Daily Briefing: ‘Need to guard employees,’ says Bhupender Yadav; BJP to give Shivraj Singh Chouhan a makeover; and more

As employees get another chance to opt for higher pension under the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), Union Minister Bhupender Yadav underlined the need for fiscal prudence to ensure that “pension payment liabilities in future are met”. 

From your pensions to EPFO’s prudent policies, here’s what Yadav said in an exclusive interview with The Indian Express.

Only in the Express

As Sania Mirza winds down her 20-year-long tennis career, we take a look at her success, as a path-breaking young Muslim woman from Hyderabad going up against the world’s best, and a flag-bearer for women’s sport. Speaking to The Indian Express, Mirza says, “As a young woman, no matter what you do in life, you are put under a lot of pressure… I want to tell these young women – don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do what you want.”

As BJP leaders admit to voter “fatigue” against Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, is a change of guard likely in the state ahead of upcoming Assembly polls? A top BJP leader said the party neither has the luxury of time nor choices to replace him. The party, however, plans to give him a makeover.

From the Front Page

Climate change – specifically, the tendency for the early onset of summer with hardly any spring break – has made India’s wheat crop vulnerable to terminal heat stress. Is there a way out? Scientists at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) have developed three wheat varieties to ‘beat the heat’.

India has kicked off its first cross-border real-time payments systems connectivity with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that the linkage of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore’s PayNow marks a “new era in cross-border fintech connectivity”. 

Must Read

One year into the Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped up the ante, by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty with the US. Earlier, US President Joe Biden announced that they “would not tire” against “tyrants”. Here’s why an end to the war is nowhere in sight.

Meanwhile, in our Opinion section, C Raja Mohan makes a case for China and India to play their part in ending the war. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, “promoting peace in Ukraine is also about recalibrating their great power relations and reordering their Eurasian geopolitics,” he writes.

In a recent interview, EAM S Jaishankar spoke at length about his transition from foreign service to politics. Jaishankar also recalled the time his father, Dr K Subrahmanyam, was removed as Secretary, Defence Production, by former PM Indira Gandhi soon after she came back to power in 1980. 

Extraordinary police protection, an effective ban on black flags and preventive arrest of workers of Opposition parties now mark the itinerary of Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, who has been facing protests over the recent Budget. In the last two weeks, several workers of the Congress and its ally IUML have been detained, many of them taken into custody from their houses, in those areas where Vijayan had attended public events.

And Finally…

The Centre is gearing up to reintroduce the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, in a bid to redefine monuments. With a likelihood of redefining “national importance” as well, at least 3,695 protected structures stand to lose their ‘monument tag’, The Indian Express has learnt.

Delhi Confidential: In a move that took everyone by surprise, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge recently travelled to the poll-bound Nagaland, where the grand-old party is just a marginal player. He had not campaigned in Tripura and may not visit Meghalaya either, where the party is in much better shape. Shashi Tharoor is also among the party’s star campaigners in Nagaland.

? In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we discuss George Soros’ comments on Adani group, a unique love story between a Pakistani woman and an Indian man, and V-P Jagdeep Dhankar’s request for a parliamentary committee probe on 12 members of the Rajya Sabha.

Until tomorrow,

Sonal Gupta and Anandu Suresh

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