The Editorial Page: What could have been done to avert a cooking gas crisis — and wasn’t 14 MONDAY, MARCH 16, 2026 JOURNALISm of COURAGE KOLKATA, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES ₹6.00 (₹12 in North East states, ₹20 in Andaman) 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 Happening today lTHIRTY-SEVEN SEATS from 10 states are up for grabs in the Rajya Sabha elections. TRACK THIS AND MORE ON WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COm COUNTING OF VOTES WILL BE HELD ON MAY 4 Contest for 5 Assemblies kicks off: Bengal to vote in two phases, others in one round Will ensure polls free of violence and inducement: CEC Gyanesh Kumar ‘Doctors are not handing over final decisions to machines. AI is functioning as a filter, a triage tool’ DR M SRINIVAS DIRECTOR, AIIMS DELHI PAGE 18 INSIDE PAGE 6 SP, CONG, BJP DO MORE POLITICS & LESS WORK FOR BAHUJANS: MAYA ON KANSHI RAM CELEBRATIONS Damini Nath New Delhi, March 15 SETTING THE stage for intense electoral campaigns in the coming weeks, the Election Commission Sunday announced single-phase Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry(April9)andTamil Nadu (April 23), and twophased polling in West Bengal on April 23 and April 29, down from the eight phases last time. Counting of votes will be held on May 4, the Election Commission said. “Elections in all these four states and Union Territory of Puducherry shall be violence- POLITICS PAGE 7 BATTLELINES DRAWN FOR BJP, OPP PARTIES free and inducement-free. The Commission will take strict action if anything to the contrary is noticed and reported,” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar told at a press conference in New Delhi. With the announcement of theschedulebytheCEC,accompanied by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 5STATES,824SEATS WEST BENGAL 6.46 cr voters 294 seats Phase 1 - April 23 (152 seats) ASSAM 2026 KERALA TAMIL NADU PUDUCHERRY 5.67 cr voters 140 seats 234 seats 30 seats Polling on: April 9 Polling on: April 23 Polling on: April 9 Counting CEC Gyanesh Kumar announces on may 4 the dates for the Assembly polls, in New Delhi, Sunday. TASHI TOBGYAL investigation Learning parameters have improved but system still forbidding: 30 of 31 AAP MLAs and all 5 non-AAP MLAs with Divya Goyal Gopal Ludhiana, March 15 school-going kids chose private schools mLAs with children in schools Indian private schools 27 Private schools abroad 2 Home schooling 1 31 AAP MLAs 5 1 Non-AAP mLAs State govt All their kids in Indian school private schools (Cong 2, BSP 1, SAD 1, Independent 1) Business as Usual By EP UNNY Damini Nath New Delhi, March 15 WITH THE Election Commission announcing Sunday that theWestBengalAssemblyelections will be held in two phases, on April 23 and April 29, it’s a race against time for 60 lakh electors in the state whoseeligibilityisunder adjudication. Fornow,theyhavebeenkept off the electoral rolls and can only hope for a decision in their favour to make it to the rolls in GURMEET SINGH Anjishnu Das New Delhi, March 15 ASTHEenergycrisisstemming from the conflict in West Asia continues to grow, data on consumptionofliquifiedpetroleum gas(LPG)showsthatstateswith themostbeneficiariesunderthe Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a programme that Divya Goyal Gopal System will change when MLAs trust govt schools with their children: Bains “IF WE won’t admit our own children in government schools, how can we convince the people to do that? Meet Sukhveer Singh Maiserkhana, the only MLA with school-going children in Punjab who seems to have placed faith in “Sikhya Kranti” — the “education revolution” promised by the state government run by his own party AAP. According to an investigation by TheIndianExpress (see adjacent story), Maiserkhana, an agriculturist from the rural constituency of Maur in Bathinda, is the lone legislator from 36 in the state Assembly with school-going children whose kids studied in government schools in the 2025-26 academic session. Maiserkhana and his wife Shapinder Kaur have two children:a12-year-oldboy,who is a Class 7 student at the government-run School of Ludhiana, March 15 GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE, high academic confidence and socialtrustarethekeyelements that can prompt all parents, including politicians, to choose government schools for their children, Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains toldTheIndianExpress.Edited excerpts from an interview: What are the key initiatives taken by the AAP government to turn around government schools in Punjab? Punjab’s school education system had suffered from dec- EXPRESS interview HARJOT SINGH BAINS EDUCATION MINISTER, PUNJAB ades of neglect. Of nearly 19,000 government schools, more than 8,000 did not have boundary walls, more than 3,200 did not have washrooms »CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 Ludhiana, March 15 »CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 l SPECIAL FLIGHT REACHES VIA ARMENIA First group of Indians stranded in Iran lands in Delhi: ‘It has been a long journey’ PAGE 1 anchor Divya A New Delhi, March 15 THE FIRST batch of Indian nationals stranded in Iran over the past fortnight amid the war in West Asia arrived in New Delhi Sunday morning on a special commercial flight via Students returning from Iran arrive at Delhi’s IGI Airport, Sunday. PTI »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Sohini Ghosh & Ananthakrishnan G New Delhi, March 15 WITH THE Delhi High Court rejecting his prayer to transfer theCBI’sappealagainstthedischarge of the accused in the excise policy case from the single judgebenchofJusticeSwarana Kanta Sharma, Aam Aadmi Party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday movedtheSupremeCourtwith the request. Kejriwalisalsolearnttohave filed an appeal against the observations made by the high court in its March 9 order while hearingtheCBI’sappealagainst thetrialcourtorderdischarging him and others in the case. The Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, DK Upadhyaya, rejectedKejriwal’srepresentation »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 34 crore LPG consumers: Average household use half cylinder/ month The lone AAP MLA: ‘50 more families followed, that’s how chain reaction starts’ A govt school in Malerkotla. AAP launched ‘Sikhya Kranti’ in Punjab to transform govt schools into institutions for ‘quality learning’. time to cast their votes. While announcing the poll schedule for the West Bengal elections, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said the total number of electors eligibletocasttheirvotesin the state was 6.44 crore. After the Special IntensiveRevision(SIR)of electoral rolls, the EC on February 28 published the final electoral roll in West Bengal with 7.04 crore electors, of which 60.06 lakh werekept“underadjudication”. E. Sukhveer Singh Maiserkhana is a first-time MLA Divya Goyal Gopal 36 Polling on: April 9 0.9 cr voters EXPRESS l ThePunjabParadox 126 Seats 2.71 cr voters AAP ‘education reform’ in Punjab: Marked progress but only 1 party MLA sends own kids to govt school »CONTINUED ON PAGE 8 2.5 cr voters DECISION Phase 2 - April 29 (142 seats) express REACHED OUT TO ALL 117 MLAs OVER LAST TWO MONTHS IN 2022, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)swepttopowerinPunjab with 92 of 117 Assembly seats, riding on a key promise based on its Delhi model: “Sikhya Kranti”, an “education revolution” that would transform government schools into institutions parents could trust for “quality, equitable and inclusive” learning. Four years on, there has been significant progress in learning levels, with Punjab performing better than the national average in almost all parameters. But an investigation by The Indian Express shows that the party’s own leadership may not be confident enough, atleastfornow,todeeplyinvest in the system — when it comes to their own children. ‘Under adjudication’: Lakhs of Bengal voters in race against time l ASSEmBLYPOLLS: Excisepolicycase: KejriwalmovesSC asHCrefusesto sendCBIappeal toanotherbench Armenia,completingajourney that a student in the group described as “long and difficult”. The flight took off from Yerevan airport on Saturday afternoon, carrying 70 students and pilgrims,mostlyfromJ&K,and landed in New Delhi after a brief halt in Dubai. Many of the students and pilgrims later boardedspecialbusesarranged by the J&K government to »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Kolkata largelytargetsruralhouseholds, tend to consume the most LPG overall,thougheachhousehold in such states consumes less LPGpermonththanstateswith more urban populations. Over the last three decades, as per data published by the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC), which falls under the Union Ministry of Petro- leum and Natural Gas, India’s total LPG consumption has grownsix-fold—from446TMT (thousand metric tonnes) in 1998-99to2,754TMTin2025-26. The 2000s and 2010s saw the highest growth rate of LPG consumption — between 8% and 11% each year. In 2016-17, after the launch of the PMUY, »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2