The editorial Page: The ghosts of 1945 are being recruited in us-China contest over asia 14 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEmBER 30, 2026 Journalism of Courage lUcKNow, lATe cITy, 20 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 CJi-led benCh direCTs lisTing oF PeTiTion neXT WeeK SC to hear petition questioning CEC decisions, seeking EC records review lCommerCe and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will take part in G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting in Milwaukee at the invitation of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. lCongress in Karnataka will undertake a second ‘Bharat Jodo’ march across 84 constituencies covering 29 districts beginning from Shikaripura in Shivamogga district. Track These and more on www.indianexpress.com Plea: Declare SIR illegal, EC functions on ‘collective authority’, not ‘individual title’ ananthakrishnan g New Delhi, September 29 (from left) kiran pahal, prachi choudhary, m r poovamma and Vithya ramraj celebrate after winning the gold medal in women’s 4X400 metres relay final at the asian Games in nagoya, japan on Tuesday. PTI relaTed reporTs, Pages 25, 26 divya mittal took voluntary retirement last month UPofficerwho resignedfrom iasannounces politicalforay maulshree seth Lucknow, September 29 neArly A month after she took voluntary retirement, former indian Administrative service (iAs) officer Divya Mittal on Monday announced that she had decided to enter politics, saying she wanted to become the “voice” of people whose concerns often fail to reachthegovernment.shesaid shewouldnotstand“underany flag” and sought public support. in a social media post, the 2013-batch iAs officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre said she took time to decide on her next step after resigning from the civil services. “i resigned from iAs last month and left many questions behind. This is a big task, and i was gathering courage. Today i have come to answer.Whatnext?Theanswer is politics,” she said. Mittal said her decision was driven by a desire to represent people whose voices do not reach government offices. she raised questions about schools sanctioned but never constructed, land allotted on lease but never handed over, poor roads and the deaths they »ConTinUed on Page 2 Four women, many struggles, one gold: India’s 4x400m relay team tops podium express at AsiAn GAmes mihir vasavda Nagoya, September 29 lforKirAnPAhAl,running wasonceanactofdefiance.her father had to fight an entire village in sonipat to allow his daughter to pursue athletics. lfor Prachi choudhary, a farmer’s daughter from sahar- anpur, the dream of a DsP post in the UP Police has been a drivingforce.Beforeleavingfor nagoya, she submitted her measurementsfortheuniform, hoping to turn that ambition into reality. lM r Poovamma had to find her way back from a doping ban and depression, with her husband and mother helping her rebuild. lVithya ramraj, the daughter of an autorickshaw driver, had already broken india’s oldest athletics national record in nagoya before taking the track for the relay. fourwomen,fromdifferent cornersofthecountry,carrying different expectations. on Tuesday, at Mizuho Park, they wonindia’sfirstandonlytrackand-field gold medal of the Asian Games in nagoya, reclaimingthewomen’s4x400m relay title with a time of 3:29.69. in the last edition in hangzhou, china had beaten india to gold, but this quartet proved why indian women remain favourites with a seventh gold in the 4x400m relay at the Asian »ConTinUed on Page 2 Resisting invaders to swords of goddesses: NCERT revises book on medieval history for Class 9 vikasPathak&gayathrimani New Delhi, September 29 The ncerT’s new social science textbook for class 9, released Tuesday, describes 700 years of medieval indian history from 1000 to 1700 AD as a period of “resistance and resilience”,oneduringwhich“indian society not only defended itself from external threats but also preserved its traditions”. Part 2 of the social science textbook Understanding Society: India And Beyond — Part 1 was introduced in June and dealt with themes across disciplines, including history, political science, geography and economics — while mentioning “both conflict and cooperation”focusesonactsofresistance, not of cooperation or the development of a composite culture, themes that were central to indian historiography for over 50 years. Documenting successive invasions of the subcontinent, thehistorysectiondescribesreligious traditions in warfare, and how indian rulers — be it therajputs,thekingdomofthe Ahom, the Vijayanagara empire, Marathas, sikhs, Jats and others — put up strong resistance against the Turks, »ConTinUed on Page 2 2024 sambhal violenCe Case Confession before police cannot be sole ground for detention under NSA, says SC New Delhi, September 29 A confession made before a policeofficerwithoutanyindependent material to support it cannot be the basis for deten- tion under the national security Act (nsA)-1980, the supreme court said on Tuesday. A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and sheel nagu delivered the judgment while »ConTinUed on Page 2 Form6declaration removedforstates wheresirisover New Delhi: four days after announcing it, the election commission Tuesday night removed the sir declaration addedtothestatutoryvoterenrolment form, form 6, from its ecinet application portal in states where the sir has concluded. The portal no longer showed the declaration for the states where the final sir electoral rolls have already been published.Thedeclarationwas stillthereforthosestateswhere the sir is ongoing. ens their knowledge. senior Advocate Vikas singh, appearing for the petitioner, urged a three-judge bench, headed by chief Justice of india surya Kant, to hear the matter early. “The purpose of having a »ConTinUed on Page 2 politics Page 4 cong raises PiTch, says Pm, shah and cec musT resign over ‘voTe chori’ bJP hiTs back: cong Trying To riP aParT consTiTuTional mechanisms E. Says if US does not appreciate India’s concern on Pak terror, it can impact ties shubhajit roy New Delhi, September 29 in firsT remarks on the meeting between Us President Donald Trump and chinese President Xi Jinping, external Affairs Minister s Jaishankar said the two countries are in “a competitive mode” and all other countries, including the world Page 16 india, are looking to “de-risk” and “diversify” to secure their own interests and ties. speakingattheAsiasociety Policy institute in new york Monday, after spending an entire week at the Un General Assembly session, Jaishankar, while underlining the complex nature of the indo-Us trade »ConTinUed on Page 2 New Delhi, September 29 allahabad high courT dismisses PeTiTions To run hookah bars Page 3 explained shifting landscape external affairs minister s jaishankar at asia society policy institute in new york. ANI At a time when conflicts have roiled economies and disrupted supply chains, the US and China are competing and because they cannot agree globally, the rest of the world needs to de-risk, diversify to survive in a fragmented order. Funds awaited, Govt showpiece deep-tech initiative hits pause amitabh sinha uttar pradesh during the november 2024 violence in sambhal. FIle By EP UNNY US, China in competitive mode, India and others must de-risk, diversify for own good: Jaishankar TrumP says iran noT offered sancTions relief; ready for Talks, says Tehran Sets aside Allahabad HC order upholding man’s detention, fines UP govt Rs 10 lakh express news service neeru dhanda after winning gold in women’s trap shooting individual event at the asian Games, Tuesday. PTI ThesUPreMecourtTuesday agreed to take up for hearing next week a petition questioning the manner in which chief election commissioner GyaneshKumarhasbeenfunctioningwhentheconstitutiongives the cec “no individual title” to the election commission’s “collective authority”. Urging the court to declare as illegal the nationwide specialintensiverevision(sir) of electoral rolls, the petitioner, rakesh Kumar singh, has said itmustseekthe“completeoriginalandprimaryrecords”relating to the matter from the election commission. The petition comes days after The Indian Express reported that election commissioners sukhbir singh sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over thepast10 months to decisions andordersrelatingtothesirof electoral rolls. The two commissioners said some of the decisions were issued without business as usual A shoWPiece Government initiative to make funds available to emerging private companies engaged in deep-tech research has hit pause after the only agency selecting beneficiaries decided to stop inviting applications — because it hasn’t received the money needed to proceed after one round of funding, The Indian Express has learnt. onTuesday,theTechnology Development Board (TDB), a statutory body under the Department of science and Technology(DsT),issuedanoticeon its official website informing that invitations for funding wouldbeclosedafterthismonth “duetoadministrativereasons”. however, multiple sources told this newspaper that TDB, which is the only agency currently involved in selecting beneficiaries for the rs 1 lakhcrore research, Development and innovation (rDi) fund, is yet to receive the money neededtoextendfreshoffersto companies. According to rules, the money has to be allotted by the DsT, which is the administrative custodian of the rDi fund.TheDsThasalreadybeen allocated rs 23,000 crore to fundtheprogramme,including »ConTinUed on Page 2 l minisTry rejecTs proposed space of 2 rooms for cenTral secreTariaT library; earlier, iTs Tulsi sadan library secTion was disbanded for meTro work, wiTh 2 lakh-plus books now in carTons for 15 yrs 135-yr-old library, 8.5 lakh books — and no room in the new Central Vista plan harikishan sharma & damini nath again, to the north Block and then to shastri Bhawan, where it has remained since 1969. New Delhi, September 29 it’s time to move again — When KinG George V an- but no one is sure where. sources say that as shastri nounced the decision to shift the capital of British india from Bhawan is pulled down as part of the central Vista calcutta to Delhi in revamp plan, the 1911, the central secpage 1 Ministry of housing retariat library and Urban Affairs (csl),thenknownas (MohUA) and centhe imperial secretariat library, moved with it, tral Public Works Department finding its first home in the old (cPWD) are yet to find space for secretariat Building in the civil what is one of the oldest cenlinesarea.AftertheBritishbuilt tral government libraries, a new seat of power around founded in 1891, and its second raisina hill, the library moved largest, after the national li- anchor brary, Kolkata. spread over four floors and anareaofnearly5,500sqm,the cslcontainsmorethan8.5lakh books, including rare books, official records and gazetteers, and continues to receive a steadystreamofvisitors,among them government officials and studentspreparingforcompetitive exams. The oldest book, in a separate section of rare books inthelibrary,isthecompilation of a french traveller’s writings, dating back to 1702. onseptember17,thecPWD wrote to all ministries and departments situated in shastri central secretariat library at shastri bhawan in new delhi. ReNUKA PURI Bhawan,sayingthecomplexbe vacated,includingallfurniture, electronic items and other belongings, “at the earliest” as it “needs to be handed over… by the end of september 2026 for thecommencementoftheconstruction work”. sources told The Indian Expressthat in January, the Directorate of estates under the MohUAallottedtworooms,occupying 300 sq m, at Kartavya Bhawan-2 for the csl. This was rejected by the Ministry of culture, which administers the csl, which replied that the space allotted was far from suf- ficient, as per sources. The Ministry of culture and MohUA did not respond to emails seeking comment. it was three years ago that thecultureMinistryfirstraised theissueatthehighestlevel,officials told The Indian Express. on september 12, 2023, then culture secretary Govind Mohan, who is now the home secretary, wrote to then MohUAsecretaryManojJoshi, urging that space equivalent to that occupied by the csl at shastri Bhawan be allotted in the revamped central Vista. stressing the importance of the csl to government employees and students alike and callingthelibrary“oneofthelargesttangibletreasuresofknowledge for indian and foreign documents”, Mohan wrote: “since csl is a part of central secretariat,itwasallowedaseparate building i.e. ‘G’-Wing on thepremisesofshastriBhawan.” notonlydidthelibrarycater“to the needs of all ministries/departmentsoftheUniongovernment”, the then culture secretarysaid,butitalso“functioned as a depository of Government ofindiapublicationssince1984”. »ConTinUed on Page 2 Lucknow