The Editorial Page: The ghosts of 1945 are being recruited in us-China contest over asia 8 WEDNESDaY, SEPTEmBER 30, 2026 JournalisM of CouragE MUMbaI, laTe cITy, 24 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 CJI-Led BenCH dIreCTS LISTInG oF PeTITIon neXT WeeK SC to hear petition questioning CEC decisions, seeking EC records review 130 158 197 75 happening today lCommerCe and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will take part in G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting in Milwaukee at the invitation of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. CISFmankills officer,3others inJ&Kafter analtercation, apprehended arun Sharma Jammu, September 29 AN ASSISTANT Commandant of the CISF and three other personnel were killed after a head constable allegedly opened fire at them with his AK-47, following an altercation in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district Tuesday evening. Allthepersonnelwereposted at the Sewa hydel-II power projectinMashkavillageinKathua’s Basohli.Theincidenttookplace around 6.40 pm. The accused, Avdesh Kumar Singh, and his wife both work in the CISF. A police officer investigating the incident said Singh’s argumentwithhiscolleaguesand company commander Ankit KumarPandeywasoverhaving to bring his child to the project site frequently. “The couple worked in different shifts at the same site. So, when one parent reported for duty, they would bring the toddler along to hand him over to the spouse »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 The Big piCTUre The fighTers who owned The skies p 17 Plea: Declare SIR illegal, EC functions on ‘collective authority’, not ‘individual title’ ananthakrishnan G New Delhi, September 29 (From left) Kiran Pahal, Prachi Choudhary, M R Poovamma and Vithya Ramraj celebrate after winning the gold medal in women’s 4X400 RELATED REPoRTS, pages 22, 23 metres relay final at the Asian Games in Nagoya, Japan on Tuesday. PTI Four women, many struggles, one gold: India’s 4x400m relay team tops podium eXPreSS aT AsiAn GAmes mihir Vasavda Nagoya, September 29 lFORKIRANPAhAL,running wasonceanactofdefiance.her father had to fight an entire village in Sonipat to allow his daughter to pursue athletics. lFor Prachi Choudhary, a farmer’s daughter from Sahar- anpur, the dream of a DSP post in the UP Police has been a drivingforce.Beforeleavingfor Nagoya, she submitted her measurementsfortheuniform, hoping to turn that ambition into reality. lM R Poovamma had to find her way back from a doping ban and depression, with her husband and mother helping her rebuild. lVithya Ramraj, the daughter of an autorickshaw driver, had already broken India’s oldest athletics national record in Nagoya before taking the track for the relay. Fourwomen,fromdifferent cornersofthecountry,carrying different expectations. On Tuesday, at Mizuho Park, they wonIndia’sfirstandonlytrackand-field gold medal of the Asian games in Nagoya, reclaimingthewomen’s4x400m relay title with a time of 3:29.69. In the last edition in hangzhou, China had beaten India to gold, but this quartet proved why Indian women remain favourites with a seventh gold in the 4x400m relay at the Asian »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 Resisting invaders to swords of goddesses: NCERT revises book on medieval history for Class 9 VikasPathak&Gayathrimani New Delhi, September 29 ThE NCERT’S new social science textbook for Class 9, released Tuesday, describes 700 years of medieval Indian history from 1000 to 1700 AD as a period of “Resistance and Resilience”,oneduringwhich“Indian society not only defended itself from external threats but also preserved its traditions”. Part 2 of the social science textbook Understanding Society: India And Beyond — Part 1 was introduced in June and dealt with themes across disciplines, including history, political science, geography and economics — while mentioning “both conflict and cooperation”focusesonactsofresistance, not of cooperation or the development of a composite culture, themes that were central to Indian historiography for over 50 years. Documenting successive invasions of the subcontinent, thehistorysectiondescribesreligious traditions in warfare, and how Indian rulers — be it theRajputs,thekingdomofthe Ahom, the Vijayanagara empire, Marathas, Sikhs, Jats and others — put up strong resistance against the Turks, »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 135-yr-old library, 8.5 lakh books — and no room in the new Central Vista plan Harikishan Sharma & damini nath New Delhi, September 29 WhEN KINg george V announcedthedecisiontoshiftthe capitalofBritishIndiafromCalcuttatoDelhiin1911,theCentral Secretariat Library (CSL), then known as the Imperial Secretariat Library, moved with it, finding its first home in the Old Secretariat Building in the Civil Linesarea.AftertheBritishbuilt a new seat of power around Raisina hill, the library moved again, to the North Block and thentoShastriBhawan,whereit has remained since 1969. It’stimetomoveagain—but no one is sure where. Sources say that as Shastri Bhawan is pulled down as part of the CentralVistarevampplan,theMinistry of housing and Urban Affairs (MohUA) and Central PublicWorksDepartment(CPWD) »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 Neeru Dhanda after winning gold in women’s trap shooting individual event at the Asian Games, Tuesday. PTI ThESUPREMECourtTuesday agreed to take up for hearing next week a petition questioning the manner in which Chief Election Commissioner gyaneshKumarhasbeenfunctioningwhentheConstitutiongives the CEC “no individual title” to the Election Commission’s “collective authority”. Urging the court to declare as illegal the nationwide SpecialIntensiveRevision(SIR) of electoral rolls, the petitioner, Rakesh Kumar Singh, has said itmustseekthe“completeoriginalandprimaryrecords”relating to the matter from the Election Commission. The petition comes days after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions andordersrelatingtotheSIRof electoral rolls. The two commissioners said some of the decisions were issued without By EP UNNY Form6declaration removedforstates whereSIrisover New Delhi: Four days after announcing it, the Election Commission Tuesday night removed the SIR declaration addedtothestatutoryvoterenrolment form, Form 6, from its ECINet application portal in states where the SIR has concluded. The portal no longer showed the declaration for the states where the final SIR electoral rolls have already been published.Thedeclarationwas stillthereforthosestateswhere the SIR is ongoing. ENS their knowledge. Senior Advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the petitioner, urged a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, to hear the matter early. “The purpose of having a »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 POLITICS page 10 Cong raises piTCh, says pm, shah and CeC mUsT resign over ‘voTe Chori’ BJp hiTs BaCk: Cong Trying To rip aparT ConsTiTUTional meChanisms US, China in competitive mode, India and others must de-risk, diversify for own good: Jaishankar E. Says if US does not appreciate India’s concern on Pak terror, it can impact ties Shubhajit roy New Delhi, September 29 IN FIRST remarks on the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the two countries are in “a competitive mode” and all other countries, including The wOrLd page 18 India, are looking to “de-risk” and “diversify” to secure their own interests and ties. SpeakingattheAsiaSociety Policy Institute in New York Monday, after spending an entire week at the UN general Assembly session, Jaishankar, while underlining the complex nature of the Indo-US trade »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 amitabh Sinha TrUmp says iran noT offered sanCTions relief; ready for Talks, says Tehran naTIOn page 15 Confession Before poliCe CannoT Be sole groUnd for nsa deTenTion: sC eXPLaIned shifting landscape External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar at Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. anI At a time when conflicts have roiled economies and disrupted supply chains, the US and China are competing and because they cannot agree globally, the rest of the world needs to de-risk, diversify to survive in a fragmented order. Funds awaited, Govt showpiece deep-tech initiative hits pause New Delhi, September 29 Central Secretariat Library at Shastri Bhawan in New Delhi. RenUka PURI Business as Usual A ShOWPIECE government initiative to make funds available to emerging private companies engaged in deep-tech research has hit pause after the only agency selecting beneficiaries decided to stop inviting applications — because it hasn’t received the money needed to proceed after one round of funding, The Indian Express has learnt. OnTuesday,theTechnology Development Board (TDB), a statutory body under the Department of Science and Technology(DST),issuedanoticeon its official website informing that invitations for funding wouldbeclosedafterthismonth “duetoadministrativereasons”. however, multiple sources told this newspaper that TDB, which is the only agency currently involved in selecting beneficiaries for the Rs 1 lakhcrore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund, is yet to receive the money neededtoextendfreshoffersto companies. According to rules, the money has to be allotted by the DST, which is the administrative custodian of the RDI Fund.TheDSThasalreadybeen allocated Rs 23,000 crore to fundtheprogramme,including »ConTInUed on PaGe 2 l 277 TANKERS ARE CuRRENTLY SuPPLYING wATER To 160 VILLAGES Early water stress: Tankers enter Marathwada before monsoon exits state Sadaf modak Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Jalna, September 29 ThE MONSOON is not over, but in parts of drought-hit Marathwada, villages are already turning to water tankers. With 74 of the region’s 76 talukas declared drought-affected, 277 tankersarecurrentlysupplying water to 160 villages, while more villages have begun seeking tanker supplies as local wellsandwatersourcesrundry. The administration maintains that water stored in major reservoirs, including the tankers to keep his ginger crop Jayakwadi dam near Paithan, alive. The water is also used by will be sufficient for drinking his family and 10 cattle. “I have already lost all of the and other domestic requirements. But in villages, farmers cotton and maize I had sowed. We have a well but are already watchit is dry. For the ing wells and local past 15 days, I am water sources run forced to spend on dry, with some the tankers. I can spending thoudo this for a month sands of rupees a droUGHT-HIT day to keep their maharashtra with the hope of some yield... after crops and livethat I will disconstock alive. In Shahapur in Chhatrapati tinue,” said Bharat, who lost Sambhajinagar, 40-year-old crops, including tomato, cotfarmer Badrinath Bharat is ton and maize. In Siddhanath Vadgaon vilspending Rs 3,000 a day on two Badrinath Bharat at his corn farm in Shahapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. naRendRa vaSkaR relaTed reporTs, p 6 & 7 lage in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar,farmerSachinBilwalhas been buying tanker water for more than a month, mainly for his family and three cattle. he pays Rs 1,000 for a tanker, which lasts about a week. “I am required to pay Rs 1,000 per tanker and it lasts me a week. We have requested the gram sabha to seek tankers from the government. hopefullyitwillbearrangedsoonbut somanyvillagesareinasimilar situationevenbeforemonsoon has ended,” Bilwal said. Bilwalhadcultivatedcotton, maizeandtur,butsaidthecrops had yielded no output because of lack of rain. Like Bharat, he has a well but no water in it. The water stress comes after a poor monsoon across the region. Maharashtra received 18 per cent less rainfall than normal this year, while Marathwada recorded a deficit of 38 per cent. The deficit was higher in some districts, with Latur recording 48 per cent less rainfall than normal and Parbhani 43 per cent. The scale of the emerging water crisis is reflected in the tanker deployment. In Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, 77 vil- lages are currently being supplied by 120 tankers, while 65 villages in Beed are receiving 127tankers.Jalnahas22tankers supplying water in villages. Among the relief measures announced after the state declared drought in 265 of its 358 talukas is the deployment of tankers for drinking water wherever required. In Jalna, the impact is also visible in fields where farmers had invested in irrigation systems,inthehopethatmonsoon would provide enough water to sustain their crops. »ConTInUed on PaGe 2