The Hindu Morning Digest, August 3, 2025
The three Pahalgam terrorists who were killed during Operation Mahadev on July 28 were identified and tracked with the help of photographs recovered from a mobile phone seized by the security forces after an encounter in south Kashmir in 2024, a senior government official said.
Odisha girl allegedly set afire dies; police reject attack angle
A 15-year-old girl who sustained over 75% burns after being allegedly set on fire by unidentified miscreants in Odisha's Puri district on July 19 died at the AIIMS, New Delhi, on Saturday (August 2, 2025). However, in a major twist, the State police, just hours after girl's death, said 'no other person' was involved in the incident. Earlier reports had said that the girl was waylaid by three persons and set ablaze.
Sell only Swadeshi goods, PM Modi exhorts Indian traders amid 'global economic uncertainty'
Asserting that India is on the path to becoming the world's third-largest economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that the country must remain alert to its own economic priorities amid the instability and uncertainty facing the world economy. PM Modi's remarks came just days after U.S. President Donald Trump called India a 'dead economy'.
IND vs ENG 5th Test: Jaiswal's ton, Jadeja and Washington's knocks put India in driver's seat
Yashasvi Jaiswal broke the shackles when it mattered the most. After a memorable start to the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, with a century in the first Test and an 87 in the second, the young Indian opener struggled in his next six innings, notching up only 101 runs. But, at The Oval on Saturday (August 2, 2025), Jaiswal proved why he is rated so highly. Making the most of three dropped catches, the southpaw raced to his sixth Test hundred (118, 164b, 14x4, 2x6) as India set England a target of 374 after posting 396 in its second innings.
India will continue to buy Russian oil, government sources tell NYT
India will keep purchasing oil from Russia despite U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of penalties, two Government sources told The New York Times, not wishing to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. 'These are long-term oil contracts,' one of the sources said. 'It is not so simple to just stop buying overnight.
No political party has filed complaints on Bihar draft roll in last 24 hours, says Election Commission
A day after the publication of the draft electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, the Election Commission on Saturday said all eligible electors would be given new Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC). Hence, they should provide new photographs by September 1 when the deadline to file claims and objections ends, it said.
IndiGo bans passenger for 30-days for assaulting a co-traveller
IndiGo on Saturday announced an interim flying ban on a passenger for 30 days for assaulting a co-traveller on a Mumbai-Kolkata flight after the latter suffered a panic attack onboard and demanded that the aircraft return to the parking bay.
Indians in Ireland urged to take 'reasonable precautions' after growing number of racist attacks against foreigners
Against the backdrop of racist attacks on foreigners in Dublin, the Embassy of India in Ireland has issued an advisory for citizens urging them to take 'reasonable precautions'. The advisory came soon after an Indian national took to social media, on July 31, reporting that he became the latest victim of an attack by teenage gang members.
Bangladesh to unveil democratic overhauls on revolution anniversary
Bangladesh's interim government said on Saturday (August 2, 2025) it will release its slate of democratic overhauls on August 5, the one-year anniversary of the overthrow of the previous autocratic administration. Bangladesh has been in political turmoil since a student-led revolt ousted then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024, ending her 15-year rule.
ED arrests MD of Biswal Tradelink in fake bank guarantee case
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Partha Sarathi Biswal, managing director of Biswal Tradelink Private Limited (BTPL), in connection with an alleged fake bank guarantee case. The arrest was made following searches in Bhubaneswar and Kolkata.
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Scroll.in
10 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
‘Misleading': EC rejects Congress claims of voters added in Tamil Nadu amid Bihar roll revision
The Election Commission on Sunday rejected claims made by Congress leader P Chidambaram that reports had shown 6.5 lakh persons were added to the electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu amid the special intensive revision of the voter list in Bihar. The poll panel described the claims as being 'misleading and baseless' and added that the exercise to revise electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu is yet to begin. 'It is therefore absurd to connect the SIR exercise in Bihar with TN,' said the Election Commission. 'Such peddling of false statements with respect to SIR should be avoided.' ❌ The statements made are Misleading and Baseless #ECIFactCheck ✅Read in detail in the image attached 👇 — Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) August 3, 2025 On Sunday, Chidambaram said that reports of migrant workers from Bihar being enrolled as voters in Tamil Nadu were 'alarming and patently illegal'. 'Calling them 'permanently migrated' is an insult to the migrant workers and a gross interference in the right of the electorate of Tamil Nadu to elect a government of its choice,' the Congress leader said in a social media post. He added: 'Why should the migrant worker not return to Bihar (or his/her home state) to vote in the state Assembly election, as they usually do?' To be enrolled as a voter, a person must have a permanent or fixed address, wrote Chidambaram, adding that migrant workers have such homes in the states they come from. 'If the migrant worker's family has a permanent home in Bihar and lives in Bihar, how can the migrant worker be considered as 'permanently migrated' to Tamil Nadu?' he asked. Rejecting the claims, the Election Commission stated that such reports were being 'deliberately peddled in the media with a view to obstruct' the voter roll revision exercise. 'There is no need for political leaders to spread false information with respect to the SIR exercise being conducted by EC at the national level,' the poll body said, adding that exact figures about voters who have permanently shifted from Bihar to other states can only be known after a similar exercise is conducted there. Earlier, leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, had accused the poll panel of 'attempting to reshape the political demographics of the state', reported The Indian Express. 'This is a problem in Tamil Nadu as they [migrants] came to work here as guest workers,' party general secretary Duraimurugan was quoted as saying by the newspaper. 'But giving them voter IDs will result in political change in the future. If such attempts are made, we will become roaring lions to oppose it.' The draft electoral roll in Bihar was published on Friday as part of the special revision of the electoral rolls in the state, which was announced by the Election Commission on June 24. As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list will need to submit proof of eligibility to vote. This means that 2.9 crore out of the state's 7.8 crore voters – or about 37% of the electors – will have to submit documentary evidence. Voters born before July 1, 1987, must show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, must also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004, will need proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents. The draft voter list published on Friday comprises electors who submitted their enumeration forms to the poll panel between June 24 and July 26. They will now have to produce proof of citizenship to make it to the final list that will be published on September 30. With the publication of the list, electors have a month to raise claims and objections, during which eligible voters can be added and ineligible names excluded. During this period, voters who believe their names were wrongly deleted can approach the relevant authorities for redressal. Exclusions higher among women, Muslim-dominated districts A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on Friday showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar's draft voter list after the revision. It also showed that five of the state's 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters. At 15.1%, Gopalganj district in western Bihar saw the highest rate of exclusion in the state. The voter list in the district's Gopalganj Assembly constituency shrunk by 18.25% – also the highest in the state. The draft roll also removed nearly 65.6 lakh voters. Of them, 22.3 lakh were dead, 36.3 lakh had permanently moved or were absent, and 7 lakh were enrolled in multiple places, the Election Commission said.
Mint
10 minutes ago
- Mint
Home by home, Russia is selling occupied Ukraine to Russians
Photographs posted on the official Telegram channel of the Mariupol City Council showing the Clock House before and after the bombings. In a brochure, the property developer touts the 'majestic style" of the building's architecture and its prime location just a 15-minute walk from the sea, adding a caveat: It was damaged during 'military events." The building that once stood there was in fact demolished by developers after Russia conquered Mariupol in a brutal onslaught that killed thousands of people and devastated the Ukrainian port city's housing stock. Residents of the Clock House counted themselves lucky to survive, but are now excluded from the redevelopment of the building, which has been sold largely to newcomers from Russia. 'We, the previous owners, don't have the right to be there," said Elena Pudak, whose mother owned a spacious apartment in the building but now lives in Germany. Once a landmark of Mariupol's unique heritage, the Clock House now stands as a monument to Russia's transformation of the city for both profit and its own political designs. Across occupied territory, Russia-backed authorities have seized thousands of apartments after declaring them 'ownerless," leaving the Ukrainians who fled faced with growing barriers to return and prove their ownership or claim compensation. Newcomers from Russia, meanwhile, enjoy a range of perks, such as 2% mortgage rates on new building developments. The strategy of replacing the people who once lived in conquered territories with ethnic Russians is one that Moscow has long pursued. The eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, for example, was flooded with Russians in the 1930s as the Soviet Union industrialized the region while starving millions of Ukrainian peasants to death in what the Ukrainian government and many historians consider a genocide. Mariupol is a symbol of Russian brutality and Ukrainian resistance during a siege in the early weeks of the war that destroyed swaths of the city, including the smoke-billowing Azovstal steel works. Real-estate agents tout the city's newly-clean air. Russia conquered Mariupol in a brutal onslaught that killed thousands of people and devastated the Ukrainian port city's housing displacement and destruction has thrown open Mariupol's real-estate market. One new arrival, a Russian woman from Siberia, said she was dazzled by the bright orange of the sun when she first visited last year. She bought an apartment there needing only minor repairs and intends to retire there, fulfilling her husband's dream of living by the sea. For now, she said she would rent it out to a tenant—a woman from Moscow who now lives and works in Mariupol. Oleksandr Nosochenko, a former Mariupol resident, said a Russian military service member had taken over his summer cottage by the seaside on the city's outskirts. As a man of military age, Nosochenko couldn't make the journey back to Mariupol to claim compensation himself, and his wife, who had endured Russia's siege of the city, refused to return there on principle. The Clock House, built in the 1950s, was one of the most coveted addresses in what had been a thriving city. A new clock was installed during repairs to the building's roof and facade in 2021, with a light show that then-mayor Vadym Boychenko hailed as a symbol of 'the era of Mariupol's rebirth." Months later, residents found themselves huddling in the basement as Russian forces besieged the city. In March 2022, a missile tore a hole in the Clock House, killing several residents. 'That's when we realized we had nowhere to go back to," said Pudak, who had escaped the city with her husband and three children days before, leaving the keys to her mother's apartment with a neighbor. Mass displacement and destruction threw open the real-estate market. While workers started clearing rubble, realtors snapped up property on the cheap from fleeing residents. Residents of the Clock House scattered across Ukraine, Russia and Europe, but some remained in the building's basement until a leak appeared in the summer. Despite the damage, residents hoped the building's historic value would ensure its preservation. In a master plan for Mariupol's redevelopment approved by Putin in 2022, the Clock House was marked for restoration. The bulldozers arrived toward the end of 2022. Residents watched helplessly as the building was torn down. Three diggers broke in the process, according to the head of the residents association Maria Tikhovskaya. 'The house itself was fighting the demolition," she said in a video posted online. Satellite images show most of the building had been leveled by early 2023. Still, residents expected to receive apartments in the new building. A 2022 decree entitled them to be rehoused on the site of their former home. Unknown to them, however, the building had been allocated for redevelopment by a subsidiary of a company called Roskapstroy, which is owned by Russia's construction ministry. The reality began to sink in when they saw the floor plans and computer generated images of the new building on a Telegram channel that popped up in July 2023. It was several stories higher than the building they knew, and had a completely different layout. Instead of spacious two-bedroom apartments, it had been subdivided mainly into studios. Residents attempted to contact the developer, RKS Development, but were ignored. The developer instead opened a sales office near the site. Among the buyers was a real-estate agent from Mariupol, who reserved three apartments in the new Clock House. 'There was a lot of interest," said the 28-year-old. Most of the other buyers he encountered were from Russia, he said. As for the former residents, he knew of their grievances but had little sympathy. If they wanted to keep living there, they could have put down a deposit like everyone else, he said. Nevermind that the price was about three times what residents say they were offered in compensation for their apartments. 'It's barely enough to buy a burial plot," said one resident. Even if they could have afforded it, many former residents objected on principle: Why should they pay the price for the destruction of Mariupol? Within a week, the apartments had sold out, the real-estate agent said. The bulk of the planned construction cost of 850 million Russian rubles, or around $10.5 million, was covered by future owners, according to a project disclosure statement from the developer. The U.S. sanctioned Roskapstroy and its subsidiaries for operating in occupied Mariupol later in 2023. The developer didn't respond to a request for comment. The central avenue of Mariupol in the early months of the war, as Russian troops intensified a campaign that destroyed swaths of the a strategic port city, is a symbol of Russian brutality and Ukrainian resistance during a siege in the early weeks of the war. As construction work began, residents mobilized, appealing to official bodies in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian name for the government it installed in eastern Ukraine. In response, they were told the law had changed: Residents were no longer entitled to be rehoused on the site of their former homes, but anywhere within the city limits. Meanwhile, Elena Pudak's mother attempted to travel back to Mariupol to claim compensation for her apartment. She was denied entry at Russia's Sheremetyevo airport—the sole legal entry point for Ukrainians seeking to return to occupied territories. There was no explanation, but Pudak suspects the authorities are trying to keep people with property claims out. With dwindling options, Clock House residents filed a lawsuit against the Donetsk People's Republic, arguing that their rights as newly minted citizens of Russia had been violated. In a letter addressed to Putin, they pleaded their case. There was no response, and late last year, the court ruled against them.
Time of India
10 minutes ago
- Time of India
Congress – singing the tune of Pakistan
Keshav Upadhye, a young, dynamic and prominent face, has been working with the Bharatiya Janata Party for over two decades. In 2014, the then state president Devendra Fadnavis had appointed Upadhye as the spokesperson in his team. Owing to his journalistic background and better understanding of the socio-economic issues of the state, Upadhye made a mark as a spokesperson in a short span. He articulates the views of the party and aggressively defends the party on various platforms including the Marathi and Hindi national news channels. Keshav Upadhye worked for the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and after completing his degree in Journalism from Ranade Institute, Pune, he began his career as a journalist with daily Pudhari, Loksatta and Mumbai Tarun Bharat. Knowing the pulse of the news, he writes on varied topics and on various platforms like the newspapers, blogs and other social media platforms. He was involved in two study groups formed by the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini in 2006 to study the naxalite movement and its adverse impact on the development of Chhatisgarh. The Prabodhini later published this report. He was also a part of the Prabodhini's fact-finding committee formed to study the Solapur riots. LESS ... MORE Parliament recently held a discussion on 'Operation Sindoor', a joint operation by the Indian armed forces against terrorist outfits in Pakistan. Entire opposition including Congress were consistently demanding a discussion in Parliament on this issue. Congress' prince Rahul Gandhi and his sidekicks were also alleging that the government is not ready to discuss this subject in the parliament. The Modi government refuted the opposition's allegation by discussing this issue in detail. Rahul Gandhi's objection that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not speaking a word on this matter also turned out to be totally false. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also shed light in detail on various aspects related to 'Operation Sindoor' and the subsequent developments. This helped expose Congress' pro Pakistan stand in front of the nation once again. Congress' prince, while speaking in Lok Sabha, questioned why the action by armed forces against Pakistan was stopped and also bragged that the bravery and courage should have been shown like his grandmother Indira Gandhi. There is absolutely no doubt that Mrs Indira Gandhi showed the courage of breaking Bangladesh from Pakistan and making it an independent nation in 1971. Jan Sangh, the main opposition party at that time, had given its complete support to Indira Gandhi. The world could see the proud picture of the entire opposition standing in solidarity behind Indira Gandhi. The same picture was expected during the time of 'Operation Sindoor'. However, the behaviour of opposition parties over the last eleven years has shown time and again that they do not hesitate to take even an anti-national stand just to oppose Modi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi completely exposed the Congress' stand during his speech in the Lok Sabha. Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, while speaking on this matter in Rajya Sabha, showed another example of his love for Pakistan by raising a question 'Why do you assume that they came from Pakistan?' At the same time Praniti Shinde, daughter of another senior Congress leader and former Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, while making her point in Lok Sabha insulted the Indian armed forces by calling 'Operation Sindoor' a 'Tamasha' performed only for the media. She revealed Congress' traditional love for Pakistan by blatantly lying that the government is not giving information on how many terrorists were killed in 'Operation Sindoor'. In the press conference held immediately after 'Operation Sindoor', the Indian armed forces had clearly stated that the only purpose behind this operation was to destroy terrorist camps in Pakistan. In this operation India targeted 4 terrorist camps located 100 km inside Pakistan and destroyed 5 camps in POK with great precision. Officials of the Indian armed forces had informed in a press conference in New Delhi that the bases of the terrorist organizations Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba have been destroyed. Despite that, a public representative like Praniti Shinde in Lok Sabha by asking questions like 'what exactly was achieved by this operation' and calling 'Operation Sindoor' a 'Tamasha', cast a doubt on the actions of the Indian armed forces. Congress has this old habit of insulting the armed forces. Pakistan launched missile attacks targeting civilian settlements in India after 'Operation Sindoor'. However, the Indian armed forces repelled all these attacks. After that the Indian armed forces showed its strength by targeting army bases in Pakistan. Terrified by these attacks, Pakistan pleaded with India to stop the attacks. The Indian armed forces had also clearly stated that they have temporarily stopped 'Operation Sindoor' at Pakistan's request as the aim of teaching Pakistan a lesson had been achieved. Leaders of the ruling party, ministers at centre were not briefing the media throughout this period. All the briefings regarding this operation, losses suffered by Pakistan in this operation were officially done by representatives of the Indian armed forces itself. A modern technique of PowerPoint presentation was used while sharing information about this operation. In spite of this Congress leaders have no shame in doubting the bravery of the Indian armed forces by making statements like what was achieved through 'Operation Sindoor' at the supreme level like Lok Sabha. Few days back, Rahul Gandhi had demanded information on the number of aircrafts shot down by Pakistan in 'Operation Sindoor'. The Indian armed forces had already given a clear explanation on this. Pakistan's Prime Minister had made the ridiculous claim that their army had shot down Indian planes. However, the government of Pakistan failed to provide a single evidence of this. Instead of demanding information about the damage done to Pakistan, Rahul Gandhi was asking for the information on the number of Indian aircrafts that were shot down. Today, Rahul Gandhi is making childish remarks like asking why 'Operation Sindoor' was stopped?, Modi Government lacks courage to take action against Pakistan, but he will conveniently forget that no action was taken against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 despite the readiness of Indian armed forces only because of the weak stand taken by Sonia Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi also forgot that his grandmother unconditionally released over one lakh Pakistani soldiers. The prince is even oblivious to the fact that he is speaking the language of Pakistan just to oppose Modi and BJP. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
