DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2025, KOLKATA, LATE CITY, 14 PAGES SINCE 1932 `6.00 (`12 IN NORTH EAST STATES, `20 IN ANDAMAN) WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM ‘SECONDARY TARIFF’ WARNING Fresh US tariff threat looms over purchase of Russian oil BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY EXPLAINED Hopes of concession on reciprocal tariffs fade as April 2 deadline nears SUKALP SHARMA & RAVI DUTTA MISHRA NEW DELHI, MARCH 31 MECHANISATION BEYOND TRACTORS EID GREETINGS PAGE 12 People gather at Red Road in Kolkata to offer prayers on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr on Monday. Partha Paul Amid BJP talks with AIADMK, Annamalai may step down as state party chief Mamata: Don’t give in 4 children among 7 killed to incitement... Left, in Sundarbans firecracker BJP have become one, unit blast, probe ordered but I alone am enough EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE KOLKATA, MARCH 31 AT LEAST seven persons, includingfourchildren,werekilledina blastatahousewithafirecracker manufacturingunitinthePathar Pratima area of South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, on Monday night. Police said that many people are still feared trapped in the rubble of the house. “Intheprimaryinvestigation, we found that the blast took BJP’s Tamil Nadu chief K Annamalai ARUN JANARDHANAN CHENNAI, MARCH 31 CONSIDERED one of the main reasonsbehindtheAIADMKand BJP falling apart in 2023, K Annamalai may step down as BJP Tamil Nadu president as alliance talks between the parties gatherpace.But,sayBJPsources, it won’t be as “punishment” — rather due to caste equations. Should the parties fight the 2026stateelectionstogether,the BJP does not want the face of both it and the AIADMK to be a Gounder. Like Annamalai, AIADMK chief Edappadi K Palaniswami belongs to the powerful backward community as well as the same western Kongu region (Gounders are dominant here). BJP sources said that Annamalai had been conveyed the same at a meeting he held with Union Home Minister Amit CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee at an Eid event in Kolkata on Monday. Partha Paul ATRI MITRA KOLKATA, MARCH 31 DAYS AFTER communal tension in West Bengal’s Malda district, Chief MinisterMamataBanerjee on Monday urged people not to fall for provocations that could lead to communal violence and emphasised her government's commitmenttoprotectingsocial harmony. Addressing an Eid event in Kolkata, Banerjee hit out at the BJP’s “divisive politics”, saying the Opposition party’s “ganda dharam” was against the tenets of Hinduism. The remark drew criticism from the BJP, which accused her of “weaponising religion”. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief also alleged that the Left and the BJP had united against her but said it would not matterasshewas“akela hi eksho CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ADHIR BACKS CM ON OXFORD PROTEST PAGE 3 IMD: Above-normal temperatures, more heatwave days this summer ANJALI MARAR BENGALURU, MARCH 31 THE INDIA Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast above-normal temperatures in most parts of the country this summer (April-June), including extended heatwave episodes that may last 10-11 days in central and eastern India, affecting Odisha,JharkhandandeastUttar Pradesh in particular. “DuringApril-June,abovenormal temperatures are likely over EXTENDED HEATWAVE 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Anomalyof heatwave duration(days) Source: IMD most parts of the country, except westpeninsularIndia,someparts ofeast-centralandeastIndia,”the IMD said in its all-India summer forecast released on Monday. IMD Director General Mryutyunjay Mohapatra said above-normal heatwave days are likely in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and northern parts of Karnataka. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 place in the premises of one Chandrakanta Banik’s house around 9.30 pm. He has a firecracker factory inside the premises. The fire from the blast spread in the whole house, and twogascylindersalsoexploded,” a local police officer said. Fire officials, who reached the spot, said they recovered seven dead. Police suspect that many more people may be locked inside the house. “Seven bodies have been recovered. The rescue operation is CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 INDIA COULD attract additional 25 per cent to 50 per cent US tariffs over the purchase of Russian oil, with US President Donald TrumpindicatingSundayhewas upset at the progress of peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and warning of imposition of secondary tariffs on buyers of Russian oil if he felt Moscowwasblockinghisefforts to end the war in Ukraine. India may also not receive a concession on the sweeping US reciprocal tariffs set to be imposed on April 2, as Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that “all countries” would face the new tariffs. This comes even as the US and India concluded their four-day talks on Saturday to determine the contours of a trade agreement. RussiahasbeenIndia’stopoil import source during AprilDecember 2024, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. SourcesinIndia’srefiningsector indicated that more clarity was needed on what exactly the E EXPLAINED ECONOMICS Trump has linked new tariff to peace talks on Ukraine Global prices ● may rise IF RUSSIAN OIL were to be priced out from the market, it could lead to higher global oil prices. While securing sufficient oil supplies over the medium term should not be an issue for India, higher oil prices and the loss of discounted Russian barrels, would be a setback for the country. ‘NOT JOKING’: TRUMP ON A THIRD TERM PAGE 10 US would do and whether there would be any scope for exemptions if Trump were to follow CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 BEIJING VISIT Yunus pitch to China: India’s N-E landlocked, Bangladesh is your gateway Bangladesh Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus, China’s President Xi Jinping. PTI SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, MARCH 31 PITCHING FOR “extension of the Chinese economy”, Bangladesh interim government’s chief advisor Professor Muhammad Yunus has said that with Northeast India “landlocked”, Dhaka is the “only guardian of the ocean for all this region”. While Yunus made these remarksduringhisfour-dayvisitto Chinalastweek(March26to29), video clips of his speech were shared by the interim governmentonitssocialmediahandles. India has not reacted to his comments so far. “Seven states of India, easternpartof India,calledsevensisters... they are landlocked country, landlocked region of India. They have no way to reach out to the ocean,” Yunus said. “We are the only guardian of the ocean for all this region. So this opens up a huge possibility. So this could be an extension of the Chinese economy. Build things, produce things, market things, bring things to China, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Empuraan row manufactured, says Kerala BJP chief, blames Pinarayi too Kerala BJP chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar LIZ MATHEW NEW DELHI, MARCH 31 THE CONTROVERSY over Mohanlal-starrerEmpuraanmay have been “manufactured” by the movie’s producers to get publicity for the film, but the credit for turning it into a political row should go to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, newly elected state BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said. Chandrasekhar said he wanted to watch the movie because it was a sequel to the hit filmLucifer,butdroppedtheplan on Sunday after the makers of Empuraan said they were incorporating 17 cuts, and Mohanlal also expressed regret. “I decided not to see it now because Mohanlal himself said that he felt upset. When CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Haryana folk singers vs the CM’s OSD: Lyrics hit a rough pitch PAGE 1 ANCHOR SUKHBIR SIWACH CHANDIGARH, MARCH 31 BETWEEN ‘TADKE pavei laas nahar mein (At dawn, the body will be found in the canal)’ and ‘Aankh aag te laal teri, aur asla hardam sath rhve (Your eyes are burning with fire, you are never withoutagun)’,theremaybelittle to choose. But choose the Haryana Police is doing, as its cyber wing cracks down on folk songs “pro- Singer Masoom Sharma (left) and Gajender Phogat, singer and OSD to CM Nayab Singh Saini. Facebook/Express moting violence” — which has ended up pitting the singers against one of their own, Gajender Phogat, who is now an Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Special Publicity, to Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini. Masoom Sharma, six of whose songs have been banned —themostamongallthesingers — has questioned the criteria used. A few days back, Sharma was stopped from singing one of the banned songs during a public performance in Gurgaon. Speaking to the local media, the singer, with more than 18 lakh followers on social media, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Kolkata