The Ideas Page: Trump’s rhetoric, Rajiv Gandhi’s restraint and lessons on leadership 9 MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2026 JOURNALISM of COURAGE LUCKNOW, LATE CITY, 16 PAGES ₹6.00 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 lINDIA AND NEW ZEALAND will sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that will remove tariffs on 100% of India’s exports to New Zealand, and either sharply reduce or remove tariffs on 95% of current imports from New Zealand. lPRImE mINISTER Narendra Modi will begin a two-day visit to Sikkim during which he will hold a roadshow and participate in the closing ceremony of Sikkim's 50th statehood year celebrations. TRACk THESE AND MORE ON www.INDIANExPrEss.cOm Business as Usual By EP UNNY ‘We view our seafarers as national soldiers. We will never let them feel lonely under any circumstances’ SARbANANDA SONOWAL UNION MINISTER FOR PORTS, SHIPPING AND WATERWAYS PAGE 13 TRUmP, mELANIA, VANCE EVACUATED fROm WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ DINNER Close call for Trump as gunman opens fire near his event venue President, admn officials likely targets: Acting AG; shooter held, said was ‘Friendly Federal Assassin’ Govt’s online content blocking orders double to 24,000 in a year, over half on X ‘Interim measure’ of urgent blocking on the rise due to AI & deep fakes New Delhi, April 26 THE NUMBER of online content blocking orders passed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has doubled in the past oneyear,withauthoritiespointingtothesurgeofdeepfakeson social media as well as objectionablepostsandcontentgenerated by Artificial Intelligence on a variety of platforms. OfficialsintheMinistrysaid that currently, roughly 60% of orders for blocking URLs were for content on X (formerly Twitter); 25% for Facebook and IF THE first legislation he had proposed as Rajya Sabha’s youngest member four years ago had become law, Raghav Chadha would not have been able to exit the AAP, along with six other party members of the House, and “merge with” the BJP, an announcement he madetwodaysagocitingatwothirds majority of AAP’s House strength of 10. Infact,hadhisproposedBill been enacted, Chadha would have needed the support of seven, not six, from his party to cross over. And the present team would have been barred from contesting elections for six years for splitting the party. Because the Constitution (Amendment)BillthatChadha, then a trusted aide of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, brought to the House as a Private Member’s Washington, April 26 »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 Ritu Sarin Jatin Anand New Delhi, April 26 bo Erickson, Nandita bose, Jana Winter & Steve Holland USPRESIDENTDonaldTrump and First Lady Melania Trump were rushed out of the White HouseCorrespondents’Association dinner in Washington by Secret Service agents Saturday night after a man opened fire on security personnel nearby. The man fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent at a checkpoint in the Washington Hilton hotel before being tackled and arrested. Trump told reporters at a hastily arranged briefing at the White House later that the officer was saved by his bulletproof vest and is in “good shape”. USActingAttorneyGeneral Todd Blanche said Sunday that President Trump and officials in his administration were the likely targets. “Itdoesappearthathedid,in fact, have set out to target folks thatworkintheadministration, likely including the President,” Blanche told NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’, adding that the suspectlikelytravelledbytrainfrom LosAngelestoChicagoandthen to Washington. The suspect will be charged in federal court Monday with assault of a federal officer, discharging a firearm and Instagram;and5%forYouTube. While Parliament had, in 2023, been informed that an average of 6,000 blocking orders were being passed by MeitY, senior officials told The Indian Express that this number increased to around 12,600 in 2024 and 24,300 in 2025, both till December. RequeststoMeitYforblocking online content and subsequent blocking orders peaked during Operation Sindoor in May 2025 and has remained “very high” ever since. Sources said more than half the requests and complaints came »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 Chadha could not have defected or split AAP – if his Bill had passed US President Donald Trump being rushed out of the Washington Hilton hotel. REUTERS INsIDE PAGES 12, 6 E. Los Angeles, April 26 RELIEvED THAT TRUMP, MELANIA, vANCE ARE SAFE, SAYS PM MODI THE SUSPECT arrested in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting was identified byalawenforcementofficialas Cole Tomas Allen, a Los Angeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a Caltech graduate working as a part-timeteacherandgamedeveloper. The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, Califor- President Trump shared a photo of the suspect, whom an official identified as Cole Tomas Allen SECOND PHASE Of VOTINg ON APRIL 29 Anger at TMC, trust in Didi: As campaign ends today, women face a choice and a paradox DECISION 2026 WEST b ENgAL Neerja Chowdhury Kolkata, Canning, April 26 “NOW WE go to Didi when we have a problem. If the BJP comes to power, will we go to Delhi to seek help?” asks a youngwomansettovoteforthe first time on Wednesday in the second phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections. Theconversationtakesplace a stone's throw from Mamata Banerjee’s two-room house on HarishChatterjeeStreetinsouth ExPrEss interview ‘Chadha, Maliwal, Pathak decided to leave due to their issues with AAP, approached rest’ VIKRAmJITSINgHSAHNEY ONE OF THE 7 MPs WHO qUIT AAP PAGE 7 The shooter: Caltech grad, game developer, award-winning tutor Fresh hope for 21,000 Reuters THE BALLROOM TERROR: THUDS, EERIE SILENCE AND FEAR »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 Raghav Chadha entered RS as AAP member in May 2022. FILE West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee campaigns in Bhabanipur, Sunday. EXPRESS Kolkata’s Bhabanipur neighbourhood, where she has con- tinued to live even as the Chief Minister.Afteradrawn-outcampaignoverthepastmonthanda hecticlastcoupleofweeks,campaigning in West Bengal will conclude on Monday. Bhabanipurisasmallurban constituency in the heart of Kolkata that sent Banerjee to the Assembly in a 2011 bypoll after she ended the Left’s 34year run in power and then again five years later. In 2021, Bhabanipur again sent the TMC chief to the Assembly in a bypoll after she lost the main battle to her former associate and now Leader of Opposition (LoP) Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram. Bhabanipur is more than just another constituency. »CONTINUED ON PAgE 5 nia, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting Santa teachers once hired to modernise UP madrasas Monica Bay. The chief of the District of Columbia police department said investigators believe the suspectwasaguestatthe Washington Hilton hotel, where the annualdinnerwastakingplace. Facebook postings appearing to relate to Cole show that »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 NATION PAGE 6 GULF OUTREACH: DOvAL MEETS UAE PRESIDENT CENTRE-LADAkH TALkS TO RESUME NEXT MONTH Laiqa Fatima now stitches clothes to support her family. She also teaches at a madrasa in Azamgarh for a modest pay. VISHAL SRIVASTAV manish Sahu Lucknow, April 26 APOSTGRADUATEinEnglish, 56-year-old Mohammad Muslim sells fruits from a handcart to make ends meet. Now, about five years after the Madrasa Modernisation Scheme was discontinued by the Centre, leaving around 21,000 teachers employedaspartofitdestitute, Muslim hopes “our achche din (good days)” may return. Uttar Pradesh Minority »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 gREEN CORRIDOR fROm fEROZ SHAH KOTLA TO RAJINDER NAgAR How a cop, an ex-cricketer, got South African bowler to hospital in 11 mins Pritish Raj New Delhi, April 26 A DRIVE that usually takes 2530 minutes through central Delhi’seveningtrafficwascutto just11minutesonSaturday,asa rare “green corridor” rushed South African bowler Lungi Ngidi from Feroz Shah Kotla to BLK Max Hospital in Rajinder Nagar after a heavy on-field fall during an IPL match. At the centre of the operation was ACP Sanjay Singh, an ACPSanjaySingh,wholedtheop ex-cricketerwhohassharedthe field with Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli. Ngidi fell on his neck and head while attempting a catch at mid-off during the clash between Delhi Capitals and PunjabKings.Hewastreatedonthe field, but concern over the severity of the injury quickly escalated. At 6:16 pm, an ambulance left the stadium. By 6:27 pm,ithadreachedthehospital, covering roughly 10 km at peak hour in less than half the usual time. The sequence moved fast, but not by chance. »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 l { RAGHU RAI • 1942-2026 } He caught a nation’s pulse, frame by frame , black & white — and all in between Vandana Kalra Rai not just prize money but more significantly also a career in photography that was to stay RAGHU RAI’S foray into pho- with him until he passed away tography was rather fortuitous. in Delhi on Sunday. He was 83 A civil engineer who was on and had been suffering from aprofessionalbreak,itwasdur- cancer. Tenacious, observant and ing a visit to his elder brother, photographer S Paul, in Delhi deeply curious, born in Jhang (Pakistan), Rai inin the early 1960s PAGE 1 stilled life into every that Rai was introphotograph that he duced to the took and captured nuances of the medium. Accompanying a the pulse of the nation. “More friend to a village in Haryana, than a professional photograhe took what was among his pher, I became an explorer of first photographs: a donkey life,” he said in an interview to gazingstraightintothecamera. The Indian Express in 2024. Impressed by the image, Paul Though that life has now sent it to The Times in London, ended, the moments he rewhereitwaspublished,earning corded will remain forever in New Delhi, April 26 anchor Acamerarestedonhischest, theidealcompanioninhisfinal journey,RaghuRaiwascremated inNewDelhi,Sunday. ABHINAV SAHA MORE REPORTS, PAGE 7 theformofhisricharchivethat spans from photojournalism to documentationandportraitsof some of the most recognised figures from across different fields, politics to culture. “Some artists transcend art categories and labels and are extraordinary in the way they gather and live through the breadth of their experiences. I don’t think India was explored any better or as expansively as by Raghu Rai, who was sharp and deeply incisive, and empa- thetic, always on the move and sleptwithaloadedcameranext to him. Not a mere witness, the intensity with which he would seek was absolutely infectious and inspiring,” says Roobina Karode, Artistic Director and Chief Curator at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), who curated his 2024 exhibition Raghu Rai: A Thousand Lives at KNMA with Devika Daulet Singh. OneofIndia’sforemostphotojournalists, the 1972 Padma Shri awardee also recorded a spectrum of the country’s history, including photographs of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in Amritsar’s Golden Temple complex shortly before Oper- ationBlueStarin1984,theBhopal Gas Tragedy, the poignant plight of the refugees during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971 and the crackdown during the Emergency years. In 1977, Rai became the first Indian photographer to be invited to join Magnum Photos uponnominationbylegendary French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who had reportedly seen his photographs at an exhibition in Paris in 1971. Thelatter’shumanistapproach echoed in Rai’s own practice, including his frames of the rhythms of Old Delhi and the serene ghats of Ganga, landscapes across terrains and the Mahakumbh. Also testament to his inclination to introspect and archive are his several exhibitions and over 40 books, including A Day in the Life of India; Picturing Time: The GreatestPhotographsofRaghu Rai; India, My Land & Its People; The Album: Friends and Family; and Tibet in Exile. HisPeople:HisFinestPortraits brought together the little known and the well-recognised, including former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan, Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Satyajit Ray. Pramod Kapoor, founder and publisher of Roli Books »CONTINUED ON PAgE 2 Lucknow