Front Page
Burning bridge over troubled waters: Tamil Nadu is losing patience over the Centre’s promises of resolving the Cauvery dispute between the state and its neighbour Karnataka. So much so, that the Supreme Court had to step in and give the Centre a scolding for “not framing a water-sharing scheme for the Cauvery” and order it “to prove its ‘bona fides’ by submitting a draft scheme by 3 May”, The Hindu reports. This is the big headline for almost all the major dailies except The Times of India, where you can find it in a small section under the Commonwealth Games coverage.
DMK working president M.K. Stalin, however, is “hugely disappointed with the breather granted to the Centre till 3 May”, The Hindu reports.
Speaking of the Commonwealth Games, India stunned three-time defending champions Malaysia to win its first badminton team gold. After day five, India is at number three overall. Check out The Times of India coverage to keep track.
A day after a girl alleged rape by a BJP MLA, her father died in police custody, The Indian Express reports. Both the daughter and her father remain unidentified, and the report tells us that the alleged rape victim also tried to “immolate herself near the residence of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath over police inaction”. “…Her father died in custody in an Unnao jail Monday, allegedly of injuries sustained when he was brutally assaulted by supporters of the MLA six days ago.”
The Supreme Court’s second most senior judge Justice Chelameswar said Monday there was “no objective assessment of performance of judges while elevating them to the apex court. It is mostly based on perceptions”, Apurva Vishwanath reported for ThePrint.
27 people, 23 of them school students, died Monday when a bus “plunged into a deep gorge in Himachal Pradesh’s Nurpur, about 100 km from Dharamsala”, Hindustan Times reports on its opening flap. Kangra deputy commissioner Sandeep Kumar said the deceased children were aged between 5 and 11. It is believed the driver lost control of the wheel while navigating a sharp turn.
Meanwhile, along the border, China ‘seems to have accomplished’ what the Indian Army chief had earlier termed an “impossible task”. The Narendra Modi government is “trying to ascertain the credibility of intelligence reports claiming that China has built around 70 km of metalled road between September 2017 and February 2018 in Shaksgam Valley”, Hindustan Times reported Monday. To know more, read Manu Pubby’s comprehensive report for ThePrint.
The widespread Dalit backlash has prompted the Modi government to begin a legal ‘course correction’. To begin with, the “Centre will file a review petition before the Supreme Court to undo its controversial order on faculty reservation”, Anubhuti Vishnoi reported for ThePrint Monday.
Business Class
The longest serving woman CEO in the financial sector, Axis Bank chief Shikha Sharma, will step down in December 2018 — two and a half years before her term ends. “The announcement came after the Reserve Bank of India raised questions on the board’s proposal to appoint her for a fourth term from July 2018,” The Times of India reports front page. “For FY16, the RBI’s classification of Axis Bank’s NPAs (non-performing assets) were 156% higher, or Rs 9,478 crore, compared with the bank’s own classification.”
Trust in ICICI CEO Chanda Kochhar is ‘wavering’. The bank board, which initially stood firmly behind the bank chief with regard to the “Rs 3,250-crore loan given to Videocon Group and transactions between its promoter and her husband”, is now divided on the issue of backing Kochhar, The Indian Express reports.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
We broke a record! The Indira Gandhi International Airport has broken into the list of the top 20 busiest airports in the world for 2017 in terms of traffic volumes, ranking 16th, Bloomberg reports.
While we enjoy the rain through our windows, the freak weather, high wind speeds, and isolated hailstorms have drenched the harvest stored in grain markets and damaged ripe wheat in farms. The food bowl states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have been impacted the most, Hindustan Times reports.
Does anybody want Air India? The government Monday said it would still want to see if IndiGo bids for Air India, even as the budget carrier announced last week that it wouldn’t, The Economic Times reports in an article that kind of makes you feel bad for the struggling PSU.
Mankind has booked itself its first flight…to the sun. “NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — humanity’s first mission to the sun — is undergoing final preparations for its launch scheduled for 31 July,” The Indian Express reports.
India: The land of doctors, lawyers, and now 80,000 fewer engineers. “There will be 80,000 less seats in engineering this year in the country. This will lead to around 3.1 lakh seats less in four years. According to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), nearly 200 ‘substandard’ engineering colleges have applied for closure,” The Economic Times reports.
Point of View
Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Oli’s just concluded India visit has given hope that Delhi-Kathmandu ties could be reset. Both the countries focused on the positives and steered clear of any rhetoric. The Hindu, in its editorial, writes that the reset was “long overdue”.
Dalit anger seems to be rising and the party most likely to bear the brunt is the BJP. No surprise that the party is going into overdrive to soothe the Dalits, especially the younger ones. The Indian Express writes in its editorial that the best way to regain Dalits’ confidence is to ensure that due process of law is followed in crimes against Dalits.
A week is a long time in politics, former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said. The BJP looked invincible under the leadership of Modi and Shah, and set to retain power in 2019. But the political mood in the country seems to have changed a great deal in the last six months. Political commentator Neerja Chowdhury writes in her column in The Indian Express that the party is now looking very vulnerable.
Facebook has been facing the anger of users for being vague in matters of privacy, and now it seems evident that the social media company didn’t take the issue seriously. Varghese K. George writes in his column in The Hindu, “As he appears before (US) congressional panels, Mark Zuckerberg is a far cry from the liberal hero that he was.”