DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE SATURDAY, MAY 3, 2025, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES ‘PAK MUST ACT ON TERRORISTS ON ITS SOIL’ Rejecting JSW Steel’s plan, SC orders Bhushan Power and Steel liquidation HopeIndia’sresponse doesnotleadtobroader conflict,saysV-PVance Worried about hotspot breaking out between two nuclear powers, says US V-P SC: Creditors’ panel made mistake in approving JSW Steel resolution plan ANANTHAKRISHNAN G NEW DELHI, MAY 2 THE SUPREME COURT Friday rejectedsteelmajorJSWSteelLtd’s Rs 19,000 crore bid to acquire Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd (BPSL) through the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP)route,andorderedtheliquidation of the company. JSW acquired BPSL in March 2021 under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy code. JSW Group Chairman and Managing Director Sajjan Jindal had then said that the acquisition had helped the group make an entry into Odisha and east India. Abenchof JusticeBelaTrivedi CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 GUJARAT THEIR DUTY COULD HAVE PREVENTED 2002 TRAGEDY: HC UPHOLDS SACKING OF COPS SUPPOSED TO MAN THE TRAIN PAGE 4 SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, MAY 2 Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Kerala Governor Rajendra Arlekar, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani and others at the newly inaugurated Vizhinjam International Seaport in Thiruvananthapuram, Friday. PTI TRANSSHIPMENT PORT INAUGURATED IN KERALA; PM REFERS TO CM, THAROOR Opening Vizhinjam port, PM swipe at Opp: ‘This will give sleepless nights to many’ SHAJU PHILIP & SIDDHANT KONDUSKAR THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, VIZHINJAM, MAY 2 DEDICATING THE Vizhinjam port in Left-ruled Kerala to the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday took a dig attheCPI(M)foritslongstanding oppositiontoprivateinvestment. Praising the Adani group for completingtheconstructionina shortspan,Modisaidinthepresence of industrialist Gautam Adani,“Ihavereturnedfromvisiting the port. When the people of Gujarat come to know that Adani has built such a good port here in Kerala — he has been working on ports in Gujarat for 30years,buthehasnotbuiltsuch a port there yet — he will have to be ready to face their anger. I wouldalsoliketosaytoourChief Minister(PinarayiVijayan)—you are a strong pillar of the INDI Alliance. (Congress MP) Shashi Tharoor is also sitting here, and today’seventwillgivemanypeople sleepless nights.” TheRs8,800-croreVizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport is being developed by Adani Ports and SEZ Limited on a design, build, finance,operateandtransfer(DBFOT) model. In 2015, when the then Congress regime inked the deal with the Adani group, the CPI(M), then in the Opposition, had dubbed it a land scam of VADODARA, MAY 2 GEORGE MATHEW & HITESH VYAS MUMBAI, MAY 2 IN WHAT could significantly changehowthestockmarket responds to global cues, the share of domestic institutional investors (DIIs) has surpassed that of foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) as on March 31, 2025. DIIs include insurers and mutual funds, which have seen a steady flow of funds from retail investors in recent years. The share of DIIs in the NSE universe of listed companies PAGE 1 ANCHOR THE HOME SURGE 24% 20% FII share 16% 12% 13.44 8% 11.39 30-Jun -2009 17.62 17.22 DII share 31-Mar -2025 reached an all-time high of 17.62 percentasonMarch31thisyear, and surpassed the FPI share of 17.22 per cent for the first time in at least 15 years, data compiled by PRIME Database shows. The DII shareholding rose from 16.89 per cent in December-end 2024 to 17.62 per cent in Marchend 2025 following a staggering net investment of Rs 1.89 lakh crore during the three months. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MUMBAI, MAY 2 THE SECURITIES and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has alleged Pranav Adani, director of several Adani group companies and the nephew of the billionaire founder, shared price sensitive information and breached regulations aimed at preventing insidertrading,accordingtoadocument reviewed by Reuters. BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY Sarla Shinde and Sandhya Nizama at the event. Adani, the nephew of Gautam Adani, was sent a notice by the SEBI last year which alleged he shared information about Adani Green’s 2021 acquisition of SoftBank-backed SB Energy Holdingswithhisbrother-in-law before the deal was announced, according to a source and the document. The matter has not been previously reported. In an e-mailed response sent to Reuters, Pranav Adani said he RELATED REPORT CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Right now, China occupies Bagram air base: Trump YOSHITA SINGH NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, MAY 2 US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has claimed that China now occupies the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. The US vacated Bagram, its biggest airfield in the country, in July 2021. “But we were going to keep Bagram, the big Air Force base, which is one hour away from EXPLAINED GLOBAL THE STRATEGIC AFGHAN AIRFIELD PAGE 16 where China makes its nuclear weapons. That’s what they do. Theymaketheirnuclearmissiles andonehourawayfromBagram, and I said you can’t give up CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Three of a Surat family barred from filing more than six RTI pleas in a year PARIMAL A DABHI PAGE 4 was seeking to settle the charges “to put an end to the matter, without admission or denial of the allegations” and that “he has not violated any securities law”. Settlementtermswerebeing discussed, said the source with direct knowledge of the matter, whodeclinedtobenamedasthe matter is confidential. ThescrutinyisthelatestchallengefortheAdanigroup.USauthorities last year indicted US Vice-President J D Vance speaks during a tour at Nucor Steel Berkeley in Huger, South Carolina, Thursday. AP Since 2009, the trio had filed 2,741 appeals/complaints before the panel CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Insider trading case: SEBI accuses Adani nephew, he seeks to settle JAYSHREE P UPADHYAY CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 daughter Roshni who was killed along with 11 other children and two teachers in the Harni boat capsize tragedy on January 18, 2024. Shinde was among the two ADITI RAJA “I HAVE no hope we will get justice... Do they know what it means to lose a child?” Seated on a cot in her modest home in the walled city area of Vadodara,SarlaShindebreaks down as she remembers her FOR THE second day in succession, the US conveyed its understanding of India’s response to the Pahalgam terror attack with Vice-President J D Vance saying hiscountryhopesitwillnotlead to a “broader regional conflict” — and that the US expects Islamabad to “cooperate” with New Delhi to “hunt down” terrorists “sometimes operating from their soil”. Vanceisthelatestseniorrepresentative of the US administration, after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, to spell out the US line on the terror attack that killed 26 people. Vance and his family were in India on a fourday visit when the attack — the worst since Pulwama in 2019 — took place in J&K on April 22. AskedontheFoxNewsshow, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 After 15 yrs, domestic ‘DETAINED’ FOR INTERRUPTING CM’S SPEECH IN VADODARA ‘Do they know what it means to lose institutions upstage a child?’ asks Harni victim’s mother FPIs in ownership of listed stocks on NSE DIIs shareholding at 17.62% in NSE listed companies surpasses that of FPIs at 17.22% `6.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 BIG PICTURE PAGE 15 Amaravati THE MAKING OF A CAPITAL In villages by the Krishna river, a ‘grand city’ takes shape, amid hopes and anxieties GANDHINAGAR, MAY 2 TAKING SERIOUS note of “improper and disproportionate number of applications” under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by three persons from a single family in Surat, Chief InformationCommissioner(CIC) of Gujarat Information Commission(GIC)haspassedan orderrestrictingthetriofromfiling more than a total of six RTI applications in a calendar year. In its order, the Commission hasrecordedthatsince2009,the three had filed 2,741 appeals/complaints before the panel. The CIC passed the order on April 24 against three persons who have been identified as MahendraBrahmbhatt,Jashvant Brahmbhatt, and Harsh Brahmbhatt. Mahendra and Jashvant are brothers and Harsh is their nephew. As mentioned in the order, Mahendra and Jashvant are editors of a Gujarati newspaper in Surat. It is noteworthy that in a separateorderearlier—onApril 4— another bench of the GIC had recommended the Gujarat government to initiate a probe by CID Crime into the allegations of harassment of members of Pandesara Industrial Cooperative Society by the three after getting information through RTI applications. Considering two FIRs of extortion against Jashvant as well, CONTINUEDONPAGE2 To Attari and back, J&K constable: I would rather die than go to Pak ARUN SHARMA JAMMU, MAY 2 ON APRIL 26, when a senior officer called him to say that he and his eight siblings had to leave India because they were considered Pakistan citizens, Iftkhar Ali felt as if someone had cut the ground from beneath his feet. Having served 27 years in theJ&KPoliceserviceandknowing no other home, he told his shocked superior officer he would “kill himself” rather than cross the border. “Like you, I too had only heard of Pakistan,” Iftkhar, a 45year-old constable from Salwah village in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, tells The Indian Express now. “I have everything — my wife and children, relatives, friends, and colleagues — here. There’s nothing in Pakistan.” On April 29 — three days afterheandhiseightsiblingswere issueda‘LeaveIndia’noticeinthe aftermathof thePahalgamterror attack—theJammuandKashmir HighCourtstayedit,orderingthe central government and the J&K administration against forcing them to leave India. The order came on the back of a petition that he filed in the High Court against the notice. As a result, Ali and his eight siblings — older brothers Zulfqar Ali, 49, Mohammad Shafiq, 60, and Mohammad Shakoor, 52; and his sisters Shazia Tabsam, 42, Kouser Parveen, 47, Naseem Akhter, 50, Akseer Akhtar, 54, and Nashroon Akhter, 56 — have now returned to the village. Althoughhegotanotice,neither his wife nor his three minor sons got one “because they were At the Integrated Check Post near Attari-Wagah border in Amritsar district on Friday. PTI all born in India, they didn’t get the notice”, he says. The eighth of nine children, Ali was two years old when his parents,FaqurDinandFatimaBi, brought him to the erstwhile state of J&K. In their petition, Iftikhar and his siblings said that their father Faqur Din was a ‘hereditarystate subject’ and Indian citizen according to the 1955 Citizenship Act. They also said he owned about 17 acres of land and a house at Salwah village, addingthattheirfatherwasconsidered a permanent resident of J&K “even at the time of enactment of the J&K Constitution in 1957”. Apermanentresidentcertificate was a document previously issued under the Jammu and Kashmir Permanent Resident Certificate(Procedure)Act,1963, to prove one’s permanent residence in the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. A feature under the special status offered to the state, the certification ceased to exist after the Article 370 in 2019. According to the petition, whatcastshadowsovertheircit- izenship is that during the 1965 war, Pakistan took over areas alongtheLineof Control,including the place where Faqur Din and his wife Fatima Bi lived with children, then three. As a result, the family spent years at a camp inTralkhalinPakistan-occupiedKashmir, during which time the couple had six more children. LocalsintheareaclaimFaqur Din and his family returned to Salwah in 1983. Posted in Katra since earlier this year, Iftkhar joined the state police in the late 90s — when CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad