The editorial Page: lost in india’s celebrations of trade pacts, the big deal 8 FRIDaY, JULY 10, 2026 JournaliSM of Courage aHMEDabaD, 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 happening today lTamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay will make his first visit to Karur district after the stampede in September last year which claimed 41 lives. He is expected to meet the families of the victims. llord’s will host the first women’s Test match between India and England, 142 years since staging its inaugural men’s Test. express special iNsTaNCEs of vEhiCular damaGE CirCulaTEd oN soCial mEdia ovErblowN: miNisTEr e20 affects mileage, but west asia crisis shows india must explore alternatives, says gadkari Track These and more on www.indianexpress.com anil sasi the world AMID A raging debate over the impact on vehicular performance from the shift to higher ethanol blends, Union road Transport and Highways Min- Page 15 iran strikes U.s. military infra in kUwait, Qatar and Bahrain explained On conflict of interest allegations, he says personal stake ‘too insignificant’ to impact government policy New Delhi, July 9 ‘Lost 2 grown-up sons’: 21 dead in Surat floods ister Nitin Gadkari reckoned that average mileage can dip as ethanol content increases in thefuel,butsaidtheWestAsian crisis has shown India must explore all alternatives to fossil fuel imports. He told The Indian Express lessons for india from Brazil’s ethanol Pathway Page 13 Union road Transport and highways minister nitin gadkari. ExprESS fIlE that the calorific value of ethanolislowerthanpetrol.“Thisis a fact,” he said, admitting mileage could be hit with higher blending, but added that CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 E. explained why explore fossil fuel alternatives India imports fuel products, and spends almost Rs 2 lakh crore in forex every year. Blended fuel — ethanol in petrol & methanol in diesel — will help the country reduce dependence on fossil fuels. iNdo-PaCifiC a symbol of sharEd asPiraTioNs: modi India, Australia ink defence pacts, fast-track trade deal 11 bodies recovered in a day from creek area; in city, CM inspects situation emergency officials rescue people stranded due to floods in surat on Thursday. ExprESS more reporTs on page 3 Kamal saiyed Surat, July 9 The horrors of the 2006 floods returnedtoSuratwithbodiesof people who had gone missing followingrecordrainfallearlier this week began to surface when the floodwaters started receding. According to Surat city police, at least 21 persons died on Tuesday and Wednesday with 11 bodies recovered on a single day from the creek area including that of two brothers and a one-and-half-year-old girl. Police said the numbers could rise. The city recorded 30 per cent of the season's annual rainfallinaweek,SuratMunicipal Commissioner M Nagarajan had said. Nearly 3,600 people had been rescued and 4,100 shifted to relief centres since Monday. Amir Ansari, a resident of Sanjarnagar in Unn area of the city, lost his two sons – Harun (21) and Faruk (18) in the floods. Their residential society was submerged and the brothers hadgonemissingwhilereturning from work on Wednesday night. "Amir tried to contact them on their phones, but it kept getting disconnected after which he informed the Sachin police station,”saidpolice. Policehad carried out a search operation in residential societies near Sanjarnagar, but could not locatethem.ThebodiesofAnsari brothers were found on Wednesday from the neighbouring society, floating in the flood waters. Ansari, a property broker, told The Indian Express, “Around 6 pm on July 7, my sons told me that they are returning home along with their colleagueHussainPathan,who is also a resident of Unn. The trioreachedHussain'shousein Tirupatinagar at 7.30 pm. The creek water was flowing up to six feet high. Faruk called me up at 7.30 pm after reaching Hussain house and told me that they are proceeding to our house. I told them to wait there for some time and come after the water receded, but they refused. As they did not turn up till 9 pm, I called Hussain, who replied that Faruk and Harun had left a couple of hours before. I called the police, who had also carried out a search operation in the night, but they failed to locate them. The bodies were discovered on Wednesdayafternoonfromthe Patia area.” “I have lost my two grown up children and I am deeply pained. Harun got engaged and he was to get married next year,” an inconsolable Ansari said. Former Tmc mps sushmita dev, sukhendu sekhar ray and prakash chik Baraik with Bengal BJp chief samik Bhattacharya (second from left) in kolkata on Thursday. ExprESS Hours after joining BJP, 3 former TMC MPs fielded for RS bypolls in Bengal atri mitra Kolkata, July 9 THrEE ForMEr Trinamool Congress (TMC) rajya Sabha MPs, who resigned from their posts a month after the party’s defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections, joined the BJP on Thursday. Hours later, the BJP announced them as candidates for the rajya Sabha bypolls necessitated by their resignations. Sukhendu Sekhar ray, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik joined the BJP at the party’s office in Kolkata in the presence of state party presidentSamikBhattacharya. “All our leaders, including (ChiefMinister)SuvenduAdhikari and I, are happy with their inclusion in the party,” Bhattacharya said, adding, “It is a really happy day for us. Like Assam and Tripura, which are moving forward under the double-engine government, Bengal will also move ahead.” In the months following the West Bengal Assembly election results on May 4, which saw the BJP come to power with a landslidevictory,theTMChasfaced its gravest internal crisis. Amid the crisis, on June 8, ray resigned as rajya Sabha MP. He was followed by SushmitaDevonJune10andBaraik on June 11. After joining the BJP on Thursday, ray said the protests followingthe2024rGKarMedicalCollegerapeandmurdercase had already indicated that the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC would not retain power in the Assembly elections. He also claimed that under the TMC government, Bengal was “moving backwards”. “This was because of repeated opposition to the central government. By always »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 ayodhya doNaTioN row prime minister narendra modi with his australian counterpart anthony albanese in melbourne on Thursday. ap; relaTed reporT, Page 10 Step taken to operationalise 2014 nuclear pact, secure uranium supplies to India shubhajit roy New Delhi, July 9 SIGNALLING A significant deepening of bilateral ties, India and Australia on Thursday sealed a series of pacts across sectors, from defence and maritime security to energy, including one that paves the way to operationalise their 2014 Civil Nuclear Agreement that secures a stable cor- Business as Usual By EP UNNY »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 ridor for uranium supplies to India for peaceful purposes. With these pacts forming the backdrop, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described both countries as “vibrant democracies”, “multicultural societies”, and “significant ocean powers”. Modi told Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that they will together strengthen peace, stability, freedom of navigation, and a rules-based order across the Indo-Pacific region. Albanese, in turn, said the two countries are focusing on deepening and diversifying their partnership. “Six years into our strategic partnership, Australia’s relationship with Indiahasneverbeenmoreconsequential than it is today. our partnership has never been stronger,” he said. “We share a focus on deepeninganddiversifyingtherelationshipbetweenourcountries so we can continue to grow from strength to strength. Today, we have done exactly that across the breadth of our relationship. With new landmark agreements, we are expanding our relationship across defence and security, education, science and technology, and energy security and critical minerals,” he said. The strengthening of ties comes at a time when China’s assertivebehaviourintheIndoPacific region has caused concern among like-minded Quad partners, while the ongoing conflict in West Asia between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other has »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 Govt clears Dixon (India)-Vivo (China) JV for manufacturing smartphones ravi dutta mishra New Delhi, July 9 IN oNE of the first major approvals to Chinese investment in a strategic sector, the Centre has cleared a joint venture between Dixon Technologies (India) Limited and Vivo Mobile India Limited (VMI) for manufacturing electronic devices and smartphones in the country, a BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) filing showed. “We would also like to intimate that VMI has today receivedapprovalofGovernment ofIndiavideletterdatedJuly8, 2026,intermsofPressNote3of 2020issuedbytheDepartment of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of CommerceandIndustry,forincorporation of the JV Co and subscription of shares of JV Co by VMI,” the Noida-headquar- tered Dixon Technologies (India) Limited said in a company filing. Press Note 3 refers to an April2020regulationimposing restrictions on investments from China, making government approval mandatory for investments from countries sharing a land border with India. The move was aimed at preventing opportunistic »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 Temple CEO must be Ram devotee, huge task to restore trust: Search panel member ‘Just keeping money in account doesn’t work... has to be invested, used properly’ maulshree seth Lucknow, July 9 For THE first Chief Executive officer (CEo) of the Shri ram Janmabhoomi Trust, the primary requirement is “ram ke prati shraddha ka bhav (devotion to Lord ram)”, said Suresh Haware. oneofthethreemembersof thecommitteesetuptoidentify candidates for the post, newly announced as the ram Janmabhoomi Trust tries to clean its house in the wake of the donationtheftrow,Haware’slistof credentialsrunslong.Heisaretirednuclearscientistwhospent 27yearswiththeDepartmentof Atomic Energy, has headed the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust in Shirdi, and is currently the Chairman of the National Institute of Technology (NIT), raipur, and a member of the Shri express interview surEsh hawarE forMEr nuClEar SCIEnTIST wITH DEpT of aToMIC EnErgy & MEMbEr of aMarnaTH boarD Amarnathji Shrine Board, plus has written a book called Temple Management. Speaking to The Indian Express over the phone from Srinagar, as he participates in the ongoing Amarnath Yatra, Hawarecalledhisnewassignment »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2 l soccer helped me discover The BreadTh and The BeaUTY oF The ciTY: mamdani This Mayor plays Sunday league — and beat Trump for World Cup spotlight express at World Cup sandip G New York, July 9 BEForE LAST year’s mayoral election in New York, rafael Gomes, a security guard at a Manhattan bank and amateur footballer, was driven to Coney Island's “Soccer Fest” by his teammates, all crammed into a van. “I thought it’s just another fun tournament,” he told The mayoral candidate’s speech on IndianExpress.Afterthegame, TV and became an instant adGomes saw a man in a black mirer. “He said something like suit, “bearded and handsome”, soccer is a big part of New near the dugout. “Someone Yorkers and a unifying force in threw a ball at him, and he the boroughs. I was moved bejuggled it beautifully. Lovely cause of all the talk of cracktouches,hemightbe down on immipage 1 a professional, I grants, and here is thought,” he said. someone who talks Gomes asked of soccer and unity,” who that was; his friends said he said. he was running for mayor. “I A few weeks later, Zohran don’tlistentopoliticalstuffand Mamdani, born to Ugandan all that. But I thought, ‘Wow, academic Mahmood Mamdani cool, we are going to get a and filmmaker Mira Nair, asmayor who plays soccer’,” he sumedoffice.Withinayear,he’d said. Then, he watched the become a hero of the masses, anchor new York city mayor Zohran mamdani at the soccerfest campaign with nYc Footy during his campaign. nyC fooTy not just for his politics but also forhisloveofasportthatbound the city. “Soccer might not be the most popular sport in the US,butit’stheidentityofimmigrant communities in New York, especially in the Queens, where there are Hispanics, Caribbeans and Asians,” said Joseph Aguilero, of Uruguay FC, a local club. Mamdani’s charm grew with populist measures, even making the World Cup affordableformany.“Hegotthepulse of the World Cup, maybe because he is a passionate footballer,”Josephsaid.WhenFIFA Ahmedabad chief Gianni Infantino defended ticket prices as “justified in the US market”, Mamdani made 1,000 tickets availabletothefiveboroughsat $50 each. When FIFA banned water bottles in the summer heat, Mamdani objected, and the governing body backtracked. After NJ Transit hiked the Penn Station-MetLife round trip ticket price to $150, Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul rolled out $20 shuttle buses.“Helovesthepeopleand sport so much. We could connect with him,” rafael said. on Wednesday, at a press conference to unveil New York'snewbuslanes,Mamdani did the math on saved commuting time. “It means agreeingwithyourfriendsthatEgypt was robbed yesterday (in the 32 loss to Argentina),” he said. Pressed on what he would do with those extra six minutes (betweenthetimeEgyptscored andthegoalwasdisallowedvia theVideoAssistantrefereesystem), he skipped the policy answer. “I would probably just watch the replays of Egypt getting robbed again,” he said. “Gotta throw up the VAr.” »CoNTiNuEd oN PaGE 2