eye THE SUNDAY EXPRESS MAGAZINE Tell me a story AHMEDABAD, LATECITY JULY28,2024 Libraries have come up in under-resourced places to help people FOUR-PAGE PULLOUT 12+4PAGES,`6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM FIRST NITI AAYOG GOVERNING COUNCIL MEET AFTER LOK SABHA ELECTIONS THE WORLD Mamata storms out of NITI meeting, says mic switched off during speech, FM rejects charge 30 KILLED IN ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES ON SCHOOL IN GAZA TRUMP INTENSIFIES ATTACK ON HARRIS, CALLS HER FAILED V-P PAGE 9 I was lone Opp voice there, Centre shouldn’t discriminate: CM Need to make policies conducive for foreign investments, says PM AGGAM WALIA & ATRI MITRA AGGAM WALIA NEW DELHI, KOLKATA, JULY 27 EXPRESS NETWORK PERSONAL ATTACKS, HIT-AND-RUN SPEECH CONCERNING: V-P ‘KK’ APPOINTED LT GOVERNOR OF PUDUCHERRY P 6 WESTBENGALChiefMinisterand TMC leader Mamata Banerjee walked out of a NITI Aayog governing council meeting, chaired byPrimeMinisterNarendraModi inNewDelhiSaturday,citingunfair treatment and not being givenadequatetimetospeak.She claimed her microphone was switched off though she was the sole Opposition voice at the NEW DELHI, JULY 27 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee after leaving the Niti Aayog meeting in New Delhi on Saturday. PTI meeting — a charge rejected as “misleading”bythegovernment. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Chief Minister “spoke her full time” but “has chosen to spread falsehood...sayingbaselessthings outside...makinganefforttokeep I.N.D.I alliance happy”. Emerging from the meeting, Banerjee told media persons CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi, who chaired the NITI Aayog's Governing Council meeting in New Delhi on Saturday, said India needs to make its policies “conducive for international investments”. “This decade is of changes, technological and geo-political, and also of opportunities. India should grab these opportunities PAK BORDER ACTION TEAM ROLE SUSPECTED PM Modi at the meet. PTI andmakeourpoliciesconducive for international investments. This is the stepping stone for CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 OLYMPICS WATCH Soldier, Pak intruder killed in LoC gunfight, infiltration bid foiled HOCKEY INDIA IN PARIS BASHAARAT MASOOD SRINAGAR, JULY 27 A SOLDIER was killed and another injured as the Army foiled an infiltration bid at the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district on Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks that have raised fears of revivalof militancyintheregion. A “Pakistani intruder” was also killed in the gunfight, the Srinagar-basedDefencePROsaid. Sources said the infiltration attempt — near Kumkari post in Machil sector — involved Pakistan’s Border Action Team CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 GUJARAT PARTS OF VADODARA STILL UNDER WATER, BJP MP SEEKS RELIEF PACKAGE 1.5 LAKH AFFECTED IN NAVSARI, WATER LEVEL RECEDING PAGE 4 TopDelhivisitto Kyivintheworks, PMtripontable Also a possibility: Jaishankar or Doval could stand in for a high-level visit NEW DELHI, JULY 27 ■ Manu Bhaker enters women’s 10m air pistol finals (BAT), which generally comprises special forces of the Pakistan Army and highly trained militants. The incident came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at an event in Drass to markthe25thanniversaryof the KargilWar,saidPakistanwastrying to “keep itself relevant through terrorism and proxy wars” and the “enemy will be given a forceful response”. “Taking advantage of bad weatherandpoorvisibilityalong Line of Control in Machhal Sector, a group of two to three armed personnel crossed the LC US Secy of State Antony Blinken with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Vientiane, Laos, on Saturday. AP REPORT,P6 SHUBHAJIT ROY SHOOTING Near the encounter site in Kupwara district. Shuaib Masoodi UKRAINE INVITE FOR AUG 24 Shuttler P V Sindhu, table tennis player A Sharath Kamal and other Indian athletes take a boat ride on the Seine river during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. PTI ■ India defeat New Zealand 3-2 in opening Pool B match PAGES 10, 11 LESS THAN three weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Russia sparked criticism from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and days after a US officialalso flagged it, New Delhi and Kyiv are discussing a possible “high-level visit” that may culminate in a visit by Prime Minister Modi to Ukraine next month, The Indian Express has learnt. The PM’s diplomatic calendar has to factor in a range of issues: the security situation in Kyiv, as the more than two-yearold war between Russia and Ukraine draws on; Parliament’s ongoing budget session and, of course, August 15 when the PM delivers the first Independence E E X P L A I NE D DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA ● Diplomatic balance INDIA HAS sought to maintain a diplomatic balancing act between Russia and Ukraine. While India has not explicitly condemned the Russian invasion, it called for an international probe into the Bucha massacre and expressed concern over nuclear threats issued by Russian leaders. Day address of his third term. If it takes place, the Prime Minister’s visit to Kyiv, after the embrace of the Russian CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Nicobar port plan: Flagged in no-go 3 students dead as Delhi UPSC zone earlier, now in permitted area coaching centre gets flooded NEW FINDINGS IN AFFIDAVIT BEFORE NGT NIKHIL GHANEKAR NEW DELHI, JULY 27 A HIGH-POWERED committee (HPC),appointedbytheNational GreenTribunal(NGT)andtasked with revisiting the green clearance for the Great Nicobar infrastructure project, has concluded that a proposed transshipment port does not fall in the Island Coastal Regulation Zone-IA (ICRZ-IA), where ports are prohibited, but is in ICRZ-IB where these are permitted. This conclusion is at variance with the information submitted by the Andaman & Nicobar (A&N) Coastal Management Bay Of Bengal GREAT NICOBAR PROJECT Port Blair 149.87sqkm Township Andaman Sea 8.45sqkm Airport 7.39sqkm Container transhipment terminal 0.4sqkm Powerplant Great Nicobar Authorityduringthegreenclearance process for the project. The Authority had stated that parts of theport,airportandtownship planned under the project are spread over 7 sq km in the ICRZIA area. The HPC’s conclusion that no part of the project falls in the ICRZ-IA area in violation of the ICRZ notification, 2019, was based on a ground-truthing exercisecarriedoutbytheNational Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM). This is the first time that the HPC’s conclusions regarding the project have been made public. TheHPC’sconclusionsonthe CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, JULY 27 THREE UPSC aspirants died after they were trapped in the basement of a coaching centre in Central Delhi's Old Rajinder Nagar, which was flooded when a drain burst during heavy rain. Theincidentcomesdaysafter aUPSCaspirantwaselectrocuted on a waterlogged Delhi street. Around7pmonSaturday,the DelhiFireServicesreceivedacall about flooding in the basement of Rau's IAS Study Circle, and deployedfivefiretendersforrescue operations, officials said. Divers from the National Disaster Rescue operation at the basement of Rau’s IAS Study Circle on Saturday. ANI Response Force were also deployed to save the trapped stu- dents, though a faculty member at the coaching centre said that should have been prioritised instead of the fire tenders. According to officials, they pulled out the bodies of the two students–bothwomen–oneby one, first at 10:30 pm and then at11:20pm.AccordingtoDFSofficials, the search for a third personremainedunderwayuntilafter midnight, and a body was recovered around 1 am. According to students presentatthespotonSaturdaynight, thebasementhousedthelibrary of the coaching centre, where studentswouldgoforself-study. According to eyewitnesses, the CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Trapped in landslide as a baby for 8 hrs, lesson on calamities for Rudra, 10 PAGE 1 ANCHOR RAVINA WARKAD & S K SAFRIN BEGUM MALIN, JULY 27 ATAschoolinNewMalin,atribal village in Maharashtra’s Ambegaon taluka, a dozen Class 5 students turn to chapter 12 on naturaldisastersintheirMarathi textbook. The two-page lesson startswithablackandwhitecollage of Marathi headlines on the 2014 Malin landslide: ‘5 lakh for families of the dead’, ‘At 7.30 in the morning, what existed, did- n’t anymore’, ‘Sir, contact not possible..!’and‘Belowthedebris, eight people rescued alive!’. Extraordinarily enough, one of those eight survivors is all set to learn about natural disasters, their management, causes and mitigation efforts with his classmates. Now a 10-year-old with a shy, disarming smile, Rudra Lembhe was just three months old when his mother and he were rescued eight hours after they got buried alive in a landslide on July 30, 2014, barely one kilometre from his school. Christened ‘Miracle Baby’, Rudraisstillnotusedtostrangers asking him about his “experience”. All questions on July 30, 2014,aremetwithastandardanswer from the reserved boy: “I don’t remember anything”. On that rainy morning a decade ago, Malin village, located in the foothills of the Sahyadrimountainrange,disappeared in minutes as the hills came down in a massive landslide, killing 151 people. The Indian Express is running a special series titled ‘10 years of Malin tragedy', focussing on all aspects of the decade gone by fromrescue stories torehabilitation of survivors to resilience of the human spirit. The chapter, titled ‘Malin: A tragedy’, was added to the Class 5 Marathi textbooks by Rudra Lembhe, a Class 5 student at the zilla parishad school in Malin, reads the chapter on natural disasters. Pavan Khengre Maharashtra Board in 2015. In 2017, the landslide survivors wererehabilitatedbythestateat NewMalin, locatedaround1km from the disaster site. Built at a cost of Rs 27 crore, New Malin has 68 ‘landslide- and earthquake-resistant’homes,aschool, temple, gram panchayat office and other community spaces. In a 2016 interview with The IndianExpress,thenPuneDistrict Collector Saurabh Rao had said that“slopefailureandwater-logging” were main reasons for the landslide. Satish Thigale, former head,geologydepartment,Pune University, claimed he had “warned”thegovernmentabout “a disaster waiting to happen in Malin in August 2003 itself”. Thigale told The Indian Express, “During my first visit to Malin in 2003, I had observed cracks in some houses. In other houses, residents were using pipes to drain out rain water, which was getting accumulated in huge quantities. I had warned theauthoritiesaboutMalinthen.” Back at the school, class teacherSantoshPadwal,50,says he is aware of Rudra’s deeply personal connection with the topic and will ensure the “sensitive chapter does not trigger any traumas”. Padwal, who wears rectangular glasses, says, “The chapter has basic information on natural calamities.However,Iencourage my students to go beyond the textbook. For instance, I have asked them to work in groups to makechartsondosand don’tsin case of a natural calamity.” While the chapter and the project will broaden Rudra’s knowledge, he has had a head start on the topic, thanks to his mother’s accounts of the incident. Pramila, 36, recalls sitting on the floor of her old two-room pucca house that “was in perfect condition, with no cracks or leaks” on July 30, 2014. “Rudra was in my lap and I was making him have medicine. Suddenly, something heavy fell CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad