DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2025, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES `5.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 SPECIAL INTENSIVE REVISION BEFORE POLLS Bihar rolls revision will disenfranchise 2 crore voters: INDIA bloc to EC ‘It is too short a notice, people will struggle to produce papers’ BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY ASAD REHMAN NEW DELHI, JULY 2 External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar with US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, in Washington DC. PTI INSIDE THERE WILL BE A SUCCESSOR, TRUST SOLE AUTHORITY, SAYS DALAI LAMA WHAT IS THE GADEN PHODRANG TRUST? PAGES 13, 14 GUJARAT SCHOOLS WITH 99% PASS RESULT, 75% AVERAGE SCORE MAY GET FREEDOM TO SET FEES PAGE 4 Cooperate to bring Pahalgam terrorists, organisers to justice: Quad joint statement SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, JULY 2 IN THEIR first meeting post Operation Sindoor, Foreign Ministers of the Quad grouping have condemned “in the strongest terms” the Pahalgam terror attack and called for the “perpetrators, organisers and financiers of this reprehensible act to be brought to justice without any delay”. In a joint statement, they have urged all UN member countries to “cooperate actively withallrelevantauthorities” under international law. MeetinginWashingtonDCfor the second time this year, the Quad Foreign Ministers — External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Australian Foreign MinisterPennyWongandJapan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya – also launched the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, and announced plans to host the first Quad Indo-Pacific Logistics Network field training exercise this year. The Quad Ports of the Future Partnership will also be launchedinMumbaithisyear.The nextsummitofQuadleadersisto be hosted by India later this year. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 India and US to sign defence framework when Rajnath and Hegseth meet next SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, JULY 2 INDIA AND the United States have agreed to sign a new 10yeardefencepartnership framework when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, meet later this year, a Pentagon spokesperson has said. This was decided in a phone conversationbetweenSinghand Hegseth on Tuesday, senior US Defence spokesman Colonel ChrisDevine said in a statement. Hegseth also met External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar at the Pentagon on Tuesday. “On July 1, Secretary of DefencePeteHegsethspokewith India's Minister of Defence RajnathSingh.SecretaryHegseth emphasised the priority the US placesonIndiaasitskeydefence partnerinSouthAsia...Secretary Hegseth and Minister Singh reviewed the considerable progress both countries have made toward achieving the defence goals set out in the February2025jointstatementby President (Donald) Trump and PrimeMinister(Narendra)Modi. The two discussed pending major US defence sales to India and RAJKOT, JULY 2 ACCUSING THE ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress of being in cahoots, AAP's National Convener Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said the “relationship” between the two parties was akin to lovers who meet in secret. Addressing a gathering of party leaders and workers in Ahmedabad, Kejriwal said, “I was asking someone ke yeh SOHINI GHOSH NEW DELHI, JULY 2 THE DELHI High Court Wednesday granted bail to two of the six accused in the 2023 Parliament security breach case, noting that their“symbolicprotest”doesnot prima facie constitute a terrorist act or come under provisions of the stringentUnlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. A division bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar also noted that the accused “havenotpropagatedanymovement which can be said to be against the interest of the nation”. It ruled that the use of smoke canisters in the incident does not raise a prima facie case against the accused, and their lethality or harmful effects is a “matter of trial”. The two accused, Neelam Ranolia alias Azad and Mahesh Kumawat, who have been in jail for over one-and-a-half years, are the first among the six to get The security breach took place on December 13, 2023 bail in the case. Both had challengedatrialcourt’sorderrejecting their bail plea. TheHighCourtgrantedrelief ontheconditionthattheywould not give interviews, attend press conferences or upload posts on socialmedia.Theyhave beenordered to report to their local police station three times a week and not leave Delhi. Noting that “the accused chose Parliament to raise their voice”, the court stated in its order: “The Parliament represents CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Arvind Kejriwal in Ahmedabad on Wednesday. Bhupendra Rana Congress aur BJP ka rishta kya kehlatahai?Aretheybrotherand CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 sister? Are they husband and wife? What do you think? Neither. This is a relationship of lovers who meet in secret. They meet in secret due to fear of society. Society won't accept their marriage. Be cautious of them, they are very dangerous.” Kejriwal's Gujarat visit, which began on Tuesday, comes close on the heels of the party's bypoll win in Visavadar constituency of Junagadh. Kejriwal said, “The win in Visavadar is not an ordinary one. CONTINUEDONPAGE2 INSIDE PM REACHES GHANA ON FIRST LEG OF 5-NATION TOUR FIRST BATCH OF AMARNATH YATRIS ARRIVES IN VALLEY PAGES 13 Finance questioned Beatles ashram revamp by Bimal Patel firm, Uttarakhand govt cleared it AISWARYA RAJ DEHRADUN, JULY 2 THE UTTARAKHAND Finance department had flagged the selection of Bimal Patel-led and Ahmedabad-based HCP Design, Planning and Management Pvt Ltd by the state Tourism department for the revamp of Chaurasi Kutiyaashram,popularlyknown as The Beatles ashram, without a tender, reveal documents obtained under the RTI Act. The documents, reviewed by The Indian Express, show that the Tourism department justified theselectionof HCPthroughsingle-source procurement by pointingtothecomplexityof the heritage cum eco-tourism project, and the expertise of the “world-class” company, which had executed major projects such as the Kashi Vishwanath INDIAblocleadersoutsidetheElectionCommission’sofficein NewDelhiWednesday. Amit Mehra BJP’s Bihar allies also uneasy, fear genuine voters will be left out DEEPTIMAN TIWARY NEW DELHI, JULY 2 THE BJP’S NDA allies in Bihar have publicly backed the Election Commission’s (EC) Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state in the face of Opposition criticism, but there is concern among some in the ruling coalition about the exercise. Several leaders of the BJP, JD(U), and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) The Indian Express spoke to expressed doubts if the EC could complete the exercise in the short time it has on its hands without leaving out genuine voters. The revision drive began on June 25 and is set to conclude on July 25. Pointing to the levels of literacy and poverty, and a lack of access to administrative remedies in the state, the leaders said manypeople,especiallythepoor and those from marginalised groups, might not have any of the 11 documents the EC has soughtasproof of dateandplace of birth. The leaders also emphasised that asinclusioninelectoralrolls wasnotdirectlylinkedwithgovernment benefits, voters would CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Two get bail in House BJP and Congress are like lovers security breach case, who meet in secret: Kejriwal HC says ‘symbolic protest’ not terror act EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE AMID OPPOSITION concerns over the ‘special intensive revision’ of the electoral roll in pollbound Bihar, 10 INDIA bloc parties told the Election Commission Wednesday that people will struggle to produce documents being sought for the exerciseatsuchshortnotice,and “it will disenfranchise 2-3 crore voters in the state”. The INDIA bloc delegation met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, ElectionCommissionersSukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in New Delhi. Briefing the media after the meeting, Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked whether the elections held since the last revision of voter lists in 2003 were “faulty”. “Firstly, we said the last revision was in 2003. For 22 years, four or five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty or imperfect or unreliable?” he said, pointing out thatthe2003SIRwasheldayear before the Lok Sabha elections and two years before the Assembly elections in Bihar. “Today, you are having it in July, a maximum period of one YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW E AN XPRESS RTI APPLICATION CorridorandtheCentralVistaredevelopment near Parliament. While the Finance department did come around to clearing the project, it recommended obtainingaprioritheapprovalof the Forest department, and asked the Tourism department toensuretheratereasonableness andthefeespaidtothecompany, the documents showed. Following rounds of discussion, the Uttarakhand Cabinet approved hiring HCP as the consultant on August 3, 2023. The Beatles ashram is situated inside the Rajaji National Park in CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Rupani had visited a Boeing 737 cockpit, 2 months before death in Dreamliner crash The aircraft was kept on the campus of an Aeronautics institute for training BRENDAN DABHI RAJKOT, JULY 2 JUST TWO months before his death in the fatal crash of Air India flight AI 171 in Ahmedabad, former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani was inside the cockpit of another passenger aircraft trying to understand its functioning. He made the visit on April 8 on the sidelines of a speech he delivered on 'One Nation, One Election' at the Indus University located near Rancharda village on Ahmedabad's outskirts. Rupani,followingthespeech, was given a tour of the Indus UniversityandtheWesternIndia Institute of Aeronautics (WIIA), which are in the same campus. There, in the parking lot, lying among two-wheelers and fourwheelers, was a slightly bigger vehicle — a decommissioned Vijay Rupani during his visit to Indus University in April. Boeing 737-200 aircraft. Like the Dreamliner which crashed two months later, this aircraft was also manufactured by Boeing and had been flown by Air India before being grounded and retired some years back. It has been kept here for practical training purposes of students of aeronautical engineering. Describing his experience, Rupani had written on social CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Saturday classes, home lessons: Mizoram road to ‘first fully literate state’ PAGE 1 ANCHOR SUKRITA BARUAH AIZAWL, JULY 2 THE LOW benches in the little school atop a hill in Tinghmun— avillage“inacornerof Mizoram”, as school teacher Robert Lalditsak calls it — is meant for children aged 10 and younger. ButonaTuesday,agroupof middle-aged villagers sat on them and clapped as 54-year-old Laltinkimi stepped up to the blackboard and wrote her name with chalk in big, spidery letters. What may seem like a modest achievement is one that she arrivedataftermonthsof classes — either before or after her long hours at the jhum (shifting cultivation farm). “I didn’t know how to read or write. Though it was difficulttolearnatmy age,I tried my best. I practised at home when I could,” she says. Laltinkimiand16othersfrom hervillageareamongMizoram’s 425“neo-literates”,mostlyadult learners from across the state who passed a Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Test (FNALT) over the past year. Thankstothem,thestatehas nowbecomeIndia’s“firstfullyliterate state” under the Centre’s ULLAS programme, officially called the Nav Bharat Saksharta Karyakram or the New India LiteracyProgramme.Theliteracy rate in Mizoram now stands at 98.2%, ahead of Goa and Tripura. According to the Ministry of Education’s 2024 definition, a statecanbecalled“fullyliterate” if it achieves 95% literacy. The ULLAS programme, which has a five-year timeline aimed at non-literate people aged 15 years and above, was first implemented across the country in 2022. ULLAS is one of the many (From left) Lalramsiami, Lalsiamtlingi, school principal Malsawmthanga, Laltinkimi and Laldawnsang. Sukrita Baruah datasets, including the National Literacy Mission (NLM) data and Census, that capture the state of adult literacy in the country. In 1991,with90percentadultliteracy,Keralahadachieved“totalliteracy” as per the NLM norms, which required 90% of a state’s populationagedbetween15and 35 years to be literate. According to the 2011 Census, literacy in Kerala stood at 93.91% while Mizoram’swas91.58%.According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey’s annual report from July 2023toJune2024,Mizoram’sliteracy rate for those aged 7 years and above was 98.2%, while Kerala’s stood at 95.3%. Calling Mizoram’s ULLAS milestone as the “last sprint”, Andrew Lalrintluanga, Deputy Project Director, Mizoram Samagra Shiksha, the nodal agency for the programme, says it was achieved “after decades of work on literacy”. Mizoram’s literacy journey has, in fact, been something of a race.WritingintheMizolanguage itselfhasahistoryoflessthantwo centuriessincelanguagesusedby these tribes did not historically have a script. It was only in 1894 that English Baptist missionaries J H Lorrain and F W Savidge codified the Mizo alphabet in the Roman script. Academic Laltluangliana Khiangtehaswrittenabouthow, alongwithlanguageprimers,the missionaries also prepared textbooks for elementary schools and Mizo translations of Christianliterature.Thesewould havebeenthefirststepstowards literacy among the Mizo people. On what helped Mizoram achieve its latest literacy milestone, Lalbiakdiki Hnamte, Professor, Education, Mizoram University,credits“volunteerism and community participation”. She says, “We have seen many literacy programmes — from ‘Operation Blackboard’ to CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad