted on X that he »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 Shubhajit Roy New Delhi, January 19 Prime Minister Narendra Modi with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in New Delhi, Monday. PTI MORE REPORTS, P 7 CONVEYING THE country’s disappointment at being singledoutbytheUSwith25per cent tariffs for buying Russian oil, External Affairs Minister S JaishankartoldthevisitingDeputy Prime Minister of Poland RadoslawSikorskithatIndiahas faced “selective targeting”. In unusually blunt remarks at their bilateral meeting in Delhi Monday, Jaishankar also flagged Sikorski’s visit last October to Pakistan and cautioned that Poland must maintain “zero tolerance for terrorism” and “not help fuel” Happening today EAM S Jaishankar with Poland’s Deputy PM and Foreign Affairs Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in New Delhi, Monday. PTI terror infrastructure in the neighbourhood. Jaishankar said, “In the recent past, both in New York last first Assembly session of 2026 begins. It remains to be seen whether Governor R N Ravi will deliver his address, having walked out of the House for the third consecutive year in 2025. Omkar Gokhale Mumbai, January 19 New BJP chief today 147 BJP leaders J P Nadda, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Kiren Rijiju, Hardeep Singh Puri, Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan, Nitin Gadkari, L Murugan and others propose the name of Nitin Nabin as the new party chief in New Delhi, Monday. With no other candidate, Nabin will be formally announced as the party chief on Tuesday. PTI REPORT, PAGE 8 183 77 Bengal SIR: SC tells EC Techie’s death: UP govt to display names flagged removes CEO of Noida for ‘logical discrepancies’ Authority; SIT to probe Ananthakrishnan G Neetika Jha l Discrepancies New Delhi, January 19 WHILE IT refused to stop the Election Commission from carrying out scrutiny of voters flagged for “logical discrepancies” during the Special IntensiveRevision(SIR)ofelectoral rolls in West Bengal, the Supreme Court on Monday underlined the need to ensure the exercise is transparent and doesn't cause inconvenience. To this end, it directed the EC to display the names of those flagged for "logical discrepancies" in their enumerationformsat"grampanchayat bhavans/ block offices in every »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 NAME MISMATCH between current roll and that of the last intensive revision LESS THAN 15 years, or more than 50 years, difference in age of elector and parent LESS THAN 40 years gap in age of elector and grandparents SIx OR MORE electors mapped as progeny of one person 2.06 L ELEctorS LINkEd to ovEr 6 cHILdrEN: Ec P8 exclusive »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 THE BOMBAY High Court Monday kept in abeyance the Thane district collector’s decisions de-recognising the Ambernath Vikas Aghadi (AVA), formed after the BJP joined hands with later-suspended Congress members, and recognising the Eknath Shinde-led ShivSenaandAjitPawar’sNCP alliance as a pre-poll alliance in the municipal council. The Bombay High Court alsokeptinabeyancetheinitial decision to recognise AVA, and directed the Thane district collector to pass a reasoned order on rival factions’ contentions. OnJanuary17,whilehearing AVA’s plea, a bench of Justices Ravindra V Ghuge and Abhay J Mantri temporarily postponed themeetingfortheformationof Subsidies, projects, slim reserves: BMC stares at a financial squeeze Pratip Acharya & Nayonika Bose Mumbai, January 19 AS THE Brihanmumbai MunicipalCorporation(BMC)isall set to welcome corporators after a long gap of four years, the Mahayuti government’s biggesttestmaynotbepolitical but financial. With the BJP– Shiv Sena alliance winning a clear majority on the back of subsidy-heavy promises, the challenge before Asia’s richest civic body will be to reconcile welfare commitments with mounting infrastructure costs andsteadilyshrinkingreserves. With a yearly budget of Rs 75,000 crore, the Mumbai civic lWhat’sinBMCkitty Annual budget for 2025-26 ₹74,427.41 crore Annual budget for 2024-25 ₹ 65,180.79 crore Reserves as on FY 2024 - 25 ₹84,824 crore Reserves as on FY 2025 - 26 ₹81,774 crore * (*OF THE TOTAL RESERVES, AMOUNT EARMARKED FOR PROVIDENT FUND, PENSION FUND, GRATUITY, CONTRACTOR DEPOSIT, PENSION FUND IS ₹42,230. 78 CRORE AND AMOUNT EARMARKED FOR INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT, ROADS AND BRIDGES CONSTRUCTION, LAND ACqUISITION, DEVELOPMENT FUND IS ₹39,543.64 CRORE) body has financial reserves of over Rs 81,774 crore for the year 2025-26. Over the past five years,thesereserveshasdipped by at least Rs 10,000 crore comparedtoRs91,690crorein2021. Thereservecorpusislargely parked in fixed deposits across multiple banks, with the interest earned contributing to the civic body’s revenue. Over the past few years, the BMC has taken up higly capital intensive infrastructure projects such as the coastal road, »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 Noida, January 19 flaggedbyEC EXPLAINED AS INDIA opens up its nuclear power sector to private sector Why LWr push participation and eyes a stake in the export market, the need Light Water Reactors form toexpeditethefabricationofan a mainstay of the global Indian Light Water Reactor n-program; these use light (LWR)hasbeenflaggedasapri- water, enriched uranium, ority within the nuclear estab- and have simpler design, lishment, The Indian Express lower construction cost, has learnt. economies of scale, and To this effect, there is a con- high thermal efficiency. certedpushbytheDepartment of Atomic Energy to speed up work on the 900 MWe (mega- foreignvendorstosecurebetter watt electric) LWR project — terms in imports, officials said. Significantly, LWRs constidesignworkonthishadstarted tute the bulk of in 2015. the international Having an inEXPRESS reactor market, digenous LWR, and without intealongsidetheexisgrating Indian ting fleet of pressurised heavy water reactors companies into the global (PHWR),isexpectedtoboostIn- supply chain, making a breakdia’s leverage in dealing with through in the export segment is likely to be difficult. This is also the backdrop to the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India Act, 2025, passed in the winter session of Parliament, which opens up the possibility of moreimportedLWR-basednuclear projects of the kind being set up by the Russians in Kudankulam. The legal changes are seen within the establishment as necessary to tap the dominant global LWR ecosystem, even as India retains its core strengths in other reactor types. India’s civil nuclear programme has deep expertise in manufacturingheavywaterreactors from 220 MWe PHWRs to the new 700 MWe units. Based on heavy water (deuterium) and natural uranium, PHWRs are a technology that »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 BombayHC keepsAmbernath allianceflip-flops inabeyance,tells Thanecollectorto decideonAVA lPOLL-BOUNd TAMIL NAdU’S 119 AFTER SHANTI LEGISLATION TWO DAYS after a 27-year-old softwareengineerdrownedina 70-foot-deep ditch in Noida’s Sector 150, the Uttar Pradesh government on Monday removedNoidaAuthority’sChief ExecutiveOfficer(CEO),Lokesh M, and put him on a “waitlist”. Thegovernmentordercame shortlyafterUttarPradeshChief Minister Yogi Adityanath took cognizance of Yuvraj Mehta’s death and ordered an SIT (Special Investigation Team) probe into the incident. The UP government said a three-member SIT, headed by Additional Director General, Business as Usual By EP UNNY Yuvraj Mehta died after his car went off the road in thick fog and fell into a pit, Saturday Meerut Zone, Bhanu Bhaskar, will inquire into the circumstances leading to the incident and submit a report within five days to the Chief Minister. A 2005-batch IAS officer from Karnataka, Lokesh M was »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 l PARTY’S CASH AND CASH EqUIVALENT RS 10,000 CRORE AS OF MARCH 2025 1,092 3,335 1,352 645 792 567 606 n Pre-LS poll and LS poll years 421 anchor l Expenditureonelection Figures in Rs Crore 359 andsevenAssemblieswereheld. The Election Commission had announced the 2024 polls THE BJP’S spending on elec- on March 16 that year, so camtion and general propaganda paigning had begun in the fistood at Rs 3,335.36 crore in nancial year 2023-2024 itself. The polling took 2024-25 when elecPAGE 1 place between April tions to the 18th Lok Sabha and eight As19 to June 1, 2024, semblies were held, spanning44days.In as per the party’s annual audit the pre-election year, i.e., 2023report submitted to the Elec- 24, spending on election and generalpropagandastoodatRs tion Commission. This is almost two-and-a- 1,754.06 crore. half times Rs 1,352.92 crore, the Thus, the total expenditure amount spent in 2019-20 when in the two years (election year elections to the 17th Lok Sabha andthepre-electionyear)leadNew Delhi, January 19 923 damini Nath 1,754 BJP’s election expenditure Rs 3,335 crore in last fiscal, 2.5 times more than its spend in 2019-20 2014- 2015- 2016- 2017- 2018- 2019- 2020 2021- 2022- 2023- 20242015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 -2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Source: BJP’s annual audited accounts reports submitted to ECI ing up to the 18th Lok Sabha and the eight Assemblies added up to Rs 5,089.42 crore, more than double the total amount of Rs 2,145.31 crore spent in the two years (election year and the pre-election year) leading up to the 17th Lok Sabha and seven Assemblies. TheAssemblyelectionsduring the years 2019-20 and 202425 were for the states of Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Odisha,Sikkim,ArunachalPradesh and Andhra Pradesh. In 2024-25,J&Kwenttopollsinaddition to the seven states. According to the annual report, which was submitted by the BJP to the EC on December 27, 2025, and published by the ECthisweek,electionexpenses »CONTINUEd ON PAGE 2 Mumbai