Your Morning Briefing for 11 September 2020

Good morning,

We are covering the fresh Chinese troop deployment at Finger 4, the BJP's nuanced approach to backing actor Kangana Ranaut and a fraudulent withdrawal from Ram temple Trust’s bank account.

The Big Story

The Chinese have massed close to 2,000 soldiers further west of Finger 4 in the last 48 hours to wrest the advantage after Indian troops occupied dominating heights on the south bank of Pangong Lake. With India mirroring the deployment at Finger 3, both sides are now less than 500 metres apart, all within shooting range. 

Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart held direct talks in Moscow for more than two hours with the border crisis deepening.

From The Front Page

A media report which said Amazon is locked in talks with Reliance Industries Ltd to buy 40 per cent stake in Reliance Retail has led to a sharp rally in the latter’s share that shot up by 7.14 per cent to Rs 2,314.65 on the Bombay Stock Exchange Thursday.

In Uttar Pradesh, more than half of the NSA cases were filed against those accused of cow slaughter. Under the NSA, a person can be detained without a charge for up to 12 months if the authorities feel he or she is a threat to national security or law and order.

The BJP has been taking a nuanced line on actor Kangana Ranaut — distancing itself from her “Mumbai is PoK” statement, while condemning the demolition of parts of her office in Bandra. Clear directives have been issued to party leaders to make that distinction while speaking in support of Ranaut.

The Rafale jets received a water salute during its induction into the India Air Force at Ambala in Haryana on Thursday.

The Pandemic

Serum Institute of India has decided to halt ongoing clinical trials in India of the Covid-19 candidate developed by The University of Oxford until AstraZeneca restarts its own global trials of the vaccine. AstraZeneca halted the trials after one participant developed a “potentially unexplained illness”.

Reiterating that all symptomatic negative cases of rapid antigen tests must mandatorily take an RT-PCR retest for Covid, the Centre has directed all states to set up two teams each to monitor and ensure that no potentially positive case is missed out.

Beyond Covid-19

Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami was ordered by Delhi High Court to adhere to an undertaking given to the court in December 2017 that he will “exercise restraint as well as bring down the rhetoric” when covering the Sunanda Pushkar death case.

Two cloned cheques have been used to withdraw Rs 6 lakh from the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust’s bank account, meant for collection of funds for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya, police said on Thursday.

Chaotic scenes, including ‘lathicharge’, were witnessed along the national highway at Pipli in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district for almost two hours after police did not allow agitating farmers to move to their rally venue to protest against the Centre’s three agri ordinances.

Farmers raise slogans against the Centre's agri ordinances, near Pipli chowk in Kurukshetra, on Thursday. (Express)

ICYMI

• Hours after Raghuvansh Prasad Singh resigned from the RJD on Thursday, Lalu Prasad wrote an emotional reply to his old comrade, telling him he was “not going anywhere”.
  
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a 30-minute conversation with Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe, where the two sides welcomed the signing of a key defence pact.
  
• The BMC has told the Bombay High Court that actor Kangana Ranaut had been carrying out “substantial alterations” in her Bandra property and its action of demolition was without any “malafide”.
  
• A Canadian think-tank has brought out a report accusing Pakistan of fuelling the Khalistan movement in Canada, and saying the Justin Trudeau government is dragging its feet on the matter.
• Days after an alleged assault on a man in Panipat was shared widely on social media, a top cop on Thursday said the initial probe indicates the 28-year-old had sodomised a child.

And Finally...

“Only six of them are up now. If things don’t improve, I will have no option but to exit completely after December” - With a pandemic raging and most parents working from home or faced with job losses, preschools across the country are staring at an uncertain future.

Delhi Confidential: Officials are uncertain about how many MPs will come to the national capital to attend the 18-day Monsoon Session from Monday.

In our latest episode of Three Things Podcast, we discuss why the Indian Railways wants to convert many non-air conditioned sleeper and general class coaches into air conditioned coaches.

Until tomorrow,

Leela Prasad G and Liu Chuen Chen